Ghosts of War: A Tale of the Ghost

by George Mann

  It was an alien thing, a monster, a creature derived from his very worst nightmares, spawned from the depths of hell itself. It had reached out for him with its thick, ropy tentacles, its pink flesh glistening in the half-light, dripping with syrupy mucus.

  He'd thought then that he was probably insane, that this thing, this figment, had been born out of his waking dreams, just like the eyes that haunted him from above. He'd tried to convince himself it was a hallucination, a creation of his damaged mind. Others had said the same, too, when—a day later—they had picked him up, stumbling across the fields, still fleeing the unbelievable creature he claimed to have encountered near the wreckage of his plane.

  Of course, the crash site had been located and the farmhouse had been explored, and nothing had been found to corroborate his story. It had been dismissed as the ravings of an injured man, driven temporarily mad by the shock.

  He'd held on to that notion after he'd recovered, after he'd been invalided home back to Long Island to have his leg treated. The dreams had continued to torment him, of course, but those strange, all-seeing eyes had remained in France, as had the beast. And so he came to accept that theory as the truth—that of course such things could never exist, that the creature he had seen had been nothing but the product of his unconscious mind, the means by which his mind had coped with the horror of his ordeal, an externalization of the pain. He'd listened to the doctors and had come to believe what they told him. He had followed their advice, and he had slipped back into his mundane, ordinary existence. The eternal party had once again come to define him.

  Yet somewhere, deep inside that kernel of himself that he had buried so long ago, he knew that in his complicity, in his readiness to believe in the mind-fever, he was deceiving not only the doctors, but also himself. A part of him recognized the truth, but he kept it hidden, terrified to admit it even to himself. Because in acknowledging the truth—that everything he had seen had been real—he would be admitting that either he had, truly, been driven insane, or else that there were such horrors in the universe that knowledge of them might amount to exactly the same thing.

  He had kept such thoughts buried for years, even when he had first donned the black suit of the Ghost. And then, just scant weeks earlier, he had seen another of the creatures, here in New York City, in the basement of the Roman's mansion, thrashing about as it hauled itself through the gateway from its own world into his.

  It was perhaps one of the most terrifying, and yet liberating, experiences of his life. After all this time, all those years of repressing the truth, he had finally allowed himself to recognize that he had been right all along. In doing so, he had blurred the boundaries between the twin halves of his life.

  Gabriel—or the Ghost—had fought the beast, and it had taken from him the woman he had loved. Only Celeste had been able to stop it. Celeste. Remarkable, beautiful Celeste. She had known the truth all along, had known of the existence of such things, and had known also that her blood was anathema to it. She had killed it by sacrificing her-self, and in doing so she had saved him, Donovan, and the city.

  In doing so she had offered him hope—hope that those things could be stopped—but at a price he could barely stand to consider. Her loss was like a burning poker in his chest. When he thought of her, he found it difficult to breathe. The pain was still so acute, so pointed, so fresh.

  But now he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the monsters in the darkness did exist. This was the burden he carried. One of the many.

  Gabriel woke with a start, thrashing his way through layers of unconsciousness.

  Had he called out to her? To Celeste? He thought perhaps he had.

  He sensed movement, and turned to see Ginny stumbling through the doorway of his bedroom, blinking into the early-morning light like a vampire emerging into the dawn. He watched her for a moment, trying to remember where he was, what had happened, why she was there.

  Yes, that was right. They were in Manhattan, in his apartment on Fifth Avenue. He'd spent the night in an armchair, giving his bed up for the girl. Judging by the light streaming in through the window, it was already well past dawn.

  His body ached. He stretched wearily, feeling a sharp pull in his shoulder. That was where the raptor's claw had bitten into his flesh. He cycled through the events of the previous night—the party, the trip into town, the apartment and the dead agent, the fight with the raptors. Ginny and his two pistols. It came back to him in a cascade of stuttering images.

  Ginny eyed him as she crossed toward the kitchenette. Had she heard him calling out? Is that what had roused her and brought her out, blinking into the morning light? Most probably. But then Ginny knew what it was to have bad dreams. She was broken, just like him. Only instead of donning a black suit and traversing the rooftops by night, searching for penitence, for someone to take it all out on, she handled her demons in a different way. She found solace at the bottom of a bottle. The thing was, he just didn't know why.

  “God, I need a drink,” she said, rummaging in the cupboards for a glass. Her voice was still groggy with sleep.

  “Isn't it a bit early for that?”

  “Gabriel, my dear, that's precisely the point.” She smiled coquettishly and ran a hand through her mop of unruly hair. Her red, glossy lipstick was smeared across her cheek. She still looked pretty, Gabriel considered. Devastatingly so, perhaps more so because of her rumpled state, her lack of perfection, her humanity. Why, then, had he chosen to sleep in the armchair, alone?

  He felt strangely reluctant to acknowledge his feelings for the woman, as confused as they were. What was it that was holding him back? Was it because she reminded him of a past he'd thought he'd left behind, a part of his life he'd sooner forget? Was it because he suspected her of something underhanded, for walking so brazenly back into his life without any sort of explanation as to why? Or perhaps it was loyalty to the memory of Celeste, who had died only a few weeks earlier? Even fear that it might happen again—that if he allowed himself to fall for this girl once more, she might disappear again, or worse, that he might lead her unwittingly to her demise?

  He didn't know. But one thing was sure—he wanted to be around her. He wanted her close. And perhaps that was enough for him, for now.

  Ginny sauntered over, drink in hand, ice cubes clicking in the glass. She folded herself smoothly into the armchair opposite him, crossing her knees. She was wearing his long, silk dressing gown, and it looked faintly ridiculous on her, billowing around her like some oversized kimono.

  Gabriel, on the other hand, was still wearing the accoutrements of the previous night: the coat and jacket of the Ghost. He'd unclipped the long barrel of his fléchette gun and dropped it on the floor beside his chair. Likewise the canisters of his rocket propellers, which he had unstrapped from his ankles and cast across the room. His hat was resting on the coffee table. He'd need to bathe before facing the day.

  He studied Ginny as she sipped at her drink. “Why did you come back, Ginny?” he asked her, his voice low.

  She watched him for a moment, searching his face for any clue as to the tenor of his question. When he didn't give anything away, she shrugged. “To see you,” she said, and reached for his discarded packet of cigarettes on the coffee table. She drew one out of the packet with her long, white fingers and pulled the ignition tab. It flared briefly, and she placed it, a little shakily, between her lips.

  “It's been a long time.”

  “Yes, I know. But I simply knew I needed to see you. I was thinking about old times, about old friends. That's all.” She smiled, but her eyes told the real story. I needed to see if you could fix me.

  Gabriel would have laughed, if it wouldn't have seemed so heartless. He hadn't been able to fix himself, let alone someone else. “I'm dangerous, Ginny. Dangerous to be around. You'd be better off finding someone else with whom to dredge up the past.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied airily. “But it isn't about the past, is it, Gabriel? It's about the present. Ab
out the here and now. You and me, and whatever's going on out there, with those raptors. And besides”—she flicked the ash from the tip of her cigarette into a half-empty coffee mug—”it beats swanning around the apartment all day getting drunk.”

  Gabriel couldn't repress his smile. “What happened to you?” he asked, and then immediately regretted it. Was it too much?

  She shrugged. “Life. That's what happened. Cold, hard reality. It's a terrible world out there, Gabriel,” she said, as if that was enough, as if that told him everything he needed to know about her. That she had faced reality, and it had proved too much to bear. He thought there had to be something more to it than that.

  Ginny could see he was bemused by her answer. He could tell that from the wry expression on her face, the slightly wonky smile on her lips as she deftly turned the question back on him. “And what about you? About that…suit?” She waved her hand to indicate the apparel he was wearing.

  Gabriel didn't meet her gaze. What about the suit? He'd done it to preserve his identity, to separate himself from the persona that everyone knew, the Gabriel Cross that lived in Long Island and threw parties and didn't care about anything but himself. He'd done it to keep the people he cared about safe. And where had that gotten him?

  “It's…a disguise, I suppose,” he said, and he knew it was much more than that. It was another life, another attempt to cope with the world. It was a fresh start.

  Ginny laughed. “We all have masks of one kind or another, Gabriel,” she replied cryptically, and downed the rest of the bourbon in her tumbler. Gabriel watched her shiver as the alcohol hit her palate. She cocked her head, her eyes suddenly bright. “So, what now?” She asked this as though it was a given, as if the events of the previous evening and her knowledge of his secret life meant that she was now inextricably involved in whatever would happen next. Her smile told him that she knew he wouldn't be able to resist.

  Gabriel glanced out of the window. The sun was coming up over the city. Birds wheeled over the rooftops. In the distance, dirigibles stirred the clouds, and biplanes dragged vapor trails across the sky. At least the fog had begun to lift.

  He looked back toward Ginny, who was watching him expectantly. “I don't know,” he said, his voice hard, firm. “I'm hoping Donovan can turn up something regarding the dead man we found in that apartment. As for the raptors…well, we're no closer to knowing what it is they're up to.”

  “What about the bird and the things you found inside that one you destroyed last night?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “All that tells us is that we're dealing with someone very dangerous indeed. Someone who has a notion of how to marry science with the dark arts. We've still no real idea of what it is they're up to, or why they're abducting people from the streets.”

  Ginny took a long draw on her cigarette. “Then we need to come up with a way to find out,” she said determinedly. “If only we were able to talk to one of the victims, to find out where they were being taken. As I see it, the abductees are the only ones who know the truth.” She flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette, and it was at that moment that a plan began to take shape in the back of Gabriel's mind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Donovan hulked behind his desk, brooding. It was too early: he needed more coffee. He dragged at the butt of his cigarette, sucking the harsh fumes down into his lungs, enjoying the sensation of the nicotine flooding into his bloodstream. Around him, the precinct was already buzzing with life.

  Donovan had hardly slept. When he'd finally arrived home after the encounter with the raptors—and after staying on to brief Mullins regarding his plans for the apartment that had belonged to the missing British spy—he'd found Flora asleep on the sofa. She'd waited up for him. His dinner was in the oven, now burnt and dry.

  He had gently woken her, slipped his arms beneath her, and carried her up the stairs to their bedroom.

  Then, unable to sleep, he had crept back down to the kitchen, where he had sat with a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of bourbon to consider everything that had occurred. It was only hours later, just before dawn, that he had climbed into bed, groggy from the tiredness and alcohol, for what amounted to a couple of hours of unsatisfactory unconsciousness.

  There would be no berating from Flora when he eventually saw her later that day, however—he had left her still asleep in bed that morning, creeping out of the apartment so as not to disturb her. She had learned long ago that the life of a policeman's wife was an extraordinary one—or at least that she would have to learn to deal with an extraordinary amount of disappointment—as, when engaged with a case, Donovan was very much the absentee from the marriage.

  It pained him, he thought, more than it did Flora. Not that she didn't care, but more that she had resigned herself to it, and that she accepted her husband for who and what he was—a police inspector in one of the busiest cities in the world. She was proud of him, she reminded him regularly, for standing up for what was right, for upholding justice in this most unjust of times. He loved her for that, for that unqualified faith she had in him, for seeing the goodness in him, even when he couldn't see it himself.

  For his part, all Donovan wanted to do was be a better husband. He couldn't always see that, to Flora, that meant something different than simply being around. Because if he was, if he gave up everything he believed in to be by her side, he would be a lesser man in her eyes.

  She'd told him that the day before their wedding, all those years ago, when he'd taken her to one side and explained that he was thinking of leaving the force. She'd taken his hand and resolutely told him that she loved him and that he had to do what he thought was right—and that she would continue to love him even when he wasn't around.

  She'd been true to her word. For all those years, she'd stood by him and supported him, and never once mentioned the ruined dinners or missed dates, the late nights or the injuries. One day, she maintained, he would be done with the police force, with chasing criminals and catching serial killers. And when that day came, then they would make up for lost time. In the meantime, he was to continue to help people the best way he knew how. And if that meant she had to grow used to the disappointments, well, that was what being a policeman's wife was all about. She'd known that before she'd ever accepted his ring.

  Nevertheless, it didn't stop Donovan struggling with pangs of guilt. He supposed it never would.

  Donovan stared at the clock. All through the night he'd been racking his brain for that sudden flash of inspiration, that insight he needed to get the breakthrough in the case he was searching for. He was clearly missing something. Something that should have been obvious to him, but was, for the time being, remaining elusive. Some fact or implication, some link he just couldn't see.

  This Jerry Robertson, the British spy he was supposedly trying to locate—there was a bigger story behind that, Donovan was sure of it. Why had the man had photographs of the state senator, the commissioner, and other businessmen and politicians on his wall? Was he planning to execute them? Is that why Senator Banks was involved? Clearly he and the commissioner knew more about the situation than they were prepared to divulge. And what of the raptors? Were they somehow linked? It seemed unlikely…but then the spy had also had a picture of one of those, too, stuck to his wall.

  Whatever the raptors were, Donovan needed to rid the city of them. They were a scourge, a diabolical plague upon the populace, and he shuddered at the thought of what they might be doing to the innocent citizens they continued to pluck so brazenly from the streets. Even the Ghost was having trouble getting to the bottom of the matter, with the raptors dancing rings around him or putting up too much of a fight. Now, finally, they'd managed to destroy one—the remains of which were still stashed in the trunk of his car—but they were still no closer to having an answer.

  Donovan stared at the paperwork on his desk. The words meant nothing to him, just a jumble of tics and scratches on the page—more of the endless bureaucratic nonsense he had to deal with
instead of real police work. He rubbed his eyes. His lids were heavy and he needed sleep. But he knew he wouldn't be able to rest, even if he could get away. Perhaps, he thought reluctantly, he just needed caffeine and more cigarettes. Wasn't that the story of his life.

  He looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching his desk. Mullins was looming over him, a dark expression on his face. The portly young man was flushed and sweating, with dark rings beneath his eyes, and he pulled nervously at his collar. He looked tired, too. Something had gone on.

  “You look as if you've been up all night,” said Donovan, empathizing with the other man.

  “I have,” Mullins replied warily, as if waiting for Donovan to make some further comment or judgment. Instead, he simply shrugged and waited for the sergeant to continue. “I have bad news for you, sir,” said Mullins gingerly.

  “Just what I need,” Donovan sighed heavily. “What's happened? Further abductions? A murder? Someone run off with the commissioner's pussycat?”

  Mullins didn't raise a smile, and Donovan felt a sinking feeling spreading throughout his chest. No, this really was bad news.

  “No, sir. None of that. It's about the apartment you asked me to deal with last night, the one in Greenwich Village. Someone burned it to the ground before we were able to finish removing the contents.”

  Donovan fixed Mullins with a confused stare. “Burned it to the ground? But it was on the third floor.”

  “Yes, sir. They took the whole apartment block. Razed it completely. At least twelve people perished in the flames.” Mullins swallowed, clearly affected by the news he was imparting. “Inspector Anderson is down there now, attempting to establish exactly what happened. But one thing is clear—the fire was started in the very apartment you were interested in.”

  Donovan allowed a long whistle to escape from between his teeth. Twelve people. Twelve people, all for the sake of some papers and a collage on the wall. As well as, perhaps, the corpse of a dead American agent. That was quite a price someone was prepared to pay. He'd been right—there was definitely more to this than he'd been allowed to know about so far.