GHOST GAL: The Wild Hunt

by Nash, Bobby

  “Are you sure we can’t change your mind?” she asked Samuel, taking one last shot to learn how to trap a ghost. Such a skill would be very helpful to someone in her line of work.

  “I’m sorry, Alex.”

  She stood and clapped her hands together. “No worries, Samuel,” she said. “I understand.”

  “I don’t,” Joshua groused as he too got to his feet.

  “Joshua…” she warned.

  “No. Who does this guy think he is?” Joshua said, his arms moving about, a habit he picked up while practicing cross-examinations for court. “We’re supposed to be on the same side here, right? If we knew something he didn’t, he’d expect us to share with him, wouldn’t he?”

  “It’s not that simple,” she said softly.

  “Nothing about any of this is ever simple,” Joshua said, irritated.

  “Let’s go,” she prodded.

  “I thought you were supposed to be her friend,” Joshua said softly as he started walking away.

  If his words struck a chord within the mysterious Samuel, he gave no sign. He sat emotionless, fingers steepled beneath his chin as the ghost hunting couple left the office. He did not even say goodbye.

  “Can you believe that guy?” Joshua started the moment they stepped outside. The cool winds of fall were in the air, a not so subtle hint of the biting winter chill that would grip the city within the next week or so. He flipped up the collar on his coat and pulled the front closed tight. After all this time, he still did not like the cold.

  Alexandra, on the other hand, seemed to welcome the cooler temperatures. He had noted before that she seemed to come alive around this time of year. Of course, he assumed a lot of that had to do with her chosen profession. Ghost stories were always more interesting when there was a biting chill in the air.

  “Joshua…” She tried to head off his rant before it started. There were not many people who rubbed Joshua wrong the way Samuel did.

  “Who does he think he is anyway? All the times you bring him information, you’d figure he would return the favor every now and again.”

  “Now that’s not fair and you know it,” she said. “Like it or not, Samuel has someone that he answers to just like we all do.”

  “Sounds like an excuse to me.”

  “Nah. Not his style,” she said, trying to allay Joshua’s irritation. “Samuel’s just doing his job. I understand where he’s coming from. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.”

  It helped but only a little bit. “Isn’t his job supposed to be helping us? This…” he gestured back toward the building wildly with his arms. “This is not helping.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done, Josh. Let’s just get going. I want to talk to Dad about these jars. Maybe he has heard something in his research that can help us.”

  Joshua slid behind the wheel of the van and fired up the engine. “Don’t you think he would have told you by now if he had the ability to trap these things like that?”

  From the passenger seat, Alexandra smiled. “Maybe. Knowing my dad, though, he might hold that back as a teaching method.”

  “Ever the professor, your father.”

  “That he is.”

  Alexandra twisted around to put her tool belt in the back and came up short. “Well, I’ll be,” she said, a smile creasing her lovely features.

  “What is it?”

  She nodded her head toward the back and when he looked, Joshua saw something unexpected. He couldn’t help but smile. “Sneaky little so and so, isn’t he?”

  “Yes he is,” Alexandra said as she stared at the empty jar in the van. It was the one that Samuel had opened once they had moved them to the office. After extracting the ghost within and setting it on its journey to the other side, Samuel must have slipped the empty jar back into the van without telling them.

  “Makes you think maybe you misjudged him, huh?” she teased.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Joshua said. “I wonder why he wouldn’t just tell us though?”

  “You heard him, he’s got a boss just like everyone. They would not approve.”

  “Won’t he get in trouble when they find out one of their magic ghost jars is missing?”

  Alexandra smiled. “Samuel once told me something, I think he called it the best piece of advice he had ever heard. He said, ‘sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.’ Thankfully, the powers that be he works for are supposed to be real big on forgiveness.”

  “If you believe he truly works for…” his voice trailed off as he searched for the best way to say what he wanted to say. “…Them, Him, whatever. You know, the man upstairs.” He pointed skyward.

  “You don’t?”

  “Let’s just say I’m skeptical,” Joshua said.

  She smiled. “One of your many charms, Mr. Demerest,” Alexandra said playfully.

  “What do you say we get out of here before he changes his mind, huh?” Joshua said as he put the van into gear.

  “Good plan.”

  From an upstairs window, Samuel Esau watched as the van pulled out of the alley.

  He liked Alexandra and Joshua, even though he could tell the young man engaged to his friend was not his biggest fan. Samuel did not let Joshua Demerest’s feelings for him bother him. He had a job to do regardless of how they felt about him. He hoped that his gift could help them in some small way. If those above him chose to punish him for aiding his friend, so be it. He would accept whatever sanction his superiors placed on him if it came to that.

  Samuel was not accustomed to breaking the rules on a whim, but he had been known to bend them in the past. That was a large part of the reason, he knew, that he had been banished to this office.

  The joke was on his superiors though. Although most looked upon assignment to the New York OAGI as a punishment, Samuel saw it as an opportunity. He loved living in a city like New York. He loved the people who called this place home, the art, the culture, all of it. Samuel loved his work.

  Even more importantly, he knew how important Alexandra Holzer was to the mission. His position did not permit him to tell her everything he knew, but that did not stop Samuel from doing everything he could to help guide her along the path that had been chosen for her. Not only was she his responsibility, she was also his friend. Although he was friendly with almost everyone and made friends easily, there were only a handful of people that Samuel Esau let get as close to him as he had Hans and Alexandra Holzer.

  Although she didn’t know it yet, Alexandra Holzer’s life was about to get a lot more interesting.

  The Slaugh arrived in New York on the same day as the first snowfall of winter.

  Still inhabiting the body of Max Bartlett, the Slaugh had reacquainted himself with this new world he found himself in while searching for the tools he needed to enact his plans. He had spent a good deal of time traveling as he gathered the items he would need to restore his brothers. During his travels since awakening from his underground prison, the Slaugh had observed the humans that ruled the world. Despite being the dominant species, they remained as weak and fragile as he remembered them to be. So easily breakable. The humans sat atop the food chain for the simple reason that they had superior numbers on their side.

  Humanity did not inhabit the planet so much as they had infested it.

  The world had changed while he had been imprisoned, trapped inside the body of Duncan McGrath and buried beneath the Earth by Hans Holzer and his infernal futuristic weaponry. Before that, he had been trapped within that blasted castle by the cursed Bartlett clan. Had it not been for the ego of Max’s father, Conrad Bartlett, moving the castle to the United States, the Slaugh would no doubt have remained stuck within its walls, consigned to forever haunt the corridors of the family keep, Heaven and Hell both denied him. The longer he was trapped, the longer his precious Wild Hunt would remain locked away in a purgatory not of their own making.

  Fate, however, had other ideas.

  Now, finally freed from
his prison, the Slaugh had a new body, this one young and strong, and perhaps of most importance, wealthy. Learning that, through his new host body’s remaining memories, the Slaugh now controlled a vast fortune that made accomplishing his goals easier. One thing that had not changed from the old country to this new land was the need for currency. Man was still obsessed with acquiring wealth. How typical. After all this time, they remained little more than mewling children in need of a firm hand to guide them.

  He would be that guiding hand.

  Now that he had a sense of the world, he found himself understanding it even less so than he had previously. The humans who infested the Earth seemed to make things far more complicated than they needed to be. Or so it seemed to him. The humans he had encountered these past few weeks as he explored this new world were so busy looking toward the future that they seemed not to notice the world around them. It had not been too long since the second of two wars had enveloped the entirety of the planet. It angered him that The Wild Hunt had missed that one. It was the sort of thing he and his brothers lived for. Thankfully, the near eradication of their race did nothing to quench the human’s desire for war. There seemed to be no end to conflicts cropping up all around the globe.

  The prevailing feeling, especially in the young humans he talked with, was that their world was doomed.

  He couldn’t agree more.

  They didn’t know it yet, but it wouldn’t be nuclear weapons that would bring about an end to their world, as so many feared. The Slaugh would be the one to end their puny existence. The Wild Hunt would begin anew, with he at its head. There was much sin in this new world and sinners aplenty to keep the Wild Hunt fed indefinitely.

  Once the hunt resumed, these pesky humans would bow before him.

  But first…

  There was a debt that had to be repaid. Hans Holzer had stood between him and his goals. The Slaugh could not let such an effrontery go unpunished. Before he put his final plans in motion for the planet, he would find his enemy and then Hans Holzer’s nightmare would begin. The Slaugh planned to dismantle Holzer’s life piece by piece until his enemy begged for death. Only then would he consider ending his enemy’s suffering. Only then would he allow Hans Holzer’s death.

  That was why he had come to the city called New York.

  His quarry was close.

  Soon, Hans Holzer would be nothing but a memory.

  The Slaugh flipped up the collar on Max Bartlett’s coat and walked through the snow deeper into the city. There was still much work to do before he could take his revenge. He laughed at the thought of what was to come.

  Hans Holzer’s death would herald the end of the world.

  It was time for the Wild Hunt to ride again.

  And this world would burn.

  Despite having a name that traced back centuries, McGinley’s Pub was little more than a downtown dive.

  The Slaugh had been drawn to it. He wasn’t sure if it was the smell of stale Irish whiskey in the air that reminded him of his old stomping grounds or if it was the sensation of menace that radiated from the bar. Whatever it was that had attracted his attention, the beast wearing Max Bartlett’s body grew excited the closer he got to the door. It had been far too long since he had stepped foot inside a traditional Irish Pub. He couldn’t wait to see what debauchery awaited him inside.

  The pub was not quite what he had imagined it would be.

  Such a pity.

  The place looked right, it even smelled right, but there was something missing, something he couldn’t quite describe. The best analogy he could think of was watered down. Yes, that was the sensation. Like so much of this new world that had grown atop the old world he knew, this place had been diluted into something less than pure. It sickened the Slaugh to see that his once proud heritage had become less than it was. He would have to correct that oversight.

  The place reeked of old booze, sweat, and urine. This was the type of place that the original Wild Hunt would have called their own back in the old country. He found it poetic that the Wild Hunt’s rebirth should take root in a place such as this. The original Wild Hunt had been birthed in a roughshod place. They crawled out of the muck and blazed a trail across the old country, setting it aflame beneath their hooves. For a time, they were kings, feared by rabble unfit to lick their boots.

  Like all good things, however, the hunt ended.

  The end came on a battlefield stained red with the blood of friends and enemies alike. It was on this last battlefield that The Wild Hunt fell.

  The Slaugh still remembered his death. The pain was as intense as it was quick and then he was gone, but only for a moment. The Slaugh was reborn in a form that was and was not his own. It had taken time to learn how to maneuver within his new form, but eventually, the Slaugh regrouped with his brothers and resumed the hunt. They blazed a trail across the land, ripping sinners from their homes with impunity. They performed a service. They were, as one enemy referred to them, a necessary evil.

  Then, The Wild Hunt chanced upon a coven whose sinners were strong.

  He had seen their kind before, gypsy caravans filled with those who worshipped the Earth Mother or some such nonsense. He disliked their kind, but the Slaugh had never had need to fear any witch before. However, what he and his band of brothers had not realized was that their new forms were susceptible to the witches’ power. The coven dispatched his brothers to a hellish purgatory realm, but because of his actions against the coven, they had a special punishment for him. They bound him to the stones of a castle near their settlement where he was trapped for days without ceasing. Centuries passed and his imprisonment was hell itself until one fateful day when workers began to disassemble the castle and moved the stones piece by piece to a boat that took them across the seas and far out of reach of the witches who had imprisoned him.

  The Slaugh was still trapped by the stones, but he found himself suddenly able to move around within the castle walls. It wasn’t freedom, but it was a step closer than he had been. The farther he moved from the coven’s power base, the weaker their magic became. A plan was hatched. The Slaugh vowed that he would gain freedom.

  He almost made it too.

  If not for a chance encounter with a man named Hans Holzer when everything changed.

  Once again, he died.

  Only, he didn’t really die this time.

  His new prison was worse than the one before. He was held immobile beneath the musty dirt of this new world. How long he was held there, he could not say, but the Slaugh was certain it was not as long as he had been trapped within the walls of Castle Bartlett.

  Now, he was free once more, with a new body, newfound wealth, and an ages-old unquenched lust for vengeance upon his enemies and their offspring. The first step toward quenching his desire for revenge was to return his brothers from the hell they had been cast into by the coven.

  The Slaugh had a plan and it all started here.

  “This will do nicely,” he whispered as the pub door closed behind him. In spite of his best efforts, the body he now inhabited could not handle the lyrical lilt of his Irish brogue the way his original form had. That, he decided, was the cruelest injustice of all. No longer did he even sound like a son of Ireland. The voice he shared with Max Bartlett sounded to his ears like fingernails on a blackboard.

  You could hear a pin drop inside the once noisy saloon the moment his presence was noticed by the regulars. All eyes faced him, yet no one uttered a word. The Slaugh couldn’t tell if they felt his power or if they were sizing Max up for their next meal. Whatever they had planned, he decided to let it play out. He was curious to see what type of men this brave new world had produced. Would they be better than the rowdy bunch he had known in times past? He suspected that these so-called modern men would prove themselves to be not only weak of will, but also weak of body. While he hoped to be proven wrong, the Slaugh wasn’t sure he would find what he needed at McGinley’s Pub.

  Max made his way casually down the three ste
ps to the floor, peanut shells crunching beneath his heels. The way he moved, it was like he didn’t have a care in the world. As he approached the bar, a young dandy wearing clothes that cost more than some of the bar’s patrons earned in a year whistled an old Irish folk tune from the homeland.

  “I’ll have an Irish Whiskey. Neat, and a chaser of Murphy’s Stout.” he told the bartender, an older gent whose name tag announced that his name was Bob and that it was his pleasure to serve you. The Slaugh tossed a wad of Max’s cash on the bar. “Make sure it’s the good stuff,” he added with as much menace as his host’s voice allowed, which, he was the first to admit, wasn’t much.

  Apparently, it was enough in this case. With unsteady hand, the bartender nodded and pulled a nearly full bottle from beneath the bar. He smiled when the bartender began to pour and he tossed back the sweet elixir as soon as the man finished. The alcohol burned all the way down. It was a wonderful sensation. He immediately followed the whiskey by quaffing down the entire pint of cool draught ale. He slammed the empty glass back down on the polished oak with a satisfying THUNK! “Another.”

  “Hey,” one of the mutts standing nearby said, finally finding his nerve. “Hey! You! This is our place, ya wanker. What are ya doin’ here?” He laughed, turned back to his smiling friends to show his manliness. They egged him on.

  It was all the Slaugh could do not to laugh at the foolish gowl who believed himself a man worthy of speaking with such impunity to one of his betters.

  “I said what’cha doing in here, eh, rich boy?” the idiot said again, louder this time.

  As before, Max ignored him and ordered another drink.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!” He clapped a hand on Max’s shoulder.

  Whatever reaction the idiot had been expecting, he got the opposite. Moving faster than the mutt’s eye could follow, Max spun around on the barstool, grabbed the man’s arm in his grip, and broke it in two as easily as if snapping a twig. The crack of breaking bone echoed through the still quiet bar.