Shutter

by Courtney Alameda

  The crowd thinned out. The stairwell to the fifth and sixth stories was silent; bloody fingerprints wrapped around the door to the fourth floor. Adrenaline sawed off the edge of my fear, and the cocktail of the two turned my senses wolfish. Think like a predator, Dad’s voice whispered to me, never the prey.

  I unholstered my camera and coupled it to my monopod. Most tetros trapped a ghost’s energy using charged silver panes, which were later dipped in insulating glass to keep the ghost from escaping back into the living world. I preferred to play offense, and my methodology of using cameras and analog film was maverick. I imprisoned ghostlight using a technique known as shutter drag, which required me to shoot a ghost several times on one frame of film. High-powered quartz lenses allowed me to capture light effectively, as quartz conducted a ghost’s electricity and had a high sensitivity to fast-moving violet light. Most ghosts succumbed in a few photographs, their energy whittled down shot by shot and sealed into film’s silver halide trap.

  Helsing Research and Development optimized my flashes to slam ghosts with flares of ionized light, which broke down the electrons in the air and turned my camera into a lightning rod for ghostly energy. Lastly, my monopod steadied my hand and became a melee weapon in a pinch—Ryder had rigged a push-button knife inside the monopod’s base.

  My camera empowered me. Unlike our mirror-wielding tetros, I never screwed up a hunt.

  Here goes. I leaned on the door lever, spilling limp light into the hallway beyond. Snatches of a lullaby wafted out, pebbling my skin with gooseflesh. I trembled, pushing away memories of Mom singing to my little brothers. I didn’t want to remember them, not now.

  I started forward, holding my camera like a gun. A bloody taint corroded the air and burned in my lungs. Inside the rooms, wreckage. Equipment made venomous shapes in the darkness. Divider curtains hung in shreds from broken tracks. When I looked harder, I saw a woman slumped on her bed, shrouded and splattered in shadows. A girl about my age lay outside her door, unmoving. Blood gelled on the floor under her. As I got closer, I almost lost courage—the girl’s hands were dismembered at the wrist, her eyes gouged, teeth torn out and scattered.

  I’d seen dead people before. Lots of them, in fact. But I’d never seen such careful murder from a ghost.

  Across the hall, a man’s severed hand lay on the floor, clutching a rosary. The sight sucker-punched me and turned my world sideways. The hallway’s walls seemed to press closer. Breathe. In through the nose. I sucked down air as though the pressure outside my body would collapse my empty lungs. Out through the mouth.

  The lullaby grew louder as I headed deeper, a woman’s voice ringing down the hall. The tune sounded like “Rock-a-bye, Baby” but the lyrics were off:

  “Hand for a hand, and tooth for a tooth—”

  The knot in my stomach drew tight and I glanced back, sensing a trap.

  “Chain down the souls of Abraham’s youth.”

  Up ahead, a pair of double doors hung open, the letters NURS stamped on the one closest to me. I could handle dead adults, but dead infants?

  “Eye for an eye, and life for a life—”

  Inside the nursery, rust-stained blankets twisted over busted equipment. Shadows sliced the room into sections, light bleeding from the gallery windows. A woman in teddy-bear-print scrubs sat on the floor, her back to me, hugging her knees and rocking herself back and forth. The whole room crackled with ozone, smelling of electricity and ghastly energy.

  “Down stabs vengeance, swift as a knife,” she warbled.

  If I could see her eyes, I’d know if she was dead or alive, possessed or otherwise. Ghosts could hide in human flesh, but their presence made the body’s irises glow. I couldn’t damage the body if the woman still lived; but if she was dead, all bets were off.

  I stepped inside. Her song trailed away, strangled into a silence that howled in my ears. So much for surprise. The woman turned her head, fixing a glowing eye on my face. Violet sinews twitched inside the hole gouged in her cheek.

  Dead.

  “Hello, Micheline.” The corpse’s lips sputtered the syllables of my name. My muscles locked up—how could she, she shouldn’t—

  A smile cut her corpse-face open. She spun and lunged for me, grabbing my leg. Her nails bit into my calf, triggering bursts of adrenaline in my fingers and toes. I twisted my leg and wrenched out of her grip, then drove my heel into her cheekbone. Her head snapped sideways. She didn’t cry out like a living person would’ve; dead nerves didn’t sense pain. I kicked her again, rotating my hips, sending her sprawling.

  Recovering, she pressed up to her palms and scuttled sideways. Her cross-eyed gaze latched on me, eyes glowing like black lightbulbs behind a hunk of hair.

  “I don’t have time for games,” I said, releasing the knife in my monopod’s base. My voice sounded braver than I felt—that was my training talking, because I’d started to think I’d been stupid to come alone. “Come out or I cut you out.”

  She rose up on the balls of her feet, jerking like a marionette controlled by a drunken puppeteer. Disjointed. I could cut the tendons in her knees and destroy her mobility, or disable her arms. Force the entity to abandon ship, so to speak.

  She staggered a step, found her balance, and charged.

  Instinct fired pistons in my brain. Sidestepping her, I swept my knife down and stabbed her in the knee. The blade glanced off bone, slicing through a tendon. Her leg crumpled. She stumbled and smashed into the fallen equipment, getting tangled in a mess of IV lines. I slammed my monopod’s base into the floor, sheathed the knife, and aimed my camera at the visible ghostlight in the knee.

  I hit the shutter, the lens blinking, world blackening. The shot’s electricity transfer hummed against my fingers, about as strong a shock as a toy buzzer’s. I’d captured almost nothing, but the entity still hissed through the woman’s lips.

  When the shutter opened, the corpse sagged. Her skin split, unzipping the crown of her head and rupturing the base of her neck. Black veins laced her flesh. An oil-dark mist gushed from the wounds, staining her clothing, drawing a dark line where her spine pressed against her shirt.

  What the—

  I took a step back, arms quivering as I kept the monster in my crosshairs. The corpse writhed, flesh rending, bones cracking. A ghostlit hand punched out the woman’s side. Heavy droplets struck my skin. My stomach barrel-rolled, and I suppressed the instinct to drop my lens and shuck the gore off me.

  The shadows spiraled up, concealing both the entity and its host from view. I’d never seen a ghost rip itself from a corpse nor swathe itself in shadow.

  The empty corpse hit the floor, the mists roiling. The ghost extended a flickering fist toward me, opened its fingers, and dropped a handful of teeth to the ground. They tracked blood on the floor and rebounded off my boot, making pings on the linoleum that rattled in the roots of my molars.

  “Micheline,” the ghost said, its voice distorted as though broadcast through an old AM radio. One ghostly finger beckoned to me.

  Go back to hell. I aimed my camera and fired rapid shots, shutter punctuating the ghost’s movements, its black mist taking up more of the lens with each click. Getting closer. I wanted to suck the entity through my lens, to siphon the thing down to a crackle of light and a mewling sob. But the familiar shock that should’ve accompanied each shot, the evidence of exorcism, oh God—

  It was missing.

  The ghost blurred forward, grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into the wall, electricity singeing my skin. Pain blossomed behind my eyes like fireworks. I lost track of my breath and clung to my monopod. The entity held me fast. Smoky shadows slithered up my sleeves, tentacle shaped, cold. My sight darkened at the edges as the smoke slid into my nose and mouth. I gagged on it, thoughts smearing while something cold and caustic sank through my chest and into my gut.

  “Helsing,” the ghost said. “So predictable.” An electric jolt hooked me in the abdomen. Even as my muscles screamed for air and my brain sputtered,
the thought came back: I was the hunter, not the prey.

  My fingers flexed. I jammed my camera between us, shocking the ghost’s shadows away with the flash. Violet light streaked through my lens, and the ghost’s lips and cheek filled up my viewfinder. Gotcha. The shutter clicked, lens point-blank, trapped electricity zinging into my fingertips.

  The entity seized and shrieked, its claws grazing my throat as it dropped me. My knees gave out and the floor rushed up—I hit hard, falling on my tailbone and crumpling to the ground. An incisor lay in my line of sight, moving in and out of focus. My mouth tasted like I’d sucked on a copper plumbing pipe—I hoped I wasn’t looking at my own tooth. My camera was a black blur just beyond reach.

  Shadows bubbled over the floor and circled my wrist. I couldn’t pull away. Couldn’t move, my body hijacked. When darkness bit into my hand, my lips twitched in a shutoff scream. Pain slammed into my head and echoed in the small of my back. I won’t go down, not like this. I focused all my will on my hand. My pinkie finger twitched. Move!

  A bang reverberated down the hall. With a growl, the entity drew back. Everything seemed too still, until someone shouted:

  “Micheline!”

  The entity dashed past the nursery doors. A gunshot burst out, shaking the windows in their frames and making the loose teeth on the floor dance.

  The boys.

  I pushed to my knees, tiny explosions searing my muscles. I grabbed my camera, stood, and struggled past the doors, choking on my breath. Coughing. The maelstrom of bright flashlights and swirling darkness at the end of the hall made no sense to my throbbing head.

  But I understood the bullet whizzing past my shoulder.

  “Hold fire!” Uncoupling my camera, I dropped my monopod and broke into a run. If I didn’t stop the monster—if I couldn’t—

  A scream rang out. Hitting my knees, I opened my lens to its widest aperture, one to capture every scrap of light in the room. I jammed my finger into the shutter button, which cut like a guillotine. The flash broke the entity’s shadows apart. Violet ghostlight spilled out in the wake, supernova bright. It filled the camera’s frame as I shot the entity again.

  This time, my lens tugged on its ghostlight. My camera crackled with static, but I was too far away—and the ghost was too bright, too powerful—for the hit to be more than a graze.

  The entity roared, its shadows kicking into a cyclone. It leapt forward and the boys’ flashlights winked out, sealing the hall in darkness. A figure hit the wall with a thud—he went down. The ghost smashed into the others, sending them sprawling before it darted through a doorway.

  I shoved to my feet and staggered after it. I almost tripped over Oliver’s legs and slid past Ryder, who stumbled to his feet, slipping on the bloodied floor.

  A crash shattered the silence. Scrambling into the room, I found jagged bits of window glass baring their teeth at me.

  The entity had escaped.

  I spun and ran for the stairwell, camera in hand. Ryder and Jude shouted after me, but all I thought was it’ll kill again, hurry. Lighting the way with my flash, I leapt down the stairs. On the last floor, I jumped the railing and hit the ground, pain spiking my ankles as I sprinted into the hall.

  People dodged me as I shouted at them to get out of the way. I plunged into the crowd outside—moving past wide-eyed nurses, listening for screams, looking right, left, and right again. I couldn’t see anything beyond the crush of bodies, ambulances, and medical equipment. People stared at me, uncomprehending and immobile as a brick wall.

  Ryder appeared at my side. Without looking at him, I asked, “Is it—”

  “No,” he said, scanning the crowd. “It’s gone.”

  I shook my shoulders, trying to loosen the pressure at the base of my neck. Helsing didn’t lose to the dead. I’d never botched an exorcism. The cross might be inked under my skin, but I had the family name stamped on my soul. In my failure to stop the entity, I’d put the city at risk and let everyone down: my crew, the corps, the victims, the survivors. My family, my father.

  A shard of glass loosened and fell from the fourth-floor window, shattering on the sill beneath.

  If shame didn’t crush me,

  Dad would.

  THURSDAY, 11:25 P.M.

  I GRABBED A POLICE officer by the arm. “Did you see that window break?” I asked, pointing to the fourth floor.

  “No, miss, I didn’t.” He stared at my eyes but not into them, absorbed by the novelty of tetro irises. Useless. I stalked off, headed toward the Humvees. My body ached like I’d gone three rounds in the academy’s practicum arena, my skills tested, then exceeded; my confidence beaten down. Bits of broken glass crunched under my boots. The crash cleared the sidewalk, but nobody I asked saw the entity exit the building. How had that monster gotten the best of me? And stranger still, why hadn’t it finished us off?

  Ryder grabbed my injured wrist. “Hold up—”

  “Don’t.” I ripped my hand away, grimacing at the pain. We glared at each other over a heartbeat. His anger shifted to shock, his face mirroring my own gaping mouth and wide eyes. Soot trailed all over his hazelnut-colored skin, tracked under his tear ducts, nostrils, and chin.

  Ryder wiped at my cheek with his thumb. “What’s this stuff?” He rubbed the substance between his fingers. “You’ve got heaps of it on your face.”

  No wonder the cop stared at me; the stuff looked freakish. My palms clammed up. The ghost’s smoky tentacles left the ashen dust all over my jacket and skin. “You’ve got some, too. Here, turn your face down.” I dug through my camera bag for a lens cloth. He closed his eyes while I dabbed at the chiseled lines of his nose and cheekbones. I swept a lock of dark hair off his forehead, letting my fingers linger longer than necessary. A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth.

  Pixelated flashes popped on the edge of my sight. When I hesitated, Ryder opened his eyes, turned his head, and scowled—people watched us, phones in hand. If these photos ended up with any of the major news channels, no way would Helsing PR miss them. Great, caught red-handed.

  With nothing more to lose than the dregs of my privacy, I decided to ignore the lenses pointed at us. “Did the ghost touch you?” I asked him, wiping the last bit of grime away.

  “Only with a bit of smoke,” he replied. “You really think that thing was a ghost?”

  “No doubt in my mind.” Looking at him, I wondered if he felt the same sense of invasion I did. The ghost’s chill stuck to my ribs, oozing down my spine and coating my insides.

  “It tore up three floors. Never seen anything like it, not even from a necro.” Ryder took the cloth from me and blotted it under one of my eyes. His fingers smelled of blood, gunpowder, and metal, and he had red half-moons under his fingernails. He caught me looking and picked at his index finger. “It’s Ollie’s. He’s okay—flesh wound—the kid needs to be faster on his feet.”

  “Jude’s with him?”

  “Yeah, no worries.”

  I spotted a news truck wading through the masses—our cue to disappear. “Let’s get Oliver some help.” I turned away from the cameras. If I were anyone else, I’d give the wannabe paparazzi the grace of my middle finger. I put my life on the line for these people, but they didn’t own me. “At least we’re close to an ER…”

  I trailed off when I saw the look on Ryder’s face, his features blank, stare one hundred yards long. “What’s wrong?”

  He stapled his fist over his heart. I spun, mentally cursing when I spotted Dad working through the crowd, flanked by guys from the Harker Elite. How did he get here so fast?

  Dad made death look paternal: His leather jacket hardly hid the Colt revolvers on his hips. A graze roughed up his cheekbone, and gunpowder streaked one temple and peppered his blond hair. He wore Helsing’s standard-issue 5.11 Tactical holster shirt and Stryker pants in black like everyone else; but unlike everyone else, the embroidery on his left breast had a commander-in-chief’s laurels stitched above the Helsing cross.

  With a piercing look
, he told me how much trouble I’d worked up. I lifted my chin and met his gaze, hoping he missed the way my knees trembled. But Dad missed only the things he didn’t want to see, and he certainly wanted to see me scared. In his estimation, the only thing worse than breaking his rules was failing to reap a necro.

  I’d done both.

  “Take McCoy into custody,” Dad said to one of the Harkers, walking past Ryder and grabbing me by the arm. “Come with me.”

  When I protested, he gave me one of his scalpel-sharp looks, the kind that crossed his face as he pulled a trigger. As Dad led me away, I mouthed sorry to Ryder. A half smile turned the corner of his lips—an acknowledgment, not forgiveness. The Harkers took Ryder by the arms. Dad jerked me hard, forcing me to about-face and keep up with him.

  Dad led me to a Humvee waiting on Stanyan, pushed me into the seat beside Lieutenant Bourne, and held out his hand.

  “Cell phone and comm,” he said. I unhooked my comm from around my ear, pulled my phone from my bag, slapped them into his palm, and hoped it stung. “Straight home,” he said.

  Just like that? “Let me explain—”

  “She’s not to speak to the boys until I’m done with them, Lieutenant,” Dad said.

  “Sir,” Bourne said.

  Dad palmed the door. I slammed my heel into it, propping it open. “Listen, you need to know what I saw—”

  “I have to clean up your mess,” he said. “Stand down.”

  “The ghost’s loose, Dad—”

  “I know.” The gravel in his tone embedded itself in my skin, where it would fester and ache until I got the courage to claw it out. “Stand down. Now.”

  I moved my foot. Dad shut the door, giving Bourne a hand signal to leave. Bourne pulled away from the curb as Dad turned back to the hospital. I watched him disappear into the crowd, his words echoing in every heartbeat. Your. Mess. He could be such a bastard sometimes.