Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice

by J. Joseph Wright

  “You have to understand,” he explained. “What you’re asking…it’s like asking a painter to redo the Sistine Chapel, improving on Michelangelo. I just…I’m not entirely certain it can be done.”

  “Mizter Crafton. Vee have been trying zis for almost a century. Believe me when I tell you, no one understands the complexities and the vagaries of Emile Petrovic’s verk more than vee do. Certainly this type of endeavor is challenging—”

  “Challenging,” Morris laughed sardonically. “That’s what it is. Challenging.”

  “Nothing verth doing is ever easy, Mister Crafton. I didn’t think I had to resort to speaking the obvious, but there it is. I know zis…when you finally do crack the code, and ven you perfect the Controller, you will be heralded as the greatest scientist ever. Tell me, Mizter Crafton, do you yearn for that magic cup? Do you seek the Holy Grail? I can see it in your eyes. I can sense it in your voice. I can feel it in your soul. You have zee spirit of an inventor, a man of ingenuity. You love a challenge. You cannot tell me zat you haven’t yearned to take the Petrovic technology to zis extreme. You cannot tell me zat zere isn’t a burning, even raging inferno inside of you as seeker of knowledge and understanding of zuh spirit verld zuh way I do.”

  “Oh, is that all it is? Just curiosity? Not power?”

  The madman glanced around, shaking with some kind of inner turmoil about which Morris could only conjecture. What was it that drove this man to senseless extremes? Boiling mad at one point and then a second later bursting with hilarity. Morris didn’t know what to expect now, happy or angry. Jekyll or Hyde.

  He got neither.

  Instead of striking Morris with extreme violence, instead of happily delineating his point of view, the mad scientist did the one thing Morris wished he would never do in a million years. He left the room. Morris could have taken another beating. He even could have withstood another session of intense brainwashing and interrogation. What he couldn’t stand was to be left alone with some of the most sophisticated prototypes ever dreamt up by man.

  It was too great of an enticement, the thrill of discovery. And when it came to Petrovic technology, that desire, that drive, that thrill became intoxicating to the point of addiction. Like heroine it drew him in, hooked him, and moved him to the same type of madness he saw exhibited in the old scientist’s demeanor. The terrible and inevitable truth hit home—it must have been his lust for knowledge, his insatiable thirst for information that was just out of reach, the holy grail of para-science.

  Everything in creation was affected by the tidal shifts between good and evil. Over the long tableau of history, even before mankind’s blip of existence, there was the dark and the light, and the omnipresent balance between the two extreme opposite siblings. Good and evil. Yin and yang. Heaven and hell. The conceptual frameworks all point to the same dichotic relationship, a duality of oneness, two parts of the same whole, one never getting more powerful than the other, at least not for long.

  Now, with the Controller, that would all change. The Singulate would have the sole and odious power to alter the playing field, change the rules, and put the dark side in charge of the light.

  It was a terrible concept. A misguided scientific endeavor, much akin to the same basic intellectually depraved thinking that led the scientists that worked on the atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man. They knew they were doing the world a terrible disservice and inevitable future harm. They were geniuses. They understood the implications upon the human race, and the entire world, their work would have. But something higher motivated them. Something innate and irresistible. Men like Morris Crafton were infected with a disease from birth. A congenital malady of extreme and unquenchable proportions. It was the dreaded affliction of invention and discovery, and Morris Crafton had it bad, an acute case, a fatal case it seemed. Fatal, because Morris couldn’t stop his feverish thoughts. He couldn’t help the calculations already taking place as he examined the wiring configurations, the inputs and outputs, the charged connections. It had already started. Even without his own doing, his mind was entertaining the possible directions of exploration, so it was inevitable that the next step would take place.

  He got to work.

  Chapter 24

  To Abby, the whole world had become one colossal blend of lights and sounds and rushing waves of ecstatic warmth. She felt like a cat in heat, a sultry, slinky, purring feline in a silken gown so sheer it had become a part of her own skin. She loved the slender feel of it on her hips, and especially the way it accentuated her breasts. Not that she needed any help in that department.

  The featherbed beneath her also served up the sumptuous luxury her intoxicated mind and body desired. She craved the tactile sensations and experiences of everything around her. Rubbing on the bedspread, rolling in circles and humming. Taking deep breaths and inhaling the spicy air that pervaded the giant stone grotto. Reveling in the idea she was being watched. She saw the faces, but only in the dim outline supplied by the faint glow of the half moon.

  There was one more watcher, and this one was near her. A man. Or was it a man? Behind the fashionable hat and silk suit hid a monster. It didn’t matter how chiseled his jawline was, or how strong and broad his shoulders were, or that, when he walked, he had a swagger. He was still a monster. Yet with his allure and charm it was all she could do to keep her eyes off of him as he confidently took his place on the bed, first kneeling, then laying comfortably aside her as she propped herself on the mountain of downy pillows.

  She knew he wanted her, but she was too stoned to do anything more than toss her head in disapproval. It became a pitiful display, her utter helplessness. Putty in his hands. The only consolation was his unusual gentleness, how his soft fingers barely touched her hip when he whispered, “My Abby. You will see in time it is me and only me that you love. Your heart will open up to me again, just like it did before, and then you will see.”

  His words were like hot pins of pleasure piercing her skin and delivering euphoric pulses into her bloodstream, supercharging whatever drug had been introduced to her system. The intoxicating effects had been gradually increasing, building to a peak in which all scents, all sights, all sounds, and especially everything she touched were like some magical dream world where there was no pain, only the white hot passion of burning love, burning lust, burning sex.

  “The stars have finally aligned for us, Abby. They have allowed us to meet again at last. I let you slip through my fingers once. This time I have no intention of letting you go.”

  Abby’s only way of expressing her absolute confusion was a weak scowl. She had almost no control over her physical state. That wasn’t true for her mind, though, and she deliberated inside over what the hell he could have meant. Had they met before? She hoped her memory wasn’t that bad. She would never forget an adversary like Hatman.

  He took her hand and kissed it, two full lips emerging from the shadow which obscured his face. It stirred her skin. She felt an immediate rush of heat, head to toe tingles, and her underarms started to moisten, as well as more private places. Deep down in her very core she understood this was wrong. It went not only against everything she believed in as a woman, but against the precepts of Ghost Guard.

  “Let it be known that the blissful union between your God and his chosen mate has been consecrated. This will be the final act before we initiate the Controller.”

  Hatman’s bold announcement caused an outpouring of emotion. Women squealing in delight, men cheering robustly. Abby felt the frustration of decades and decades of work, seemingly endless toiling and failing, only to come to this, the culmination of their dreadful and misguided dreams of immortality.

  “We are almost there, my friends,” Hatman addressed his followers like a dark and charismatic evangelist. His secretive nature was eclipsed only by his charm. “At this very moment, Morris Crafton, the one we have been seeking, is working on the Controller. And when he is finished, we will see our frustration come to a shining and successful end!”<
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  The grotto exploded in horrible worship, detestable to its very foundation. Hatman’s coldly burning eyes settled on Abby. Her skin tingled at his glance, and she felt the strap on her spaghetti dress begin to tickle her when he pointed his finger at it. A smile played on his lips as he lifted and then slid his finger in a curved motion downward. As if on an invisible string, the strap slid over her shoulder. Then he duplicated his move on other side and her dress now clung to her by sheer luck. Intellectually, even spiritually, she wanted nothing to do with this…man, or thing, or whatever it was. On the surface, her motor functions were controlled by something else, a base and animalistic and regressive drive. A lustful push of power that moved her, reduced her to a mere shadow of her former self. This wasn’t Abby. This kitten in heat, rolling in the sheets like a sex-starved nymph.

  She tried resisting, desperate for a last second miracle. Desperate for Rev. Where was he? She had no idea, and that scared her the most. She was alone now, and no matter how much she tried, her flagging self-control prohibited any movement other than a pathetic rolling of her head, and a throaty, unsavory moan which only made her an easier target for the sexual supernatural being.

  She lost all hope. Hatman would have her. It was inevitable. His cold and dead hands felt like lifeless steel against her flesh. He licked his lips depravedly and she shuddered again. It was her only real response when he reached for what was left covering her breasts. He snatched and grabbed in an unchivalrous way, despoiling his otherwise gallant demeanor. It seemed the closer he got to Abby, the less gentlemanly he became, growing more and more ravenous, bubbling with gluttonous glee as his greedy grip took her on both sides, squeezing tightly, almost cutting off her circulation, and shooting hot signals of alarm through her system. It was enough to awaken her from the nightmarish hypnosis under which her mind was suffering. But not enough for a full recovery. She hovered somewhere in the middle latitudes, between consciousness and sleep, unable to gain control of her own body. It was Hatman’s’ body now. He would do what he pleased.

  Chapter 25

  Morris kept moving, kept going, kept working, never ceasing for a second. He didn’t need approval from anyone. The Controller had the best mind working on it. Never had he been so stimulated, so inspired, and so terrified at the same time. The mixed and variant emotions caused his body to tremble and his thoughts to jumble when it came to right or wrong, good or bad, and, the ultimate question: just what kind of evil deeds will be done with this device of glorious genius?

  Morris didn’t reflect on that. It was the beauty of the machinery that drove him. That and the consequences his friends would suffer had he dared to fail. He wouldn’t fail.

  Morris knew this was no child’s play. This truly was the Manhattan Project of the Twenty-First Century. Petrovic had been onto something so world shattering, so game changing, it came the closest Morris had ever seen to being the most groundbreaking development since the discovery of electricity.

  “Mister Crafton,” the Nazi scientist prodded his hapless captive. “Are you anywhere near finished?”

  “Almost there,” Morris wiped the sweat from his brow. “Almost…there!”

  Morris’s hair was a mop of sweat, sopping his coke bottle lenses to the point of extreme fogginess. His fingers were numb with pain from handling the scorching solder and his nose burned from the chemical reactions at play.

  But he was done.

  “The Controller is complete!”

  “Are you certain?” the doctor inquired dubiously. He had seen it before, and had been right where Morris was at this moment many times.

  “Complete?” a disembodied voice resonated from a sudden shower of blackened mist. Rapidly the sour haze coalesced into a man’s shape. Hatman, before materializing fully, plunged into Morris’s thoughts, reading him like a book. He sensed Morris was incapable of deception when it came to Petrovic. “It is true. You have it completed. Or at least you think you have.”

  He held the machine in both hands. “Follow me to the grotto.”

  *****

  The grotto, as Hatman had put it, looked to Morris more like an open air opera house complete with small balconies and rows and rows of seating that faced a large raised platform where Abby languished like a cat in heat on a king-size bed.

  “Abby!” Morris tried running to her but two large men in black hooded robes ushered him forcefully to the Nazi scientist’s side. They weren’t losing track of their newly prized scientist.

  Hatman stepped toward Abby, took her hand, and kissed it.

  “It is time,” he said to Abby and to the crowd. “I, with Abby as my queen, hereby claim dominion over all that is unholy, impure, and unclean. This dominion of the good and light will be damned to hell. The dark dregs have been suffering far too long. It is a new time! A time for the shady, the sinister, and the suspicious to shine!”

  Hatman pressed his hand on the Controller and, with a deep and resilient breath, initiated the power. It was a moment of truth, the moment Morris had been waiting for.

  The machine whirred twice, issuing a sickly sound from deep within its superstructure. There was a puff of smoke from some unseen area below the stage, where the orchestra pit would usually be if it were a normal theater. But this was normal theater, and it was no orchestra pit. Morris didn’t need to look to know the Controller was using the energy from the captive souls inside their despicable prisons. Morris hoped for a miracle, hoped for the first time his hard work would result in failure.

  His prayers were answered. More smoke appeared, this time it occurred internally, a fire so hot it flash-melted the Controller’s processors.

  “It was supposed to work!” Hatman banged on the Controller. Then he angled his head just enough for Morris to see the whites of his eyes cutting through the darkness beneath the brim of his hat. “You! You sabotaged it!”

  “Never!”

  “I have to agree vith him, heir Hatman,” the Nazi scientist asserted. “Zis man is incapable of even zuh mere idea of laying a malicious hand on anything related to Petrovic. Trust me, he is telling zuh truth.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Hatman moved with lightning quick reflexes toward Abby. “And I think it’s time to show you what it means if you fail me. Did you think you could play me for a fool and get away with it, Morris? Did you!”

  Abby felt Hatman’s grip around her throat. He meant to do it this time. She knew it. He had gone past the point of sexual attraction and went straight for the kill.

  “Stop!” Morris was held back by the Nazi scientist and his large assistants. “Stop hurting her!”

  “Why not? She’s hurt me…many times!”

  “What are you talking about, dammit!” Abby was desperate to know.

  “You know,” Hatman’s eyes cut the darkness like two full moons. “You know if you look deep inside your soul, to…before this life.”

  “Before this life?”

  Abby was left dangling. Before she had the chance to query him more, Hatman stood front and center of everyone. The loyal followers were stunned at the spectacle, watching with vacant stares and silent solemnity. It was a disappointment. This was to be the night their master would get what he deserved, the buried treasure he had been seeking for so many centuries. Instead it turned out like all the other times. The Petrovic Controller still didn’t work, and they all knew what that meant; there would be hell to pay.

  “Strap them up,” he motioned to the biggest of the security personnel. “And kill them both.”

  Those cruel words sent a thrilled chatter among the seated onlookers like a flutter of swallows through the trees. It also sent a flutter of anxiety through Abby’s and Morris’s hearts.

  “You can’t kill me,” Abby slurred. “You said it yourself. You’ve been waiting for me, remember? Here I am…whatever you wanted me for, here I am!”

  “You are correct,” said Hatman. “I did say I have been waiting for you…waiting for your soul. You see, though your corporal body is
temptingly scrumptious, you are, as they say, worth more to me dead than alive.”

  “What!” she screamed.

  “Don’t hurt Abby!” Morris screamed with her.

  “You’re in no position, Morris. What a disappointment. How much of a failure you must feel right now.”

  “A failure?” Morris said. “I suppose. But it takes one to know one.”

  Without a word, Hatman motioned at two henchmen for assistance. It was the end for Abby. Morris knew he had to do something now. He felt so guilty, so ashamed. It was his fault. He pushed Hatman over the edge and forced his hand.

  Morris wanted to tell Hatman he could fix everything. But he couldn’t. He had nothing. No answers. No last minute miracles. This was it. Morris couldn’t look, so he cast his gaze to the sky, and that’s when he saw, with his naked eyes, Abby’s salvation.

  *****

  “Hold it, Hatman!” quite spontaneously, a small funnel cloud appeared in the air, and, in a particulate haze, the body of a man developed from the sudden turbulence. He was tall and had a broad jaw, the finest example of Croatian heritage. He wore a suit coat with brass buttons, the clothes of his youth back in Šibenik. He opened his palms as if to convey a sense of peace, and of sincerity, even though he knew Hatman didn’t deserve such magnanimity.

  Another apparition materialized in midair, flirting with the atmosphere in a lustrous vapor the consistency of a light spring shower. This was in the shape of a woman, beautifully dressed in a gown of linen and lace. Alexandra Petrovic knew her appearance in this place of horrors was dangerous. Soul snare wielding footmen were everywhere, and, worst of all, their odious leader Hatman was there. Her problem was she cared too much for her husband.