by H. P. Bayne
Breanna was to his left now, face turned toward another door and, from its position, Sully suspected it was either a pantry or a basement. He hoped for the former but knew it had to be the latter when Breanna disappeared through the door, leaving Sully to suck back his anxiety and follow.
He was greeted by a set of wooden planks serving as stairs while Breanna waited at the bottom. Sully took the stairs carefully but found they held easily.
Revealed by the beam of the flashlight, the basement was one large, undeveloped space encased by bare cement walls. Significant cracks had formed in several places, and pools of water were spreading on the equally stark cement floor. The place had the smell of age—mould, mildew and dust—and there was something else, something not quite so prevalent, lingering in the background. It took Sully only seconds to pin it down as decay. The smell of death.
As Sully stood there, trying to figure out why Breanna had summoned him here, the smell grew until it was almost unbearable. Yet he knew it wasn’t his nose picking up the scent, not really. It was beyond that somehow, a smell from the past rather than the present, lingering more in consciousness than in reality.
Sully searched Breanna’s face, a dull light in the gloom. “Did you die here?”
She didn’t answer in words, and he wouldn’t have been able to hear her anyway. Instead, she drifted back to the rear wall, disappearing behind a space occupied by a disused water heater and furnace. Sully joined her. Nothing was there, of course, not anymore. Her body had been located and long since removed, leaving no sign of her presence save a small dark spot near the wall, which Sully suspected was blood.
He could now see the signs the police had been down here, fingerprint dust coated heavily along the rear side of the furnace and water heater, while along the wall, one latex glove lay discarded on the floor.
What else she wanted him to find, he had no clue.
It occurred to Sully he hadn’t heard from Dez; he fully expected his brother would have called to give him hell for wandering off in this neighbourhood late at night. The reason for the silence became clear as Sully removed his phone to find it completely dead. Whether from battery drain or fatal water damage would remain unclear until he could get it plugged in somewhere. For now, all that mattered was finding what he needed in this basement so he could get out.
“What do you want me to see?” he asked Breanna.
Without warning, she shot toward him, that one visible death-whitened eye staring through him as her bound hands came up, fingers defying the laws of physics and nature as they wrapped, ice cold and solid, around Sully’s neck.
Flashlight and phone clattering to the ground, Sully grasped at his throat, struggling to pry the fingers away. She was squeezing hard enough to cut off his oxygen, but there was nothing for him to grab, his fingers finding nothing but his own constricted flesh.
He tried to back away, mind turning to the stairs, to escape from this house, from her. But he was frozen to the spot, his flight response no longer his to control.
Although she continued to hold him in her grip, he could see no hatred in her features. If anything—and he couldn’t swear there was anything to see—her face was frozen into a mask of controlled fear. It was the expression some people got when facing a mad dog, while doing all in their power to remain calm, to retain the upper hand while knowing all along it would do no good. In that state, as the frenzy took hold, the dog would never listen, and it was only a matter of moments before the inevitable attack, the lock of jaws on flesh.
Unable to speak, unable to move, Sully could do nothing as his vision began to swim, the murdered woman moving and shimmering before him in the growing haze of approaching unconsciousness. He dropped to his knees—she allowed him to, he supposed—as his sight started to fade, blackening around the edges. And still she refused to let go.
Through his panic, it occurred to Sully she might have mistaken him for the man who had killed her. He shot out a desperate thought to her that it wasn’t him, that he wasn’t the man. Whether she heard him or not, he didn’t know. Either way, she wasn’t stopping.
The image before him changed through the remaining pinhole of vision. And it was no longer a woman standing over him. It was a man.
Unable to focus, just one thing stood out: a tattoo of a partially melted, lit black candle.
Sully tried to lift his eyes to see a face, but achieved no more than a glimpse of a pale blue denim button-down shirt.
Then his vision blackened completely, and his hold on the last cords of consciousness gave, sending him down into darkness.
5
The suicidal man had still been in the process of contemplating the sheet he’d looped over a ceiling fan when Dez and his colleagues entered his home.
Putting aside the fact the guy had to be delusional to think the ceiling fan would support his weight, it was clear he was having a breakdown. Dez’s fellow officers drew the short straw tonight and were en route to the hospital with the man to have him checked out and likely admitted to the psych ward. If things went the way Dez suspected, the man might well find himself fully committed to Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital.
But any smugness Dez felt over escaping hospital babysitting duty fell away when he returned to the car.
Edgar’s sound sleep in the backseat was interrupted by Dez’s hand shaking his shoulder.
“Whaaaat?” he said, batting at Dez’s hand.
“Eddie, wake up. Eddie!”
“Whaddya want?”
“Where’s Sully?”
“Amsterdam. How the hell should I know?”
“Damn it, Eddie, focus. Where’s Sully?”
Edgar emitted a protracted groan and shifted in his seat before prying his eyes open and peering into Dez’s face. “Oh, yeah. A friend, he said. Something about the alley.”
“A friend? What kind of friend? Sully doesn’t know anyone around ….” Dez trailed off as realization dawned. “Eddie, this friend. They have a name?”
“Of course they have a name. What the hell kind of person doesn’t have a name?”
“What’s the name?”
“Uhh …. Jeez ….”
“Eddie, come on.”
“Uh, Deanna. Yeah, that’s it. Deanna.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dez said. There was no question Edgar had been told to say Breanna, no other reason Sully would have left the dry comfort of the cruiser in this weather and in this neighbourhood. “Which way did he go?”
Edgar pointed noncommittally to the right, in the direction of the alley that ran to the south of Poulin Avenue.
Dez pulled out his phone and dialled Sully, listened as it rang through to a message telling him the person he was trying to reach was unavailable or out of the service area. Uttering a curse under his breath, Dez checked to ensure his flashlight was working properly before reaching for the door handle.
“Stay here, Eddie. I’m going to find Sully. I’ll be back soon.”
Edgar had nothing of substance to say on the matter, merely grumbling incomprehensibly and turning until he could rest his cheek against the window.
Dez shook his head and got back out into the rain, hunching against it as he felt it trickling down the back of his hair and inside the back collar of his shirt.
“Damn it, Sully,” he said as he clicked on the light and jogged along the back alley.
There was no immediate sign of his brother, and it occurred to Dez that Sully had likely been led inside one of the houses. The question was which one, and none of the houses along this street was a welcome prospect. And if Sully had gone into one of several abandoned structures backing onto this alley, Dez would drop-kick his scrawny ass all the way back to the car.
He was halfway down the alley when it dawned on him where he was. He’d been here a month ago, had helped with the door-to-door enquiries that routinely followed the discovery of a homicide.
Breanna Bird had been located inside a house on Poulin Avenue and, unless he was very much m
istaken, it was the nightmarish abandoned house he was facing.
Dez stared at the darkened house on the darkened street, imagination running wild as a clap of thunder sounded and a streak of lightning lit the sky, illuminating the house’s eye-like broken windows, the rear door gaping open like a toothless mouth threatening to swallow him.
It might have been enough to send him at a brisk walk back to the cruiser, had it not been for his missing brother and the fact Dez could just make out the dull glow of barely there light coming from a basement window. Against every ghost-fearing instinct he possessed, he edged forward and brushed at the window trying to see through. It didn’t help, the layer of dust on the inside creating a near-blackout curtain.
There was no way around it now.
“Damn it, Sully.”
Dez stood and drew a breath deep into his lungs, holding onto it as he stepped carefully up the back steps and into a filthy kitchen that likely hadn’t hosted a hot meal in close to two decades.
The beam of his light revealed an open door to his left, a set of stairs going down. And, at the bottom, a hint of light coming from what looked to be a flashlight. It was the stillness of the light that worried Dez, had him rushing down the stairs faster than he would have without the incentive of a potentially endangered loved one. Because that, right there, was the one thing Dez feared more than ghosts.
Although he’d never personally been down here before, he’d seen the pictures of the murder scene. And so he got a shock beyond what he naturally would have when he found Sully lying motionless behind the water heater in exactly the same position as they’d found Breanna a month ago.
Dez rushed forward and knelt at Sully’s side, praying for a response as he laid a couple fingers along his brother’s jawline. He found a strong pulse and was equally relieved to feel the breath coming from Sully’s nose.
Dez slapped his brother’s cheek, gently at first and then harder, calling his name until he saw a thread of blue-grey between the dark lashes as they slowly parted.
“Sull? Sull! Hey, man, I need you to talk to me, okay?”
“M’okay, Dez.”
Dez wasn’t at all confident in Sully’s assessment, not just yet, anyway. But now that it was clear his brother wasn’t dead or dying, Dez’s mind returned to their location and the very real possibility they weren’t alone. Relying on the beam of his flashlight in the small room, he tried to reassure himself as much as he could. Not that it meant anything. He wouldn’t be able to see Breanna if she was kneeling right in front of him.
“Damn it,” Dez muttered. Then to Sully, “Can you walk? I need to get you out of here.”
Sully shifted, testing his limbs. “Give me a minute. Everything’s still kind of numb.”
That wasn’t happening, Dez wanting the hell out of here now. Tucking the extra, smaller flashlight into his pocket and his own larger one into his utility belt, Dez pulled Sully up and over his shoulder. That done, he retrieved his flashlight and used it to guide him up the stairs he hoped would bear their weight.
“Damn it, Sull. You’re an idiot, you know that? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Can we have this discussion later?” Sully asked. “I’ve got a headache.”
“You’re going to have a bigger one by the time I’m done with you.”
Dez didn’t bother to put Sully down at the top of the stairs, nor anywhere on the property, just wanting to put as much distance between them and the house as quickly as possible.
Dez made it to the alley faster than was likely safe given the possibility of rotting floorboards. The rain pelted them both as he continued at a brisk pace in the direction of the cruiser.
Sully shifted in his grasp. “I think I can walk now, man.”
“You think or you know?”
“I won’t know for sure until you put me down.”
Which was all the answer Dez needed to keep pressing on as he was. Sully could walk it off later.
Dez righted his brother only once back at the car, dumping him into the passenger seat before circling to the driver’s side and dropping in behind the wheel.
“You don’t feel good either, huh?” Edgar asked Sully.
Dez glared at the older man in the backseat. “Don’t you even think about puking in here. I’m not in the mood.” He turned to Sully. “You get an address before you ran off to play paranormal detective?”
Immediate fear passed, promptly chased by anger, but Dez bit back the lecture until he’d dropped Edgar safely back at his little Riverview home.
“Why the hell would you do something that like, huh? Goddamn it, we’re at the front end of the storm of the century here, and people are looking for shelter everywhere. Do you realize what you could have run into in that house?”
Sully avoided the question with one of his own. “How’d you know where to find me?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question since my only clue came from a semi-conscious, slurring drunk who mentioned an alley and someone named Deanna. Then I knew exactly where I’d find you because I remembered the house where they found her was down that block.”
“About that—”
“A woman was murdered in that house, man. That’s the sort of crap that goes on in those places.”
“I know that, okay?”
“So why’d you go there?”
“If you’d let me get a word in, I could tell you.”
“All ears, Sully.”
Sully launched into an explanation of what he’d seen and what had happened to him in the basement, a tale that ended the way Sully’s stories usually did—with Dez wanting to crawl out of his skin.
“They can do that?” he asked, unable to hold a poker face through this new and unexpected layer of anxiety. “Physically attack you?”
“I’ve never had that happen before,” Sully said. “Sometimes I’ll feel their injuries kind of. But I’ve never been in a situation like this.”
“‘This’ being a ghost trying to kill you.”
“I’ve thought about it, man, and I don’t think she was trying to kill me.”
Dez scoffed. “Yeah. Because choking someone into unconsciousness is just another way of saying ‘hello,’ right? Anyway, how’d she do it? She’s not even solid, and you said she was trying to hit Bulldog earlier but wasn’t connecting.”
“I’m guessing it’s because of what I can do. I’m more open to them, so they can communicate with me in ways they can’t with others. But that’s just a guess.”
“Why attack you when you’re trying to help her?”
“My best guess? She wanted to show me how she died, but I think she also needed me to really know it, to see what she saw. That tattoo. Does her common law have anything like that?”
“Easy enough to check, but from what you say, it’s not her husband. He’s Indigenous. The guy she showed you was white.”
“So Danny’s telling the truth, Dez. He didn’t do it.”
“Sure. All we have to do now is go to Major Crimes and tell them Breanna’s ghost choked you out and showed you a tattooed arm. They’d laugh us out of there in two minutes flat.”
“I guess that means I need to find something else then.”
Dez glared at him. “Nope. You’re done with this. It’s getting too dangerous.”
“I don’t have a choice. I haven't met many as determined as she is. She won’t stop, not with me or Bulldog, until I’ve finished this for her.”
“And what if you can’t? Sully, you’re only twenty years old, you’ve got no background in investigation or defensive tactics, and you’re talking about going up against a killer whose name and face you don’t even know. He could be anyone.”
“Anyone except Danny. Come on, Dez. I need to help Breanna, for my own sanity as much as anything. And you know we can’t leave Danny rotting in jail for something he didn’t do.”
“He still hit her. Far as I’m concerned, jail’s a good place for him.”
“Maybe so, but ther
e’s a murderer out there getting away with it right now. For all we know, he could be getting ready to kill again.”
“And how certain are you that you won’t end up being his next victim?”
“Dez, you can’t protect me forever.”
Dez met his eye. “No? Watch me.”
There was nothing Sully could say to that, no arguing with Dez on a characteristic as much a part of him as his hair colour or height. They fell back into silence as Dez drove Sully to his home in the Gladstone neighbourhood and pulled into the driveway.
Dez snagged his brother's arm as he tried to climb out of the car. “I know I can get overbearing with you, and I’m sorry. But it won’t change. That said, I know we need to do this—and I mean ‘we.’ You stay put at my place tonight and then tomorrow morning we’ll start figuring some stuff out.”
Sully met his eye with a smile. “Thanks, bro.”
Dez smiled in reply, but it faded fast. “And if you even think of leaving this house without me at your back on this, ghosts and murderers will be the least of your problems. You got me?”
When Sully awoke in Dez and Eva’s spare bedroom, sunlight was streaming through the windows, and Breanna was standing over him.
It took the usual few seconds for his heart to stop pounding as he fixed her with a glare. “I’m on it, okay? By the way, that choking thing last night kind of sucked.”
Eva had gotten up briefly to say hi last night and had commented on the bruises around his throat, at which point Sully realized Breanna’s attack had been a little more physical than he’d realized.
This morning was no better. The bruises had deepened in places, two dark spots the shape of thumb pads directly in the centre of his throat.
A little before eight, Sully found Eva in the kitchen, struggling to settle their energetic three-year-old long enough to get a full breakfast in her. Kayleigh was a cute kid by any standard, but she also possessed an exotic appearance by virtue of her mother’s Indigenous hair and skin colouring and her father’s Irish green eyes. In attitude, as Eva frequently observed, Kayleigh was every inch her father’s daughter: stubborn and strong and yet affectionate and open, with a healthy dose of wacky humour tossed in. Eva was far steadier with her emotions than either her husband or daughter, a rock for Dez’s waves to crash against. Dez was prone to an emotional gamut of giddying highs and depressive lows, but Sully had noticed his brother had been far more even-keeled since he’d met Eva. And for someone who loved his brother as much as Sully did, that made Eva a godsend.