“Think we should tell Sorren?” Teag asked.
I shook my head. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with yet,” I replied. “Let’s see what’s going on, and then we can figure out whether it’s a matter for the Alliance.”
Sorren is part of the Alliance, a coalition of mortals and immortals who work together to neutralize or destroy dangerous supernatural objects. If we can’t handle a situation on our own, Sorren’s got a network of colleagues with a variety of powerful—and lethal—magical talents he can call for back up. I really hoped we wouldn’t need the Alliance’s help. That usually meant really big trouble.
“Whatever you say,” Teag replied skeptically. “Are we going in armed?”
Teag didn’t mean guns. He meant magical protections. “Damn straight,” I replied. “If something scares Kell, we already know we’ve got a problem.”
* * *
Five o’clock rolls around a lot sooner when the evening isn’t likely to be fun than it does when you’re looking forward to a night on the town. Teag and I drove over to the old Navy Yard in my blue Mini Cooper, and I felt like someone had dropped an ice cube down my back as soon as we passed the defunct guard booth at the gate.
“Not too late to change your mind,” Teag said with a nervous grin. But we both knew it was. Kell was counting on us.
“Have I mentioned how much I don’t like this place?” I asked. Teag and Sorren and I had nearly gotten killed by some seriously evil magic out here a little while ago. That’s not the kind of thing you forget.
The old Navy Yard had been many things over the centuries. Pirates had claimed it as their safe haven. Smugglers and sleazy businessmen had taken up where they left off. The grounds had housed a Confederate hospital and holding area for captured soldiers during the Civil War, and plenty of war equipment had moved through here for several conflicts when the Navy owned the land. Since the area was decommissioned, it had fallen into disrepair. The effort to renovate the place and make it into a business park was just getting started, more of a dream than a reality, although a few start-ups were making a valiant effort.
Abandoned buildings hulked all around us, boarded up and falling into ruin. Lots of bad things had happened on this land, and the blood seemed to have soaked into the ground itself, giving it some bad mojo that probably contributed to the faltering efforts to revitalize the area. It set my magic on edge, warning me to get out while I could.
I should listen better when my instincts tell me to turn around and go home. But it’s our business to get rid of dangerous stuff so it doesn’t hurt anyone, which means rushing in where sane people fear to go.
“This is it,” Teag said as we drove up to an old three-story brick building. The new museum was in one of the blocks where the renovated businesses were located. I pulled into a spot near the other cars in the lot, and took a moment to look the place over.
From the brick, I’d guess the building was more than century old. It had been built with solid walls and stone under the windows and around the door. Outside, banks of red poppies swayed in the breeze, the symbol of the First World War. An inscription over the entrance made my heart sink.
“Base Hospital,” I read with a groan. Next to the door, a much newer sign proclaimed ‘Charleston and the Great War—a World War I Retrospective’.
“Just your kind of place,” Teag joked. I sighed. Military hospitals had a higher than average death toll, which probably explained why Kell and his people had been brought in for the ghost issue. More dead people meant more ghosts, usually. And a museum display of items associated with war was likely to set off my abilities in uncomfortable ways. Exhibits from a World War were unlikely to have a happy history. But we had made a promise to Kell.
“Let’s try to make this quick,” I replied, although I doubted it was going to work that way.
Kell was waiting for us at the door. “Thank you for coming on short notice,” he said, looking so relieved I felt a little guilty for not being more enthusiastic.
Kell was tall, with light-brown hair, blue eyes, and a boater’s tan. He wore a trendy tweed jacket over a dark t-shirt and jeans, professional but functional for setting up cameras and microphones to catch the ghosts in action. Kell was the founder of SPOOK—the Southern Paranormal Observation and Outreach Klub. What began as a hobby had turned into a full-time paying business, with talk of a TV show. More importantly, Kell was a friend of Teag’s long-time romantic partner, Anthony, so we were doubly obligated to try to help Kell out of a jam.
“So, what’s in the bag?” Kell asked, looking at the beat-up canvas backpack Teag had slung over one shoulder.
“Just some tools of the trade,” I said off-handedly. Actually, they were weapons of the supernatural sort. The bag held Teag’s blades, salt and his weaving cords as well as a walking stick that I used to channel my magic defensively. And depending on what kind of big nasty we were going up against, Teag and I had collected a variety of magical odds and ends that might not look like much but could pack a supernatural wallop. On top of that, Teag was a championship martial arts kind of guy, and while I hadn’t won trophies like Teag, I could hold my own pretty well.
“Have you seen the exhibit yet?” Kell asked. “It hasn’t opened to the public, but you know Alistair over at the Lowcountry Museum pretty well. I figured he might have given you an early pass.”
I shook my head. “No, but I heard that the exhibit was in the works,” I replied. Kell led us through the partially-completed displays. I saw glass cases with soldiers’ uniforms from the First World War, military gear and weapons, and medical equipment that would have been used when the building was a hospital. In other displays, I glimpsed letters, official documents, photos, and journals, and off to one side in an alcove was a small movie screen for video.
Near the entrance, a large plaque held the text of a famous poem about the war’s casualties lying beneath fields of poppies. And in every room, artists had brought their own interpretation to the theme, with paintings, sculpture, and textiles of red poppies.
It looked like a great exhibit, except for the warning prickle that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I glanced at Teag, and he gave a nod, showing that he felt the power, too.
“There have always been rumors about the old hospital being haunted,” Kell said, comfortable in his role as tour guide. Elsewhere in the building, I could hear carpenters and the sound of power tools as the workmen finished up for the evening. A few museum employees locked up the display cases they had been working on and gathered their things.
“I’ll close up,” Kell said as the construction workers came downstairs. They nodded and headed out, and suddenly the old building seemed too quiet.
“As I was saying,” Kell began, and just then, we heard someone coming down the stairs from the second floor. Teag and I turned, expecting another workman, but no one emerged from the stairwell. When we turned back, Kell gave us a knowing smile.
“Spooky, huh?” he said. “This kind of thing has been going on since the museum decided to renovate the building for the exhibit. Footsteps. Cold spots. Glowing orbs. Lights that turn on and off by themselves, and doors that open and close. Oh, and at least two different ghosts that look real enough people have tried to talk to them,” Kell added.
“Was that why they called you in?” Teag asked.
Kell shook his head. “Nope. Museum folks are used to a fair amount of ghost stuff. Comes with the territory. But then, things escalated.”
I peered up the empty stairwell when we passed, but no one was in sight, and I repressed a shiver. My right hand went to the agate necklace I wore, grounding myself by touching the protective gemstone. Around my left wrist, I wore a stained and worn old dog collar, wrapped a couple of times and buckled. It belonged to Bo, a golden retriever of mine who passed beyond the veil a couple of years ago, but whose spirit remained close as a loyal protector.
Kell led us into one of the small rooms toward the back of the building. It had ex
posed brick walls that still showed the wear of more than a century. On one side, a World War I-era metal hospital bed had been set up with a mannequin dressed like a wounded soldier lying beneath a military-issue blanket and sheet.
In the middle of one wall hung a display of old-time photos, and when I looked more closely, I saw that they were all doctors who had served at the Navy hospital. A similar photo display showcased the nurses assigned to the hospital during the First World War. And on the far wall, a somber document listed the names of all the soldiers known to have died in the hospital during World War I.
A glass case stood over to one side, shattered as if someone had given it a good kick.
“Your ghost did that?” I asked.
Kell nodded. “My folks are pretty sure it’s a different spirit than people have reported before. There’ve been sightings of a woman in an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform walking down the hall. She disappears halfway down the corridor, always in the same place. Then there’s an older man in a long jacket who walks from room to room. We think he’s a doctor, still making his rounds. Those two have never hurt anyone or bothered the exhibits.”
“What about the patients?” Teag asked. “Did any of them… stay behind?”
As if on cue, we heard the clatter of a metal pan hitting the wooden floor. A moan sounded from somewhere upstairs.
“Yeah,” Kell said. “A few of them hang around. They don’t seem to do more than make noise. Sometimes, you’ll get a whiff of rubbing alcohol, or smell cigarette smoke when no one’s around. So the whole building is a hot spot, but the rest all seem pretty harmless.”
“Are they ghosts, or stone tapes?” I asked. ‘Stone tape’ was the phrase ghost hunters used to mean memories that were impressed upon a physical location, replaying themselves in an endless loop, like an old-fashioned cassette tape.
“Some of both,” Kell replied. “Then the new one showed up and started turning things upside down.”
I noticed there were remote cameras trained on the four sides of the room, and an odd sensor with an array of blinking lights that were aimed at the far corner. A couple of tiny microphones dangled from the ceiling. Kell had the room under surveillance.
He led us into another room, where two of his ghost hunting team watched a bank of computer monitors. One was a girl in her mid-twenties with goth-black hair and a gray hoodie over black jeans. The other was a guy about the same age sporting a brown ponytail and a t-shirt with one of Shakespeare’s bawdier quotes on it. “Kendra and Tom,” Kell introduced, and the ghost hunters acknowledged us with a nod.
“We’ve been recording since the first night,” Kell said. “I was afraid it would be hard to narrow in on just this one ghost’s manifestation, since there’s a lot going on here, but whoever is kicking up a fuss in the next room pegs the meters. The energy is really strong, and he’s pissed off about something.”
“And the damage only started when people began working in that room?” I asked.
Kell nodded. “Yeah. I did a little digging. Before the museum bought the building, a couple of different owners tried to use it for other things. One company leased out office space. Nobody would stay because of the ghosts, so that didn’t work. A pest exterminator company bought it next and only used the bottom floor, but they had so many problems with their electrical equipment that it wasn’t worth it, plus their receptionists kept quitting because of the ghosts.”
“Are the exhibits going to be on all four floors?” I asked.
Kell shook his head. “No. The museum didn’t need that much room, and the upper floors haven’t been modernized. They’re blocked off and locked up.”
“What kind of readings have you gotten?” I asked, looking at all of Kell’s equipment. It looked he had enough stuff to launch a mission to Mars.
Kell typed on one of the keyboards, and a graph came onscreen. “The flat areas are where there’s no ghostly activity in the back room,” Kell said, pointing. “Then you can see, the readings go way up here,” he said, noting the spike, “and here.”
“What kind of activity caused the spike?” Teag asked.
Kell shook his head. “You name it, it happened. The motion sensors went off, but no one was around. The electro-magnetic frequency recorder triggered with strange sounds, but there was no one in the room. The temperature dropped.”
“Okay, that’s definitely strange,” I said, leaning in to get a better look at the screen. “Is it the same set of occurrences each time there’s a spike?”
“Not necessarily,” Kell said. “A few people say they’ve seen a shadow by that back wall, but there’s no one to cast it. When furniture has been placed up against the wall, it’s been moved by morning, with no one around. And listen to this,” he said, pivoting to grab a hand-held recorder from one of the tables.
Kell thumbed a button, and the recorder blinked on. We heard a lot of white noise, hissing, and popping, turned up to high volume. Then out of the background hum, what sounded like a man’s voice, and two syllables: “Sa-rah.”
I looked up. “A woman’s name? Sarah?”
Kell played the recording again, and we listened closely. The ghostly voice was low and muffled, but to my ears, it sounded like ‘Sarah’. Teag nodded in agreement.
“So, who’s the ghost? And who is Sarah?” I asked.
Kell put the recorder back on the table and turned to me. “I was hoping you could help us figure that out.”
In the distance, I heard the bells from one of Charleston’s many churches ring six times. “Things tend to happen back here between six and seven,” Kell said. I followed him back to the corner, and it seemed to grow colder the closer I got.
“I’m still not sure how I can help,” I said, looking around. “I’m not a medium. I don’t talk to ghosts. I read objects.”
“And I think I know which object may have triggered this new haunting,” Kell replied. He went to the display with the cracked glass and carefully withdrew a worn and stained bundle of canvas.
“This was a soldier’s shaving kit,” Kell said. “The museum had it in their storage area for quite a while, and it never seemed to have caused any trouble. When they sent it over to us for the display, all hell started to break loose.”
He turned the small bundle over in his hands. “It looks as if someone inked a name on here,” he said, tracing a dark, smudged area. “But part of the cloth is torn, and after a lot of use, the marking isn’t readable.”
Kell held out the bundle to me. “I was hoping that maybe you could find out who this belonged to, and why he’s raising a fuss after all this time.”
“All right,” I replied. “But I’d like to sit down,” I said, knowing from experience that sitting was better than falling. “And since the ghost likes that corner, let’s put the chair over there.”
Teag moved the chair, and Kell carried the shaving kit. I sat down in the chair, took a deep breath, and held out my hands. Kell placed the old kit across my palms, and I closed my eyes.
Cold, dark clouds hung over the blue-gray ocean. From the deck of the ship, I saw a rocky coastline far in the distance. Smoke filled the sky, and the sound of gunfire carried across the water, even this far out from shore.
The wind was laced with salt-spray, and I felt chilled to the bone, though it was only autumn.
Our look-out shouted a warning. I could just make out a strange object in the waves before the men on deck scrambled for combat positions. The big guns fired, then fired again. The shells hit the ocean, sending a wall of water skyward. There was a muted thud, then bubbles and oil percolated to the top. A cheer went up. We’d hit a sub.
The cheering died as another shout came. Torpedo sighted—oh God. I felt the ship turn hard, but the torpedo caught it midships with a sickening thud. Metal squealed and the ship jerked, sending men flying.
Seeing the action through the eyes of the man who had owned the shaving kit, I felt his terror, saw him thrown off his feet and into a bulkhead. The whole ship shook, an
d smoke rose, making it hard to see and harder to breathe. The ship listed, and I glimpsed something large and heavy coming straight at me…
The scene shifted. I lay in a bed, staring at a hospital ceiling, drifting in and out of consciousness. I looked over at the brick wall, eyeing the place I had stored my treasure, knowing it was still safe. Fever and chills wracked my body, and a never-ending thirst. I could taste blood on my lips. Not much longer—
“Cassidy!” Teag was calling my name, kneeling next to my chair. He took the shaving kit out of my hands, and Kell held out a glass of cold water for me. My hands were nearly shaking too badly to accept it, but I managed to take a drink without spilling too much.
“He was on a war ship. It got hit by a torpedo,” I said when I found my voice. “He was hurt. They probably sent him home to recover.” I paused. “Except—I think he got worse here. He was very sick, dying. Fever.”
Kell sat back on his haunches, studying the shaving kit thoughtfully. “That might explain some things,” he said.
I sipped my water. The visions I see when I handle potent objects really send me for a loop. As reactions go, this wasn’t the worst I’d had. Still, it would take me a while to be back to my old self.
“Explain what?” Teag asked.
Kell stood. “Charleston had a big military base here for a long time. Back in World War I, a lot of fellows were just getting ready to ship out when the Spanish Flu came through town. Some of them never left port. Others, sent here to recuperate, ended up dying from the epidemic.”
He nodded in the direction of the old hospital’s back parking lot. “The museum just found the site plan for the building and grounds as it was back then. It had been misplaced for a long time. There was a graveyard behind the hospital—pretty common back in the day, but people had forgotten all about it. I bet this poor fellow never made it home.”
Something about the vision stayed in my mind. I stood, and Teag followed me over to the corner, where I got down on my knees and stared at the wall.
“What are you doing, Cassidy?” Teag asked.
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