by Ron Ripley
He and his cousin Marlene spent anywhere from ten to twelve hours a day in the shop, Monday through Thursday. The weekend was time to recover and prepare for the workweek to come.
With a slight smile, James picked up his cup and had a sip of the hot water he favored. He did not drink caffeine or alcohol for that matter, but he did enjoy a warm drink.
Marlene entered the back office and sat down across from him at her large oak, desk. At thirty-five, she was ten years younger than he was, but she had wisdom that far exceeded his own and a forceful personality that had allowed her to thrive in the competitive world of the Marines. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore only the slightest of makeup on the high ridges of her cheeks. Marlene's eyes were a piercing green, and her thin lips seemed to vanish when she was displeased.
Few customers enjoyed that look.
She glanced at his cup and shook her head. “One of these days I’ll slip some cocoa in there, really throw you off your game.”
James raised his left eyebrow, gave a half smile and said, “Then you’d give me a heart attack.”
“Really?” she asked, grinning. “From drinking hot chocolate?”
“No,” James responded, “because I’d try to chase you down.”
“I appreciate the ‘try’ you put in there,” she said with a snicker.
“Try is right,” James continued, smiling, “but if I did catch you.”
“That’s a big if, cousin,” Marlene said, laughing.
He conceded and gave her a nod. “Anyway, all playing aside, what’s going on out there? Anything?”
“Not much,” she said. “I had a hipster come in with a man-bun and a poor excuse for a beard. He said his coffee mug was haunted, said it made his coffee cold all the time and that a psychic told him it was the mug. Then he dug around, found us, and brought it in.”
“And was he impressed with himself?” James asked, already knowing the answer.
Marlene rolled her eyes as she said, “Of course he was. I took a good look at the mug. There was nothing to it.”
Marlene, like James, had been taught how to examine an item, and they had learned how to spot a faint, telltale glow around it if it was indeed possessed. Some items, like a toy soldier that had come in a few days before, had been tinted ever so slightly. It was haunted, but the ghost would need some coaxing. Other pieces, such as a battered paperback, war issue copy of H.P. Lovecraft's In the Mountains of Madness, had been occupied by the ghost of a female nurse who had been none too pleasant.
That particular piece was under lock and key. As were seventy-six others. He and Marlene were in the process of assembling a new catalog. It would be the 141st Moran and Moran catalog. The first ever produced in 1876, and still haunted by a male relative who refused to leave for the next world, was kept in a glass display case behind the counter.
The business line rang, and Marlene reached out, plucked the phone from its cradle and answered it. “Moran and Moran, this is Marlene speaking. Yes, hello, Mr. Rhinehart, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”
James watched and listened. Jeremy Rhinehart was a warden, not a collector, but a jailer of haunted items. Occasionally, he purchased a piece to keep it out of someone's hands, and he was an avid reader of their catalogs, subscribing to them and to the reports of sales made. He had also saved James early on in his career at Moran and Moran. Jeremy Rhinehart would always get what he needed as far as James was concerned.
“Hold on one moment, Mr. Rhinehart,” Marlene said, pressing the receiver to her ear with her shoulder as she logged onto her computer. “Alright, give me that description, sir.”
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, struck ‘enter’ and she waited a heartbeat for the response.
“Yes,” she said, taking the receiver back in her hand, “we did sell that piece. In 1977, it was sold to Nicole Korzh. According to the description, it contains an active teenager. A particularly angry one as well. There was some suspicion that the spirit was responsible for fires, but there was nothing definite … Anytime, Mr. Rhinehart. Enjoy the rest of your day, sir, and thank you for calling.”
She hung up the phone and shook her head. “He’s been calling with some pretty random questions lately.”
“No,” James disagreed, “he never asks random questions. If he’s calling about a piece, it means he has either seen it or, more than likely, he is staring at it.”
“Isn’t he old now?” Marlene asked.
“In his seventies I believe,” James said. “But he’s been fighting and confronting the dead since before either of us were born.”
A chime sounded, letting them know that someone had entered the shop.
"I'll get it," James said, backing his wheelchair away from his desk. He smiled at his cousin and rolled past her, heading out to the storefront to see who had come in, and why.
Chapter 41: A Congenial Discussion
He had interrogated a great many people in his time, some of them for pleasure, but most for information.
Stefan would be questioning the woman, Ariana Leckie, according to her license, for both.
He knew it would not end well for her, and he wondered if she would understand that when she woke.
Stefan had bandaged her wounds, secured her to a chair, and gotten himself a protein bar. He snacked, had some water, and waited.
Time passed slowly, each minute dragging by. Finally, having decided that he didn’t want to wait any longer, Stefan prepared to slap the woman back into consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered before he could raise a hand, and he grinned as her eyes focused and fixed on him.
Stefan leaned back in his chair and chuckled. "I was just about to wake you up."
Her eyes darted about the room, no sense of panic in them as she sought a way out.
There wasn't one. Not only had Stefan bound her to the chair, but he had covered the walls with tarps. Neither the room's solitary window nor its door was visible. One bare light bulb hung from a fixture above her head, and the room was cold. More for her than for Stefan since he was wearing a full set of clothing, and she was clad only in her undergarments.
Stefan waited a few minutes while she took stock of her situation. He knew that the loss of blood and the disorientation of having been unconscious would make her thirsty, so he took a leisurely drink from his glass of water. Her eyes fixated on it and he could see the longing for the cool liquid fill her face.
“Tell me,” Stefan said, “what’s your name?”
She stared at him for several seconds and then responded, “I’m sure you know it already. I don’t think you would have stripped me down and gone through my purse otherwise.”
Stefan chuckled. “You’re right about that, Ariana. I appreciate that. Okay, here’s one for you that I don’t know the answer to. Who are you?”
She smiled, dragged her attention away from the water, and said, “No one in particular. Why do you ask?”
“I have a feeling that you’ve been harassing me,” Stefan said. “Maybe not intentionally. But I doubt that. I think you know exactly what you’ve been doing.”
“And what’s that?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I ask the questions. Not you. Now tell me. Who are you?”
“Ariana Leckie. Not much more to tell, really,” she said, smiling. She winced, suddenly cognizant of the injuries her face had sustained when he had knocked her out.
“That’s funny,” Stefan said, offering her a humorless grin. “Because you see, I feel that there is a little more to it than that. In fact, I don’t know why, but your face seems familiar. Like I’ve seen it before. Why is that?”
She shrugged.
Stefan let out an exaggerated sigh. “You know, Ariana, you’ve seriously interrupted my work. I have a lot of items that need to go out into the world, and your meddling has put a rather significant dent in my timeline.”
The woman remained silent.
Stefan leaned forward and said in a low vo
ice, “Tell me why you’re helping Ivan Denisovich Korzh. What possible reason could you have for helping that ghost? In all honesty, you don’t look old enough to have run into him on the collecting circuit. You don’t even seem like a collector. There’s not that stink about you.”
The muscles in her face twitched at the mention of his father and Stefan smiled. “You did know him. Curious. How so? And what sort of relationship could it have been?”
She stared through Stefan and said nothing.
Her silence bothered him. For the first time, he suspected there was something more to her than he had even considered, and his anger crept up. “Tell me.”
She must have heard the anger in his voice, for she smiled at him. “You need to know, don’t you?”
It wasn’t a question, but he nodded his assent.
"I," she started, but then she began to shake and spittle formed at the corners of her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered, and the whites rolled up, her hands opened and closed, the fingers digging into the arms of the chair.
“Pills.” she said through clenched teeth. “Purse. Seizure.”
The idea that she would die without telling him what she knew spurred him out of his seat. Stefan twisted around, found her purse on the floor, and jerked it into his lap even as she and the entire chair crashed to the floor. He tore the snaps off the purse as he opened it, found the small white bottle labeled, Gabapentin. A glint of silver caught his eye, and for a moment he was distracted, and he looked deeper into the purse.
He saw his own eye staring back at him.
“Gary,” Ariana said, without a trace of the debilitation she had been suffering from seconds earlier.
An unseen blow smashed into Stefan, hurtling him backwards.
***
Waves of nauseating pain washed over Ariana, threatening to send her into unconsciousness, much as Gary had done the same for Stefan.
Her half-brother lay limp on the floor, and Gary stood beside him.
Gary Sloan was a diminutive ghost, not quite a midget. He was slight, almost elfin, and his favorite pastime had been to cut the hamstrings of tall men when he had been alive in the 1930s. The compact he possessed had once belonged to a prostitute, the only person who had ever cared for him, and thus the only person he had ever cared for.
Ariana had the good fortune to look like the woman.
“He’s not as tall as I thought he would be,” Gary said, shrugging his shoulders beneath the rough cotton shirt he wore. He turned his attention to Ariana, frowning. “Do you need help getting out of there?”
“I would appreciate it, Gary,” she said, biting back a grimace. The three gunshot wounds throbbed, and as much as she wanted to seize hold of Stefan, she knew that she would be no match for him when he came to. And she didn’t have anything to hold him with to keep him bound and in place. She forced herself to smile at the ghost. If Gary realized how much Stefan had hurt her, he might kill the man, and that was an action only her father could take.
“Okay,” Gary said. He moved toward her and warned, “This might hurt.”
“Usually does,” Ariana said, and braced herself for the pain.
***
A pounding headache woke Stefan up and showed him that he was alone.
The chair he had bound Ariana to was empty.
Whoever Gary was, the ghost had helped her escape.
Ariana had recognized Stefan’s desire for information and exploited it.
It had been a deft move, and while he felt rage seethe below the surface, he nodded in grudging admiration at the way she had escaped. With a grumble, Stefan left the room.
In silence, he walked out into the daylight and stood still. He took several deep breaths, glanced back at the small shack he had transformed into a cell, and sighed.
Not knowing who she had truly been, or why she had been helping his father was disappointing. But at least he had confirmed that someone was helping Ivan Denisovich, and while he didn’t know why, he at least knew how.
And that knowledge lifted the shroud of fear off him. He would still need to watch his back.
I need to make a safer place. One laced with salt, and lined with cameras. A house with iron to keep out the dead, and a damned clear field of fire to gun down the living, he thought, following the path that would lead him to the main road. I am still not as safe as I need to be.
Not if I want to destroy my birthright.
Chapter 42: A Distant Memory
Tom woke up feeling as though he had been sick for a month. In the back of his throat he tasted something sour, and a quick look around the front seat showed an empty pint bottle of whiskey on the floor.
It took him several minutes to get his bearings, and when he did, he realized that it was late afternoon, almost evening, and he had no idea where he was.
Straightening up, Tom looked around the strange car he was in. The fact that he was in the driver's seat was even odder, especially since he had been so reluctant to drive with his parents or to take lessons at school. A quick check of his surroundings showed he was in the parking lot of an abandoned McDonald's.
“Tom,” Nicholas said from the back seat.
Swallowing back a scream and trying to get his thundering heart under control, Tom twisted in the seat to look at the dead man.
Nicholas grinned at him, the man’s form disturbingly solid. “You’re finally awake.”
Tom nodded. “How long was I asleep?”
“Less than a day,” Nicholas said, glancing out the window as a battered pickup truck went racing past. “Strange, how one becomes aware of the passage of time when in a body again.”
The dead man smiled at Tom, and Tom was shocked by the sincerity.
“Now, do you remember anything?” the ghost asked.
Tom shook his head. “I remember going past the unconscious police officer, and heading down the road. That’s it.”
“Best you don’t remember anything else then,” Nicholas said.
Tom went to scratch an itch on the back of his hand and discovered he had gloves on. When he went to take them off, Nicholas shook his head.
“Leave them on,” the dead man advised.
“Why?” Tom asked, confused.
“We borrowed this vehicle,” Nicholas answered. “Without permission.”
“We stole it,” Tom said, leaving the gloves on.
"Yes," Nicholas said, grinning. "We did. Or, rather, I did. You were more or less asleep. In all honesty, you, personally, had nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, since I was in your body, your fingerprints would tell a different story."
Tom was silent for a moment before he looked at the dilapidated fast food restaurant and asked, “How much longer until we get to Pennsylvania?”
“We’re here,” Nicholas responded. “And, if I’m not mistaken, we should find not only Jeremy and my grandson, but Stefan Korzh.”
A sickening rage exploded in Tom’s heart as he heard the murderer’s name.
His face must have reflected his feelings, for Nicholas nodded.
"Keep that hatred close, Tom," the dead man said in a hard voice. "You'll need it before long if I am not mistaken. We must be cautious, you more so than myself.”
“Okay,” Tom said in a hoarse voice. He looked out at the darkening sky and asked, “Now what?”
“Now,” Nicholas said, “we find my grandson, and from there, Korzh.”
“Let’s do it,” Tom said, and he left the safety of the stolen car.
Chapter 43: Disgusted
Stefan Korzh had suffered more setbacks in the past two weeks than he cared to think about. It was time, he knew, to do more than complain about it.
Stefan had become accustomed to being at the top, and he hated to be anything less than number one. Allowing his dead father to drive him out of not one, but two refuges was unacceptable.
Stefan knew Ivan Denisovich shouldn’t be capable of anything.
Not against him.
The unknown woman, and her esca
pe, left a bad taste in his mouth, and Stefan felt a strong compulsion to know who she was. Not only to know her name, but her history, and to find her.
She needed to be dealt with, especially since she had been so eager to help his father. The woman had already proved herself to be a threat, and once she healed, she might be again if he didn’t find a way to contain both her and Ivan Denisovich.
And Stefan knew his father was probably the only person who knew who she was. That meant he would need to confront Ivan Denisovich, and the only way Stefan could do that would be to find the object his father was bound to.
Which required him to return to the house Ivan Denisovich had destroyed.
Stefan shuddered at the thought, but he knew there was no other choice.
“I hate him,” he sighed, and readied himself for the dangerous task ahead.
Chapter 44: A Growing Bitterness
Lana was back at the second crime scene, by herself.
There was something wrong in the air. A corruption in the woods that raised goose bumps on her arms and caused the small hairs at the back of her neck to stand on end.
The house was empty, the victim’s girlfriend still hospitalized.
And understandably so. Some of the forensic techs were seeing therapists. It had taken them the better part of the night to gather what remained of the victim.
Most of him, at least. Some had been stolen away by animals. A few pieces, Lana suspected, had been carted away as trophies by whoever had done the killing.
A few of her colleagues from Pennsylvania argued that it was an animal that had killed the man. She disagreed. The lack of tracks and the precision with which the body parts had been scattered said otherwise.
And there was the case in West Virginia, the rest stop with the teens.
No, Lana thought, squatting down and looking over the scene where they had found the man’s face. There’s something here. Something more.