Dead Waters sc-4

by Anton Strout

  Without another word, I adjusted the strap of my satchel so it lay flat across my back for the climb and the rest of us started up the under skeleton of the bridge. The going was rough but thankfully my gloves kept my hands from slipping as I climbed. I reached the top first and pulled myself up onto the bridge itself. Far out in the center among the swirl of shuffling spirits, Mason Redfield was staring down into the water below, oblivious of our little group’s progress. Connor and Jane pulled themselves up next and the three of us waited for the Inspectre together, but he was taking forever. He was still only about halfway up the understructure. At this pace it would be morning before we could pull him up.

  Out of the darkness behind him, something blurred into view, grabbing for him. The Inspectre let go of the bridge, but didn’t fall. Instead he and the other figure flew up the side of the bridge. They shot up past us, flying into an arc fifty feet over our heads until they both came down onto the bridge right in front of us. The professor landed, stumbling away from the figure carrying him, revealing Connor’s brother, Aidan. The vampire’s face was drawn and leathery from taking a form that could fly. Aidan almost lost his footing, but caught himself before he fell.

  “Aidan?” I asked, running over to him.

  The Inspectre turned to him. “Are you all right?”

  Aidan nodded, his face returning to its more human state. “Fine,” he said. “Just a little too wet out tonight for my liking.”

  “Thank you,” the Inspectre said. “For the ride. It was quite… invigorating.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  Connor walked over to us. “I called him, kid,” he said. “Thought the vamps might be helpful in all this.”

  “Actually,” Aidan said, “not so much. We don’t really function well around water, remember? It’s why I skipped your boat ride and had a little trouble sticking my landing just now. But I’ll do what I can. I owe you guys for helping me get rid of that ghost.”

  “Well, nice Superman entrance anyway,” I said. “Let’s just hope the water woman doesn’t get her green coloring from a Kryptonite infusion.”

  “Funny,” Aidan said. “So glad I came out for this.”

  “Thank you for joining us,” the Inspectre said. “Sincerely.”

  Aidan smiled, baring his fangs.

  “All right,” Connor said. “Enough. My brother’s going to get an even bigger head on his shoulders.”

  “Is that possible?” I said.

  “Gentlemen, concentrate,” the Inspectre snapped. The rest of us fell silent. “Now, then, we have to make sure Mason Redfield doesn’t escape. We need to surround him.”

  Aidan stepped forward. “I’m on it,” he said. “I’ll block the other side of the bridge.” His features stretched back to his vampiric form once again. “Up, up, and away.”

  Aidan leapt into the air like he was the Hulk bounding away.

  “Let’s move in,” the Inspectre said.

  “And quickly,” Connor added, heading out onto the bridge. “There’s no telling what my brother may or may not do.”

  I grabbed Jane’s hand and headed after him and the Inspectre, who was already setting a brisk pace.

  “Hey, if your brother brings down this woman in green and gets this mark off of Jane, I’ll bring him on a Hot Topic shopping spree myself,” I said.

  “Quiet,” the Inspectre said, his mood darkening. Connor and I used foolishness as it had been described in the Departmental pamphlet entitled “Witty Banter to Ease Any Paranormal Situation.” I knew that personally it was what kept me from losing my mind and running off screaming on an hourly basis sometimes. Before I could say anything, the Inspectre had picked up his pace and moved ahead, closing in on his old friend. The sea of long-dead spirits parted out of the way as we went, drifting to and fro in their constant wait for a ship that would never come.

  Mason Redfield stood at the edge of the bridge, staring down at the chopping waves far below. His hands held him in place as he leaned out over the side, rocking back and forth, totally unaware of our approach. Pushing him off would be so easy if I just took a running start from here. I let go of Jane’s hand and reached for my bat in its holster.

  I worried that the click of extending it out might draw his attention, but I doubted he would be able to hear it over the whip of the wind and rain out at the center of the bridge. I needn’t have worried. Another sound caught his attention instead.

  Aidan landed just on the other side of Mason, slamming down into the bridge, cracking a few of the slats. He came down hard, too hard, and looked a little stunned by the trouble he was having being exposed to so much water.

  Mason spun around, and then noticed the rest of us crowding in on him. Faster than I expected, he reacted, pulling something out of his jacket.

  “Crap,” I heard Connor say. “Gun!”

  Fewer words inspired more panic in the Department than hearing someone was packing heat. Dealing with pedestrian weapons wasn’t really our area. Vampires and witches didn’t use them, and when I heard the word, I put myself in front of Jane.

  Mason looked around him as we spread out to block any escape path he might try to take, all except the one down to the water below. If he wanted to try that hoping to survive the fall, he could be my guest.

  “Everyone stop,” Mason shouted. “Now!”

  Everyone on our side of the bridge stopped, but Aidan continued creeping forward on him, fangs bared.

  “I said stop,” Mason repeated, and then cocked his head at Aidan as he noticed his teeth. “I’ve got something to stop you as well.” He reached into the collar of his shirt and brought out a wide assortment of chains, all of them with dangling pendants bearing different marks on them. Some of them were definitely religious, some absolutely foreign to me, but they were enough to stop Aidan in his tracks.

  “Ever resourceful,” the Inspectre called out to him over the wind.

  “It pays to be prepared,” Mason said. “I’m living proof.”

  Aidan’s face twisted to its monster form. “What do you want me to do, little brother?” Aidan asked Connor. “I can still probably stop him …”

  “Don’t,” I shouted. “I’m not going to risk Jane’s life on your ‘probably.’”

  “Why are you doing this, Mason?” the Inspectre shouted.

  “Why?” he asked. “I turned away from the Department years ago because the dark and secret horrors of this life were too much to bear. Only through teaching film did I revisit my love for all things horrifying, only in fictional form. Thanks to it, I learned why people love seeing scary movies. It’s a thrill, controlled fear without the actual chaos of it being real. Over time that morphed into something more, a darker fascination… I turned to the world of the documentary trying to capture the horrors of real life—in this case, the hundreds of deaths at the Hell Gate Bridge.”

  “But why?” the Inspectre asked again. “Back in our day, you had everything in control. You were powerful. We were going to fight the good fight side by side.”

  “You don’t understand,” Mason said. “Do you even remember the day I told you I was leaving the Department?”

  The Inspectre paused in recall, but I stepped forward.

  “I do,” I said. “That was the day you almost died, yes? There was a fissure in the earth of a graveyard, ghouls pouring out it—”

  “Exactly,” Mason said, giving me a look of suspicion, “but how do you know that?”

  I held my hands up and wiggled my fingers. “Psychometrist,” I said. “I let my fingers do the walking.”

  “Fascinating,” he said. A spark of interest lit up on his face, the same spark of fascinated curiosity I had seen on it from the vision.

  “Look,” I said. “I get it. I really do. For the Inspectre here, that day is but a distant memory, but for me? My powers made it seem like only yesterday. I’ve even felt how you feel. I know the panic you felt that day when you were nearly dragged down into the earth. I understand why you w
alked away from that life of risk. Hell, I have days in the office where I want to just throw the towel in, too.”

  Mason was paying attention to me now. He stared at me like I was stupid. “So, why don’t you, then?” he asked

  I shrugged. I wasn’t quite sure of the answer myself

  “It’s not in his nature,” Jane said, speaking up in my defense.

  Mason Redfield laughed at that. “Not yet, anyway,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “How old are you?” Mason asked. “In your twenties still, yes?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he said, darkness thick in his voice. “I almost died that day you saw, and every day after that I wondered when the other shoe was going to drop. When was the grim reaper going to show up at my door? Over time it built, festered… and the years slipped by, age creeping up on me, robbing me of my strength, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was a way to cheat death. There had to be.”

  The Inspectre shook his head at his old friend. “So you struck a bargain,” he said, “with that woman in green. Tell me, Mason, how did you manifest her? You haven’t practiced arcana in years.”

  “Actually,” Mason said, “finding her was purely accidental. I unearthed her withered remains while researching the ship graveyard below the Hell Gate Bridge for a perfectly normal documentary I wanted to do about those mundane horrors your friend here suggested. Charybdis was damaged, weakened, and needed my help, which I gladly offered in exchange for some help of my own I wanted.”

  “This is her weak?” Jane asked. “Geez. I’d hate to see her in tip-top shape.”

  “No,” Mason said. “Once we raise Scylla and Charybdis takes control of her host, she will return to her full power. It took years to return her to her current state. I helped her recover and she promised in return to tell me dark secrets to assist me in pursuit of my rebirth.”

  “At the expense of others,” the Inspectre reminded him.

  “No,” Mason said. “Not at first, anyway. Originally I only twisted my students to the use of magic trying to make film come alive. Nefarious, but mostly harmless. I kept my grander plan for my youth a secret. When Charybdis was recovered enough to her satisfaction, she finally shared those dark secrets with me. I never knew she would want blood in return.”

  “Oh, come, now,” the Inspectre said. “We both know that’s not true. You must surely have suspected. Even with what you had seen in your short time with the Department, you must have known that such a bargain would bear a heavy price.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, admitting it with a slight smile, “but it is a price I’ve come to live with for the promise of rebirth.”

  It was the Inspectre’s turn to smile, but there was a sadness to it.

  “You can’t cheat death,” the Inspectre said.

  “Oh, no?” Mason asked, turning to look at Aidan. “What about him? He seems to be doing quite well at it.”

  “Make no mistake,” the Inspectre said. “Death even comes to their kind, even if it is staved off by supernatural means. Some give up wanting to live, some are struck down by vampire hunters, but eventually death comes to us all.”

  “Hey!” Aidan said. “Not cool with all this talk about me dying, guys.”

  Mason Redfield looked around for a way to escape as we argued in the growing fury of the storm, but there was none.

  “Come, now, Mason,” the Inspectre said, walking after him. “Give yourself up. You can’t run anymore. You’re surrounded.”

  Mason spun around, angry. “Are you happy growing old, Argyle? Are you?”

  The Inspectre stopped. “Honestly, no,” he said, “but it has made me appreciate life all the more for what it is. We get one go-round, Mason. That’s all.”

  “Well, not me,” he said, “and once I am finished carrying out Charbydis’s wishes, I intend to get right on appreciating my second one.”

  “How are you helping her with the ritual?” I asked.

  Mason fixed me with a sinister stare. “You shall see,” he said.

  “No, Mason,” the Inspectre said, good and pissed. I had never seen him this angry. “This ends… now.”

  As a group, our circle closed in on Mason Redfield. I held the business end of my bat up high, ready to swing. Redfield was close enough that I’d have no trouble dropping him if needed, but a second later that wasn’t even an option.

  A blast of water shot up through the slats of the bridge itself, shattering some of its structure and flinging shards of it in every direction. The water wrapped itself in a wide circle around Redfield, rising up above him for several feet and staying around him like some bizarre waterfall feature at a mall. One thing was sure: Mason Redfield wasn’t responsible for it. Even he looked surprised to see it happening.

  Inside the protective circle the water began to solidify until the woman in green stood by his side. Her hair swirled in the chaos of the growing storm.

  “Nice Medusa effect,” I said.

  “Wrong Greek monster, kid,” Connor said.

  “Sorry.” I tested the wall of water with my bat. The rushing water threatened to tug my bat skyward from my hand, but I tightened my grip and pulled it back. Before I could do anything else, the woman’s voice boomed out into the night.

  “Prokypto,” she said, holding her arms out and looking down through the bridge.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s Greek,” Connor said. “Arise. She’s starting the ritual now!”

  I looked down, too. Below, the water churned against the edge of the island like it was boiling. Bits of old, rotted wood rose to the surface, ancient timbers that littered the surface, looking like tiny toothpicks from where we stood.

  “I gather those are the remains of the General Slocum,” Connor said.

  “And countless other ships, no doubt,” the Inspectre added.

  “Aidan,” I said, looking over at him on the far side of the water barrier. “Do something!”

  He shook his head. “What part of ‘not good with water’ did you not get, Canderous?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll handle it myself.” I rushed the wall of water protecting the woman and Mason Redfield. The woman was already looking toward me, waiting. She pointed her arms out at me.

  No, not at me. Past me. Jane screamed, stopping me in my tracks. I spun around. She was doubled over, clutching her arms around her midsection. “Jane!”

  “Get her away from here, kid,” Connor said. “Now. At least off the bridge, anyway. If the woman can’t have Jane, she can’t complete her ceremony. Hopefully, anyway.”

  “Right,” I said, grabbing Jane around her shoulders. We ran off as the Inspectre started talking reason with Mason through the wall of water. As we ran farther away from the woman and the professor, a new sound filled the air as we dodged through the swarm of lingering ghosts. A rush of water of tidal-wave proportions filled my ears and I looked down through the bridge. The surface of the river erupted, a greenish gray mass of land rising up, water pouring off it in waterfalls. No, not land, I realized. Flesh. Whatever was rising was alive. It rolled as it rose, exposing the familiar yellow eye I had seen in the vision of the General Slocum sinking. Scylla was no longer dormant, and even bigger than when I had seen it. A jagged maw of teeth opened to nearly the size of a bus, water running down into its throat. A gurgling roar rose up from it, causing me to grab Jane tighter and run a little faster.

  “Who invited the kraken?” Jane asked with weakness in her voice.

  “Scylla,” I corrected. “Godfrey called it that.”

  Jane looked good enough to stand again and the two of us stopped where we were to stare at the monstrosity.

  “Whatever it’s called,” I said, “I’m pretty sure my bat alone isn’t going to take it down. Good thing I equipped the boat with the ram. I’ll see if I can put a nice boat-sized hole in that… thing. Godfrey told me when all else fails, go for the hea
rt.”

  “What can I do?” Jane asked. There was concern on her face, but I could see how hard she was still fighting the effect of the green woman’s mark on her.

  “Stay here,” I said, “and don’t let her get control of you. Keep fighting her, Jane. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

  Jane nodded, but the look on her face was pained.

  “Listen, Simon,” she said. “I’m sorry about the whole drawer thing.”

  I stared at her, incredulous. “You want to get into this now?”

  Even in the rain, I noticed tears streaming down her face. “It’s just… I’m so in love with you and the idea that you didn’t want me around all the time, well, it hurt.”

  I pulled Jane to safety behind of one of the bridge supports. “Jane!” I said. “This is so not the time.”

  She looked like I had slapped her. “Do you hate me or something?” she asked, hurt. “It’s just that I don’t know how long I can stop this from overtaking me and I need to get this off my chest.”

  Given the chaos all around us and the distracting amount of pain she was in, I couldn’t believe we were getting into this now. Either way, I had to make this fast or we were sure to die in the middle of it all. I dug into my satchel, pushed past my Ghostbusters lunch box, and pulled out a slip of paper. I handed it to her. “There,” I shouted over the noise. “You see, Jane. This is how much I hate you.”

  “What’s this?” she asked, looking at it, and then back up at me.

  “It’s a receipt,” I said. “I found a dresser, online. I hate you so much that I agonized and searched for days trying to find just the right piece for your stuff in my apartment because I can’t stand you.” Jane’s eyes widened, and I forced myself to stop shouting at her. I hadn’t meant to, but the dire situation had me caught up in the moment. I softened my voice. “You know how anal I get about selecting stuff for my own needs… It took all of my spare time and energy to even come close to finding the exact right one that would be perfect for you. I love you and I realized that’s not going to change. What I mean is … that dresser is just the beginning. I know you weren’t asking me to, but I’m telling you… I want you to move in with me. Whatever angry flare-ups or hesitation I had before, that was just me letting the psychometric emotions of another interfere with my own insecurities. I know that now. Like the Inspectre said, we get one go-round. I want mine to be with you.”