The Tower (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 9)

by JL Bryan

  Millie glared at me, her bright eyes set into wrinkled sockets, as I read a stanza about my troubled soul and my empty heart.

  “Nobody cares anymore,” she said. “It was a long time ago. I told everyone how evil my family is. Look at him, holding a knife to a little girl's throat.” She pointed at Vance and Hyacinth.

  “But you're the one who really killed people with the bomb,” I said. “Including your father. He was the real target, wasn't he?” I looked over at Albert. “Do you see what making a deal with Clyde gets you? Two of your children killed, and another one who turned against you and killed you?” I looked at Vance, who was holding Hyacinth over by the edge of the roof, the knife in her face. “Do you see, Vance?”

  “No one here cares what ye say, lass.” Clyde began to approach me, and I tightened my grip on my flashlight, though I doubted its beam was going to help me much against such a powerful ghost. “Here's the truth of it. My wife left me for a rich man, and the two of them conspired to kill me. Couldn't stomach a divorce, not Siobhan, the delicate flower. No, only death would do. But where to put the body? Under the tower, of course, where it could never be found. I did not choose to be here. But here we are, all of us. And I'm getting myself a new girl tonight.” He looked at Vance. “Kill her.”

  “Ellie! The nurse is knocked out, too, and Millie's missing! I think a ghost must have kidnapped her and hidden her somewhere...” Stacey emerged onto the roof, gripping the ghost trap that held Elton, and fell silent as she looked around. “Whoa, there's a crowd up here.”

  “Let her go, Vance,” I said, giving him my full attention. “You won't gain anything. You'll just make him stronger. And that will just put your family members in greater danger. The ones you actually care about, I mean.”

  “Close your mouth, woman!” Clyde stalked faster toward me. He bared his teeth; they were broken and full of concrete.

  Vance howled in pain, which I hadn't been expecting, but I quickly saw why.

  Hyacinth was biting him. She'd sunk her teeth into the arm that was holding her. Most of his arm was sheathed in a black rain jacket—maybe to keep the blood off Vance when he killed his niece as a sacrifice to Clyde's ghost—but Hyacinth had gotten her teeth into his wrist, ahead of the raincoat sleeve. It looked like she was getting pretty deep into his flesh, too.

  It was a bold, risky move on her part, and I had to admire the girl for taking it. I couldn't say I blamed her. I probably would have done the same in her situation.

  I darted toward Vance and Hyacinth. At the same time, I pointed at Clyde, who was chasing after me and closing in fast. “Open the trap, Stacey!”

  “Huh?” she said behind me, out of my range of sight. Then: “Oh!”

  Vance raised his blade to slash at the biting girl on his arm. When he saw me coming, he hesitated, probably trying to decide whether to change course and try to stab me instead.

  While he hesitated, I swung my tactical flashlight into his face.

  There was a hard thunk as the anodized shell of the light cracked into his cheek, possibly splintering the bone beneath. I hoped it had.

  With my other hand, I grabbed the wrist of his knife arm and twisted. He grunted, trying to stab downward at me, but his grip was loose and his movements unfocused. He was reeling from my blow to his face, blood leaking from one lip. I hit him again.

  Hyacinth was still biting into his arm, though he no longer seemed to be holding her there.

  “Go!” I said to her, pointing back toward the stairs.

  She removed her teeth from her uncle's arm, then looked at him, swaying on his feet, bleeding from his face, razor blade dangling loosely from his fingers.

  Then she made a fist, reared back, and punched him right in the crotch.

  Vance howled and crumpled to his knees.

  “Hyacinth?” a weak voice asked.

  “Dad?” The girl smiled and ran toward the roof stairs, where Thurmond had staggered his way to the top. He looked weak, and in fact sat down when he reached the top step. He'd managed to make his way up, doing his best to save his daughter. His long hair hung in clumps around his pudgy, pale face. “Dad, I punched Uncle Vance.”

  “Good girl.”

  Stacey cried out for help. Millie had grabbed her—the gray-haired woman was fully levitating now, acting like a ghost possessing her own body, which was kind of weird. Millie seized Stacey and lifted her up. Stacey fought and kicked but couldn't get free.

  Millie carried Stacey toward the nearest ledge, where the strong gusts of wind would help sweep Stacey away, and she would fall to her death on the street far below.

  Stacey was already too high, out of my reach; there was no way I could jump up and grab her.

  The ghost trap lay a few yards away from Stacey. Millie must have knocked it free before Stacey could open it. It contained my best chance of stopping Millie and saving Stacey—and it was rolling away, carried by the strong wind.

  I hurried toward it.

  Something slammed into me from the side, and it was like being sideswiped by a truck. I landed face first on the rough asphalt of the roof. My backpack, already partially unzipped, ruptured open, and my feeble attempts at collecting secret weapons spilled out across the roof ahead of me—a book of fairy tales, a book of fantasy stories, a lot of aged yellow paperwork, and little else. The high gusts caught the old files and lifted them up, and they turned a slow circle in the air above. If they were causing the ghost of intrepid reporter Gary Brekowski to pop up to the roof and help us somehow, I wasn't seeing it.

  Clyde stood above me. He was the one who'd knocked me down. His skin was completely gray now, and crumbling piece by piece, slowly dripping away like chips of broken concrete and revealing the skull beneath, as he looked down at me.

  “Let it go,” I whispered.

  “My murder?” he asked, smiling his broken-toothed, concrete-riddled smile. “Oh, I have. You know, I took the girl as payment for a debt her father owed me. Back in Belfast. Did you know that? He had eleven children. He shouldn't have minded one, even if she was the prettiest. But he tried to fight me over that, and when I was done with him, the girl was mine.”

  “The girl? Siobhan?” I tried to give the impression that he had my full attention, but I was watching Stacey out of the corner of my eye while reaching toward the ghost trap with one hand. “She married you under duress?”

  “How else do you think a pretty fish like that ends up in the net of an old beast like me?” he asked. “Her father paid her as a debt. More or less. I took her as payment. Then we boarded ship for America. She had no way to run after that.”

  “I'm feeling a little more sympathetic to your murderers now, Clyde,” I said. My hand reached the trap.

  “I brought them to heel, though. They're mine now.”

  “Where? I don't see them.”

  “Not much left to see.” Clyde turned and gestured toward the shadowy, wraith-like forms toward the middle of the roof. Two of them came forward and crawled on their hands and knees like dogs. They were still like black sticks and wire, barely visible spirits with almost no substance at all, certainly nothing as detailed as faces and hands. “They're just like beasts now. Scrawny, brainless little dogs.”

  I grabbed the ghost trap and rolled to one side. I needed everything to line up just right. I knew the spirit of Elton would bolt directly toward Millie, and I wanted to make sure Clyde was in between me and Millie when it happened.

  “What are you—?” Clyde asked, looking down at my sudden movement.

  I opened the trap, and fire launched from within.

  The hot red ghost of Elton the bomber blasted through the ghost of Clyde like a meteor, then rushed on and slammed into Millie and Stacey. Millie cried out and spun, still levitating several feet above the roof. Flames swirled around her in a bright red spiral as she turned.

  The fire spread to the dozens of bits of paper that were floating in a slow, hypnotic cyclone above the building. The tongues of flames floated above all
our heads, making me think of the Pentecost, though nothing so holy was happening here.

  Stacey broke free of Millie's grasp and plunged to the roof, smacking hard against the asphalt. Ouch. But it was a much shorter fall than the street far below, at least.

  Clyde was howling in fury. He was stripped down to a twisted, concrete-laden skeleton, his clothes a few scraps of cloth that barely clung to his broken ribs. His jaw seemed fixed open, stuffed with concrete; more concrete bulged from his cracked eye sockets.

  “No more games,” Clyde said, his jaw moving slightly but unable to close around the mass of concrete that filled it and wedged it open. His voice was rough and guttural, but still clear through the rushing hiss of the constant wind. It wasn't as if he was really using air and lungs to speak, anyway; his voice was an auditory apparition, with no more real substance than his body.

  “I didn't know we'd been playing any games,” I said. I got to my feet, tossed aside the empty ghost trap, and raised my flashlight again.

  Clyde was already on the move, ignoring me altogether. He was across the roof in an eyeblink, leaving the smell of decay in his wake.

  He stood next to Vance. The large, gray-haired man was on his hands and knees, struggling to rise after the damage that Hyacinth and I had inflicted on him.

  “You're all mine, by rights,” Clyde said. “As the shepherd owns the lambs birthed by his flock. I'll take you all when I please. Even this wretch.” He reached down and grabbed Vance around the neck. “No time for a slow drain here. Maybe I'll throw ye off the roof, like I did your sister.”

  “We had...” Vance struggled to draw air. “...a...deal...”

  “See how evil my family is?” Millie sank to her feet, no longer levitating. She stumbled and fell to the asphalt, just a helpless old woman, her legs so atrophied she couldn't walk. “We deserve punishment. All of us.”

  “And every last one of ye will get it.” Clyde continued to squeeze Vance, who was still on his hands and knees, now sinking to the floor. Vance's face was turning blue, his fingernails scraping on the asphalt. “None will protect ye against death,” Clyde said to Vance. “None care about ye. None love ye.”

  Clyde had a point—I couldn't raise a ton of enthusiasm for protecting the man who'd just been holding a razor to a young girl's throat. I ran to check on Stacey instead. She was battered and bruised from her long fall, but still conscious and breathing. Millie lay a few yards away.

  In the other direction, Thurmond huddled in the short outdoor stairwell along with Hyacinth, Amberly, and Dexter; all of them had come up to the roof, though they wisely stayed near the door, trying to take in the crazy scene from a distance.

  It was even crazier than I'd realized. Under the burning lights of the mass of small flames above—fire provided by Elton, igniting papers haunted by Gary Brekowski—the spirits on the roof seemed a bit more visible. The family members who'd appeared as little more than sticks and wires were a bit clearer now, their faces seeming to flicker like weak, sputtering candles.

  Albert, his face still unreadable from the burn damage, floated across the roof toward where Clyde was strangling Vance, who barely had the strength or oxygen to fight back anymore.

  “Leave him,” Albert said, his voice hollow and quiet, barely audible above the wind.

  Clyde gave his broken-toothed grin. “It's a wee bit late to start caring about your boy. Get back. Ye've made your choices.”

  “I was a boy when I made my choice,” Albert breathed.

  “Fifteen? That's a man, if you ask me,” Clyde said. “I was breaking horses when I was fifteen. Breaking wee lasses, too. Get back.”

  “I should have saved my sister,” Albert said. “Now I'll save my boy.”

  Albert rushed at Clyde, the burned man charging the twisted and broken skeleton, and it was clear just how much more substantial Clyde was. Clyde looked solid and real, like a body risen from the grave. Albert was filmy, nearly transparent, almost invisible from some angles.

  “Stop.” Clyde released Vance, dropping the bruised old man to the ground, and turned his full attention to Albert's ghost. Clyde's blackened, skeletal hand seized Albert's burned face. “I killed you before. I can do it again,” Clyde whispered.

  “Actually, you didn't,” I said. “Millie killed Albert. And Gary. And Elton.” I looked at the tongues of flames orbiting above in a huge spiral, like glowing red stars hanging low in the night sky above. “You may have influenced Millie, and manipulated her into it, but she's the one who did it. They aren't yours. They're hers.”

  Millie lay on the ground, watching us. An unnatural light glowed in her eyes.

  “And she is mine,” Clyde said. “They're all mine...”

  If he sounded less certain, it was probably because all the family members' ghosts were moving in on him from every side, more visible than ever with the firelight from the burning paperwork. Maybe that was the influence of Gary Brekowski, who was so connected to the old papers and also so determined to let the truth be seen.

  Ernest and Siobhan were more fleshed out; Siobhan held the hand of Lawrence, still in the same silly suit he'd worn while attacking us in the basement. A ghost who resembled the diseased corpse of a teen girl stood with them; Catherine, I supposed. Together with the charred-face ghost of Albert, they formed the original nuclear family that Clyde had set out to kill and destroy.

  Others were there—a little girl who had to be Miriam, judging by her age and how every bone in her body seemed broken. She shambled forward, broken bones clacking, her dark eyes fixed on Clyde.

  A reedy, scrawny young man appeared, too, very pale, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Marcus.

  “Dad?” Thurmond asked, and the ghost turned to look at him. Thurmond was probably ten years older than his father had been when he'd died, but his voice trembled and sounded almost like a little kid's when he said, “Daddy?”

  The ghost of Marcus turned slowly to look at Thurmond.

  I saw Gary, too, the intrepid reporter still in his Mad Hatter hat, but his clothes no longer overflowed with old newspapers. He approached Millie where she lay on the ground. Elton showed up as well, a glowing red partial apparition, glaring at Millie.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, but her victims kept approaching her, moving in on where she lay, like vultures investigating a carcass.

  “Get back,” Clyde said, his voice a cold hiss from between his unmoving jaws. “Back!”

  As if his voice had some power of command, the six Pennefort ghosts pushed back in six different directions, repelled from Clyde like magnets shoved apart by invisible forces.

  “None of you have the power to stop me,” Clyde said.

  Marcus, the seventh Pennefort ghost, turned and advanced on Clyde.

  “Leave us alone,” Marcus said, his voice like a couple of leaves rattling in a weak gust of wind. “Leave us all.”

  Clyde raised a hand and repelled him as well, throwing the thin, barely visible ghost of Marcus back to land near Thurmond. He hit the asphalt silently and flickered like he would vanish.

  “Dad?” Thurmond reached towards the apparition but didn't quite touch the area where it lay. Thurmond's wife and kids huddled in the concrete stairwell behind him.

  “We can do nothing,” Marcus said. “I am sorry.”

  “Your family is too weak.” Clyde advanced on Thurmond. “Maybe I'll make the four of ye my next meal, along with your uncle. Vance has a child somewhere, and a fresh new grandchild. There will be more of ye for me to feed on, when they come to collect their inheritance. Maybe I'll lie low again, let the family grow larger again...and have another feast, like the one I'll have tonight.”

  “Sacrifice,” Vance said weakly. The old man was barely holding himself up on his hands and knees, while looking at Thurmond.

  “Shut your mouth, or ye'll die first!” Clyde snapped.

  “Sacrifice,” Vance managed to say again, his voice hoarse, his neck and throat bruised where Clyde had grabbed him. “Thurmond.
Make a ghost powerful through...sacrifice. Your father.”

  Clyde blinked away and reappeared next to Vance. He brought his skeletal, concrete-encrusted hand around in a long arc and cracked it into the side of Vance's skull—right about where I'd hit the guy with my flashlight—and Vance went sprawling and rolled a few yards from the force of the impact. He came to a stop next to a big rusty HVAC machine, then lay still.

  “Sacrifice?” Thurmond said. “I'm not going to kill anyone. What's valuable enough to sacrifice?”

  Jacob emerged from the roof door, wheezing and sweaty. He managed to stagger up the concrete steps, past Amberly and her kids, and lay down on the roof. He set the hefty cannon down and shrugged off the heavy battery backpack. “What did I...” He paused to breathe. “...miss?”

  The burning papers above were going dark fast now, winking out one by one, and as their red light diminished, the ghosts became less visible, less distinct.

  The extremely rare copy of Spells of Magicia, autographed by M.G.G. Jensen herself, blew open, the pages rustling as the wind flipped through them. The apparition of Marcus stood beside it.

  “Of course,” Thurmond said. “Our most valuable possession. Mine and yours.” He lifted the book and held it out to the apparition. “You used to read it to me every summer, the whole trilogy. After you died, it was how I remembered you. I remember us, together, riding with Sir Garalt and Kiara the priestess to defeat Scarletta the Witch. Striking down the frost dragons and the Shadow Walkers with the Lightsword.” Thurmond wiped his eyes. “I left it in your old room for you. I miss you, Dad. I love you.”

  The weakening, transparent apparition of Marcus rippled, and his lips seemed to say something, but I didn't catch it. Perhaps his voice was too soft in the wind; perhaps his words were for his son alone.

  Thurmond nodded, then raised the book, wide open, toward the spiral of flames above.

  One burning scrap of paper, little more than a red flake, drifted down and landed on the page, igniting an illustration of an armored lady with a sword slaying a huge dragon coiled around a mountain peak.