by E. E. Holmes
THE WORLD OF THE GATEWAY
The Gateway Trilogy (Series 1)
Spirit Legacy: Book 1 of The Gateway Trilogy
Spirit Prophecy: Book 2 of The Gateway Trilogy
Spirit Ascendancy: Book 3 of The Gateway Trilogy
The Gateway Trackers (Series 2)
Whispers of the Walker: The Gateway Trackers Book 1
Plague of the Shattered: The Gateway Trackers Book 2
Whispers of the Walker
The Gateway Trackers Book 1
E.E. Holmes
Lily Faire Publishing
Lily Faire Publishing
Townsend, MA
Copyright © 2016 by E.E. Holmes
All rights reserved
www.lilyfairepublishing.com
ISBN 978-0-9984762-0-9 (Print edition)
ISBN 978-0-9895080-9-4 (Digital edition)
Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC
Edited by Erika DeSimone
Author photography by Cydney Scott Photography
For Joseph, my music maker, my dreamer of dreams, and my partner on this most wonderful adventure.
“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.”
—William Shakespeare
“The Merchant of Venice”
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1. Home Sweet Home
2. Moving Day
3. Madame Rabinski’s Mystical Oddities
4. Paranormal Vigilantes
5. The Ghost Oracle
6. Busted
7. Return to Fairhaven Hall
8. Consequences
9. Taboos and Tattoos
10. Target Acquired
11. The Lafayette Boarding House
12. Accessorizing
13. Jeremiah’s Angel
14. Night Swimming
15. Silenced
16. Behind the Mask
17. Discovered
18. Wards
19. Drawn to Trouble
20. A Moment in the Moonlight
21. Psychic Habitation
22. The Escape Artist
23. Forbidden Meldings
24. Whispers of the Walker
25. The Tracker Division
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Home Sweet Home
I KNEW SHE WAS WATCHING ME BEFORE I GLANCED UP. I could feel the waves of animosity—sheer negative energy—radiating down toward me from the window two stories above. My fingers twitched inside the pocket of my jacket, itching to draw a face I had not yet seen. I balled my fingers into a fist and calmed them with my familiar mantra:
“Patience, now. Art will follow.”
I bounced on the balls of my feet, trying in vain to keep warm, as I stood outside on the sidewalk. On general principle, I’d refused to break out my winter coat in early October—I was still mourning the warmth of summer. As a result, I was now freezing my ass off. I yanked the collar of my sweater up to my chin, and watched my breath turn to damp swirling clouds around my head.
A smart, two-door sports car rolled up beside me and slipped deftly into a very narrow parking space. A short, harried looking woman jumped out; I watched as she shut the car door with her foot while hastily twisting her hair into a messy bun.
“Are you Jessica?” she asked.
“Yes. Tanya? Nice to meet you,” I said, holding out a hand.
Tanya was so preoccupied with trying to extract a set of keys from her pocket that she didn’t notice my offer of a handshake. After a few awkward seconds, I lowered my hand and thrust it back into my pocket—where it could at least stay warm.
“So, um, this is it, obviously,” said Tanya, gesturing vaguely over her shoulder at the house. It was one of the boxy old Colonials which crowded the historic district of Salem; the houses stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the block as if they were all vying for position. A tiny, grassless strip of a yard stood before each, adding even more uniformity. The house looked stately from across the street, but up close I could see that its yellow paint was starting to peel, and its windows looked warped in their black-shuttered frames. A tarnished plaque next to the front door read: “The Samuel Harner House, 1704.”
“It looks really cool,” I said truthfully. “I’m a sucker for historic houses.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tanya replied, although she sounded rueful rather than enthusiastic. “That’s why I bought it in the first place.” She thrust a sheaf of papers at me. “These are all the details about the apartment, which you might’ve seen online. Is that how you found it?”
“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t look at the papers. A movement had caught my eye; a lacy white curtain was fluttering in a window high above.
“It’s the third-floor unit… Although,” and she laughed a little hysterically, “I can now offer you the first or second floor as well, if either would suit you better.”
“No, no, the third floor is fine,” I said, smiling at her. “I’d rather not have the noise of upstairs neighbors.”
“Although neighbors might not be the trouble,” I added in a whisper to myself. The curtain above us twitched again.
We stood staring at each other for a moment. The keys jingled agitatedly in Tanya’s hand as she gnawed on a fingernail; it was already bitten to the quick.
“So… can I see it?” I asked finally.
Tanya opened her mouth as though to tell me something, but shut it again and nodded. Then she turned without another word and marched to the door. I stood quietly beside her while she fumbled with the keys, then attempted to jam one of them into the lock with her shaking fingers.
“What site did you find the listing on?” she asked me, to break the awkward silence as she struggled with the keys. “I like to ask, so I know which of my advertising methods works the best.”
“Oh, uh… Craigslist, I think?”
“Mmm-hmm. Okay, great.” Her response was perfunctory; she wasn’t listening to me at all.
And that was good, because I hadn’t found the apartment on Craigslist. In fact, I didn’t even know if the apartment had been posted on Craigslist, although it seemed a pretty safe bet. No, I’d learned of the apartment while I was working at a nearby coffee shop.
Two students, both girls, had been swept into the Juniper Breeze Café by a biting, bitter wind two days earlier. Their faces were pink and raw; their scarves were yanked up around their ears. They had stumbled over to the counter, hopping up and down to warm themselves, and ordered skinny lattes before sliding into an empty table in front of the pastry display.
I had half-listened as they debated between ordering a Danish over a scone, but then perked up my ears as one checked her phone with a groan.
“Oh, God. That other place isn’t going to be available until next Thursday.”
“The one on Halifax?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit. I really liked that one.”
“What are we going to do now? I’m not spending another night in that apartment.”
“Neither am I. I’ll text Katie and let her know we’ll be crashing for the next week.”
“Yeah, but what about all our stuff? And our security deposit?”
“I don’t know. At this point, I just want to say, ‘Screw it.’ Oh my God, this is such a mess.”
I set the two lattes carefully down on the table in front of them. “Sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re moving out of your apartment? Is it local? I’m looking for a new place, and I’m sort of in a hurry.”
The girls exchanged an uncomfortable look before one of them shook her long, wavy blonde bangs out of her eyes and said, “Uh, yeah, it’s only a couple of blocks from here on Brimfield Street, but… well, trust me, you don’t want to live there.”
“Oh, really? Why’s that?” I asked.
They looked at each other again, clearly unsure of how they should answer.
“Loud neighbors?” I suggested.
The second girl, who had short, dark hair, gave a harsh laugh; it was just possible to detect a note of hysteria in it.
“You could say that,” the other answered. Her face was turning the same shade of red as her scarf.
“Well, I don’t mind a little noise. What’s the address?” I asked, pulling a pen from my apron.
The blonde girl sized me up, then said, “112 Brimfield Street. Unit C.”
All trace of laughter fled from the brunette’s face. She whacked her friend on the arm before hissing, “You can’t just tell her that!”
“Why not?” the blonde murmured back. “If we find a new tenant, we might have a prayer of getting our deposit back.”
“But you can’t let her… that’s not right!”
“You heard her, she said she doesn’t mind some noise,” the blonde said, glancing at me again. Her eyes lingered in a familiar way on my hair, my clothes, and my elaborate, recently acquired tattoo. I repressed a sardonic grin and tried to look politely puzzled.
The brunette threw a disgusted look at her friend before turning back to me. “Look, just take our word for it, okay? You really don’t want to live in that apartment.”
“Why?” I pressed. “I really need a place.”
Then, ignoring a glare from her roommate, the brunette unleashed the entire story—not a solitary detail of which deterred me in the least.
§
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I sang under my breath.
Tanya looked up from her struggle with her keys. “What did you say?”
“Oh, nothing. Just humming to myself,” I replied, watching her hand tremble violently as she tried another key. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine. It’s just… it’s been a hell of a week, if you’ll pardon my language,” Tanya said, and the laugh that bubbled out of her could have been a precursor to tears. Just as she finally managed to fit the key into the lock, it shot out from between her fingers and landed noisily on the front step.
We both stared at the key for a moment. Then I bent down, picked it up, and offered it back to her. “We all have weeks like that. It’ll get better,” I said.
Tanya forced a smile that clearly said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She didn’t take the key from me.
“I’ll get it,” I said, and thrust the key into the lock. It turned easily, and I pushed the door open.
“Thanks,” muttered Tanya, as she pulled the key from the lock and stepped over the threshold. Her expression looked as though she were expecting an imminent lightning bolt to the head. When nothing happened, she exhaled a long-held breath and began trudging up the stairs, cocking her head for me to follow.
“The house is old, obviously,” she said as she climbed, “but the heating system was replaced five years ago, and the whole house has been deleaded. I redid all the kitchens when I bought it, so the appliances are less than three years old.”
“Great,” I replied, since she seemed to expect a response. I was barely listening, though. New heating system or not, there was a definite chill in the air that deepened as we ascended the stairs. Every cell in my body tingled with a familiar sensation, a latent sensitivity to the presence of someone who belonged in another world entirely. By the time we reached the top of the staircase, my breath was visible and chugging out of me like puffs from a tiny locomotive.
“So… I’m guessing that new heating system isn’t actually on right now?”
Tanya turned to look at me. “Yeah, uh… I didn’t expect it to be so cold so soon,” she said with yet another slightly wild laugh. I knew she was lying. She was a New Englander; the area was notorious for its unpredictable—and often freezing—weather. The poor woman was in panic mode, however desperately she was trying to hide it. I nearly took pity on her and told her the truth about why I was here, but since I didn’t know exactly what I was dealing with yet, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Tanya pushed open the door to the third-floor apartment and flicked on the light. We stepped inside the entry hall. The hostile presence I felt was so powerful that I could taste the sour acidity of it on my tongue. Tanya could feel it too, I realized, although how she perceived it—apart from the cold—I couldn’t tell. But her body language told me all I needed to know; she knit her brow ferociously and seemed to withdraw into herself. Perhaps the cold was causing her to anticipate the manifestation of something she couldn’t understand, something that had perhaps appeared to her before.
“So… um, this is it,” she said so weakly that I almost couldn’t hear her. Her whispers hung in the air, like little hovering cumulus clouds of fear.
“Nice!” I replied brightly as I began walking briskly around the apartment; the unit contained a huge brick fireplace and several large built-in bookcases.
I stepped into the kitchen, which was a fair size. “Oh, yeah, I can see the appliances are newer,” I said encouragingly.
A blast of cold pulsed from the living room and into the kitchen, causing Tanya to gasp and my hair to blow back from my face.
“These old places are pretty drafty, huh?” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “You should think about replacement windows, eventually.” I couldn’t hide a small shiver.
Tanya blinked and forced a smile. “Uh, yeah. It’s on the wish list.”
I opened the nearest cabinet, then ran my hand over the counter near the sink. “It seems really clean. Can’t say that about many of the places I’ve seen.”
“Yes, I had a service come in after… uh, before I started showing it,” came Tanya’s shaky response.
“So this is the half bath?” I asked cheerfully, pretending I had missed the hesitation in her answer. I poked my head into a small bathroom off of the kitchen. As I glanced inside, the antique mirror over the sink fogged over as though someone were breathing all over it. Then two slender-fingered handprints appeared on the mirror’s cloudy surface. The tiniest of whimpers escaped Tanya. I turned quickly to face the kitchen, as though I’d seen nothing unusual.
“I could totally see us living here,” I said. “Can I check out the bedrooms?”
“Of—of course,” replied Tanya, with the faintest trace of hopefulness in her voice. She took a deep breath and followed me.
The apartment’s three bedrooms were directly off of the living room. I poked my head into the first bedroom. It was small but cozy, with a wall of exposed brick and lots of shelf space for books; I could almost see Hannah curled up in a chair in the corner, lost in her latest library loot.
Almost. It was kind of hard to picture Hannah sitting there, while also staring into a very angry set of eyes.
“Ah, so there you are,” I said quietly.
The spirit looked young, maybe twenty-five. Her jet-black hair was braided back from her face, and she had a goth look that made my own penchant
for black look tame. She was wearing a decorative lace corset cinched over a long, trailing dress; a pentagram and other mystical charms hung from silver chains around her neck. As I stared at her, she extended her arm towards the nearest item—a vase of fake flowers on the windowsill—and, with a sweeping gesture, caused it to fall to the floor.
Tanya screamed, dropping her last vestiges of pretense. I turned to her.
“It’s okay!” I said with a gentle nudge. “It was just a vase. You’re jumpy, huh?”
“I… I just… what?” Tanya stammered.
“This vase fell over,” I said, trotting over to it and picking it up. “Might have been the draft when we came in. These old houses can have crazy cross-breezes sometimes.” I was really putting on a show; this was some first-class improv.
If Tanya looked confused, it was nothing compared to how the spirit now looked. She gazed around for something else to scare me off with. Then, with a smirk, she reached toward the lamp in the corner. As she opened and closed her hand, the lightbulb began to flash on and off.
I looked at the lamp and chuckled. “Old wiring, huh? I’ll be sure to bring some surge protectors,” I said, speaking half to Tanya, half to the spirit.
Tanya had reached her limit: She dropped her face into her hands and started to cry. I took advantage of her momentary distraction and looked the spirit straight in the eye. She stared back at me, wide-eyed, and dropped her hand to her side.
“What the hell?” I heard her mutter.
“I can see you,” I whispered. “And your little poltergeist tricks won’t work on me, honey—You can chill with the antics.”