by H. P. Bayne
Dez moved to Sully’s right side. “That’s where they think he was taken from. Do you see anything?”
Sully crossed to the pane, tugged back the fragile material and scanned the area. It was heavily overgrown, and one of the large elm trees had toppled, covering much of the ground beneath. If there had been places to hide back then, there were even more now. From where he stood, there was no sign of a small child’s ghost.
“I don’t see anything from here,” Sully said. “We can go out there, though. Could be I just can’t see him yet.”
“Let’s cover the house first. I’d rather get that part over with.”
Sully patted Dez’s abs and moved around him, rifling a few drawers and coming up with nothing but rusted cutlery, pots, pans and small appliances. What paper they found had been waterlogged to the point of illegibility.
From there, they walked past a pantry and the door to the basement—“We’re not going down there. Forget it,” came Dez’s pronouncement—before ending up in a dining room. Passing through, they pushed a sliding door into a formal lounge and, from there, back to the entry hall.
Photos once lining the walls had been knocked off and now cluttered the floor with countless other pieces of rotted and vandalized debris. Nothing to see here. They’d have to go upstairs.
Sully scanned the ceiling, taking note of sagging plaster and more than a few protruding boards. The main floor seemed sound enough, but rainwater might have seeped through the compromised roof throughout the past few years, compounding the water damage on the upper floor.
“I think you’d better stay down here,” Sully told his brother. “You outweigh me by close to eighty pounds. My weight will be enough up there.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go either.”
“We came here hoping to find some answers. It’s possible David’s still around here somewhere. Sometimes kids go back to their old rooms, or it might be I’ll see him in the backyard from a higher viewpoint. Just let me….”
He trailed off as his eyes drifted to the stairs. A small blonde woman stood there, a series of ghastly stab wounds to her chest, neck and face, marking her as dead. Her eyes met Sully’s and held, widening as she recognized him as someone who could see her.
She shot forward, reaching him in a fraction of a second. He flinched, took an involuntary step back. Sometimes, in their excitement, spirits forgot the rule of personal space, and he gave himself a more comfortable distance from which to communicate.
Before he could open his mouth, she had, her fast-moving lips forming silent, unreadable words.
“Hold on,” he interrupted. “I can’t hear anything you’re trying to tell me.”
“Oh, God,” Dez said. “You found a ghost.”
Sully glanced over at his brother, who was peering at the space where Sully had just been looking. “It’s too tall for a kid, though, judging by where you were looking.”
“It’s not a kid. It’s a woman. She’s been stabbed repeatedly.”
“Any idea who?”
“I’ve got every idea,” Sully said. Her face was a little messed up but he’d recognized her once she’d gotten close enough. “Eloise Gerhardt.”
10
Sully rubbed his face, let his heart settle.
“Not the ghost we were expecting,” Dez said. “I remember Gerhardt saying something about his wife having died, but…. Jesus, Sully, what if he murdered her?” His question, one that would inspire horror in most people, had instilled in him a small, hopeful smile.
Sully raised his eyebrows. “You want to tell me why you think that’s a good thing?”
“Hey, if he killed his wife, that’s not only a way to bust that asshole for something serious, it might also give us a way to really crack open this whole thing with Lowell. If Gerhardt’s going down for something as serious as murder, he’ll have no reason to guard anyone else’s secrets—especially if he offers up info the same way Montague said he would.”
Sully hadn’t thought to cut in before Dez finished the statement. Now it was too late. Montague, summoned by his own name, reappeared as his usual intimidating presence at Sully’s shoulder.
“Damn,” Sully muttered.
“What?”
“Montague. He just found me again.”
“Aw, shit. Sorry, Sull. You think he heard me?”
“I guess he did.”
“How? We’re a decent hike away from where we left him.”
“Yeah, but I think saying his name triggers it somehow.”
Dez’s brow rumpled in thought. “How does that work?”
“No idea. I don’t understand the whole ghost travel thing. I just have to work around it.” Sully did his best to ignore Montague, returning his attention to an increasingly desperate-looking Eloise. “Like I was telling you, I can’t hear you, but I can usually see things if you’ll show me. Touch my hand and try to think of what you want me to see.”
He held up his fingers. Immediately, her hand met his, ice biting into flesh. He grunted as pain—her pain—seized his chest, neck and face. But it was more than that. The intensity of heartbreak, loss and desperation hammered into him hard enough to steal his breath. He gasped, struggling to breathe beneath the weight of her emotions. Images formed, zipping past him in a way that reminded him of those books he and Dez used to like as kids, where you flipped through really fast to make it look like the cartoons inside were moving. Nothing held inside his brain, pictures flashing bright and indecipherable as they spun past. Fire ignited inside his skull, the pain now his own.
“Sully, stop! Stop!” Hands were on him, pulling his hand back by the wrist and pinning it to his side. Instantly, the pain stopped, and Sully discovered he’d somehow ended up on his knees on the floor, a worried-looking Dez next to him. “What happened?”
“She’s intense,” he said. “Like, really intense. She’s frantic to have me help her, but it means she’s just firing stuff at me at a pace I can’t process. My brain felt like it was melting.”
“Well, don’t do that again.” Dez gave Sully a moment to collect himself before continuing. “She lost a child, Sull. I can’t begin to imagine the way that affects a parent. Loss to death is one thing, and it’s nightmare enough. But to not know…. God, I don’t even want to think what that would be like.”
Sully nodded. He didn’t have kids of his own, but he had Kayleigh. It wasn’t impossible to picture the horror of the kind of loss Eloise had suffered, and the excitement of finally finding someone she believed could help.
He lifted his head but found her gone from her place before him. Scanning the room, he spotted her back on the stairs.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “It was too much to process. Maybe if you try to focus on just one image?”
But she seemed to have a different idea. She lifted a hand, moving it in an indication for him to join her.
“She wants me to follow,” Sully said for Dez’s benefit.
Dez helped Sully to his feet. “Let’s go.”
They’d taken just a few steps up, Sully in front, when Dez’s foot broke through a stair. As he fell forward, he managed to catch himself, preventing a face plant.
“You all right?” Sully asked as Dez pried his foot out.
Back on solid footing, Dez checked his ankle. Sully noted a couple of scrapes, but nothing serious. “Fine,” Dez said.
“You’d better wait down here. I’ll try not to be long.”
Dez sighed. “That’s probably a good idea, unless you want to be dragging my carcass back to Ravenwood.” He caught Sully’s wrist as he made to follow Eloise. “Don’t let her touch you again, all right? If she wants to point you toward something, fine, but keep it there.”
“No problem,” Sully said.
While Dez returned to the main floor, Sully climbed the stairs.
The upstairs hallway sagged in places, the ceiling broken above. Nearer the end of the hall, pieces of board, brick and whatever had been in the attic had settled into a large
pile on the floor. Thankfully, Eloise didn’t take him that far, leading him instead into a room off to the right.
It was a little boy’s room, its train and airplane wallpaper peeling and faded by weather and light but still visible. A shelf above the bed held a toy train, the kind a small child would play with. A bookshelf across the room contained numerous books, all of them for children.
Sully knelt to scan the titles. Eva had been big on reading to Kayleigh as a young child, and Sully had been handed the duties several times. More than a little familiar with kids’ books as a result, he still didn’t recognize any of these. He pulled a few out and cracked them open to check the years. All, he noticed, dated from the nineteen seventies or earlier.
Sully turned at an icy touch to his shoulder, one that was withdrawn almost as soon as he felt it. Eloise stood near the door, pointing to something on the yet-hidden back side of it. Sully straightened and joined her, pushing the door shut far enough to see behind it.
A child’s door-mounted hat and clothing rack hung there, a sweater and a baseball cap on its pegs. Each peg was placed beneath the car of a train, with each of those cars emblazoned with a letter that, together, spelled out a name.
DAVID.
Sully met Eloise’s eye. “He still lived here. Your husband, I mean. He lived here until the flood.”
Her expression, wistful as she gazed at the name on the rack, tightened into one Sully could only describe as disgust. It seemed Eloise shared his dislike of the psychiatrist.
Sully had questions, but Eloise left the room before he could ask them. He followed her to a room directly across the hall, one that had clearly been the master suite. Eloise gave no indication of interest in any particular spot, rather eyeing the space as if in wistful remembrance. Sully kept an eye on her as he explored the room, peering at a pair of family photos, searching the bedside drawers and scoping out the walk-in closet. Signs of Eloise were still very much present here, her image showing in the photos and her clothing still taking up a corner of the closet. The room’s decor, too—very much nineteen-seventies style—suggested Gerhardt had touched little since his wife had disappeared. They might have been estranged, and he might well have bullied her out the door, but there was no indication he’d killed her.
Then again, Sully had seen regret in killers more than once. It might be Gerhardt lived with such a regret, that his memories of Eloise remained fond, despite whatever had passed.
Sully faced the spirit, seeking out her eyes. “Did he do this to you? Did your husband kill you?”
He wanted a yes, wanted it so badly. Even if it turned out he could pin nothing else on Gerhardt, he’d be satisfied if he could nail him on even this one crime.
But Eloise shook her head. No, her husband hadn’t killed her.
“If he did something to you, you don’t owe him anything. You can tell me the truth. Did he do this?”
Another head shake.
“Who, then?”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it almost immediately, as if recalling he wouldn’t be able to hear.
Bracing himself, Sully once again held out a hand. “Show me.”
Eloise took a step forward, slowly raised her fingers to meet his. A light touch this time, fingertips to fingertips.
It didn’t matter. Images fired into Sully’s brain, rapid-fire memories rendered nonsensical to anyone but those who were there. David laughing. A backward glimpse of the house. A flash of trees. A vehicle interior. An unfamiliar room. The back of a woman’s head.
Sully pulled away when the fire relit inside his brain. As his senses returned, he discovered he was back on his knees on the abandoned home’s dusty floor, Eloise in front of him with regret written on her face. He didn’t need to hear the words to know what she wanted to say.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m fine. We’ll find another way, okay? I’ll find a way to help you.”
The dresser stood next to him, and he reached up to its surface, using it to draw himself to his feet. A little unsteady, he leaned against the dresser and spotted something inside a decorative bowl: a set of keys.
A large set of keys.
They might fit the house, but there were far too many for just that. Most notably, several of the keys were the old skeleton types, the kind you’d only ever fit to locks from the turn of the century or before.
A word formed in Sully’s brain, spelling itself out in black letters: Lockwood. The night of the flood had been terrifying, the evacuation hectic. With the island’s destruction imminent, homeowners had grabbed their most important items and fled, each desperate to be as close to the front of the line as possible. What Gerhardt had considered his most treasured possessions was anyone’s guess, but clearly his work keys were not among them.
They might not have served a purpose to the psychiatrist on that awful night, but they might prove plenty useful to Sully. He dropped the keyring into the inside pocket of his outer jacket, then returned his attention to Eloise.
“I’m sure you’ve tried to find your son since you’ve been in spirit form. Have you found out anything? I know we’re having trouble communicating, but maybe you could just nod or shake your head for me if I ask questions. Could we try that?”
She nodded, and Sully readied himself to start the questioning.
A series of loud noises and shouting downstairs—shouts that weren’t Dez’s—snapped Sully’s attention away from Eloise. More than one voice was audible. Far more than one, shouting something that sounded very much like a gang name.
“Shit,” Sully said, dashing from the room and to the stairs. Dez’s voice came now, limited to grunts and yells as he took on a fight. Sully flew down the stairs, turned the corner into the sitting room to his right.
He counted five.
All of them with metal bars or knives.
Dez was good in a fight, but not against this many. He was already stumbling, blood on his head suggesting he’d taken a hard blow.
“Hey!” Sully shouted.
The distraction gave Dez the chance to rally, to land a solid, knock-down punch to one man’s face, then start battling a second.
It also brought two of the gangsters rushing at Sully. He deked left as one sliced at him with a knife, managing to avoid the blade while placing himself in a position to punch the second man in the face. A second knife swipe, this one aimed at Sully’s gut, barely missed its target. He managed to pull his abs back just in time, limiting the severity of the resulting injury. The knifeman was already delivering another strike, and Sully ducked away from that one too.
This time, though, he collided with one of the other men. Sully found himself effectively pinned as the man caught him in a bear hug from behind. Judging by the feel of him and the strength in his sizeable arms, he approached Dez-proportions.
Already, the knifeman was moving back in. Sully got his legs up in a double kick, taking a cut to the calf but managing to catch the assailant on the chin. The knifeman fell back, blade skirting away and sliding beneath the sofa.
A glance to his side had Sully’s heart thudding even harder. Dez was being piled on by the remaining three guys, the one he’d hit earlier now back in the fray. Two were beating on him with pipes.
As Dez finally dropped beneath the weight of the attack, a third man retrieved his knife from the floor.
Panic seized Sully.
He was about to watch his brother die.
A flash of movement—the arrival of several new presences—drew Sully’s attention for a second. Flynn and Aiden, hand in hand, had appeared out of nowhere, joining the ever-present Montague in the sitting room. Eloise was nowhere to be seen, and Sully didn’t care right now where she’d ended up. His eyes had gone back to the horrifying scene, his brain churning through every worst-case scenario as he screamed at the men to stop.
Desperate to help Dez, he pulled hard against the man holding him. He managed nothing more than a slight shifting and subsequent tightening of the re
straining arms.
Flynn moved closer, stretching out fingers to touch Sully’s face.
The memory blasted into his mind, the battle between himself, Lowell and Hackman in his apartment above the Black Fox. His partial possession by Harry Schuster. The extra power he’d drawn from the ghost’s energy inside him.
Flynn pulled back, returning Sully to the here and now. His father’s eyes shifted meaningfully to Montague.
The rage inside the judge. Added to Sully’s own, it might be enough.
As he had at Hackman’s apartment, the day he’d pulled the spirit of Nora Silversmith into himself, Sully focused in on Montague.
Instantly, the judge’s glower changed, narrowed eyes widening as he was towed forward.
Sully could feel him fighting it. But need and desperation drove Sully, made him stronger than any spirit. With Dez’s pained grunts spurring him on, he completed the process in seconds, absorbing Montague’s spirit and energy.
He felt it inside him now, the intensity of Montague’s fury. The man’s thoughts formed inside Sully’s brain, but he swept them aside, focus entirely on Dez.
The gangster with the knife pushed aside one of his crowbar-wielding buddies, preparing to deliver his own blow to Dez.
He was laughing. Like killing an innocent man was nothing more than a cheap form of entertainment.
Rage built, Montague’s own turning Sully’s into a lit stick of TNT. He vibrated with it, unreleased tension and fury.
And power.
Power he’d never felt.
He exploded.
The arms around him released like those of a child as he pulled free of the hold. He flew at the knifeman, tackling him hard to the floor before he could deliver a blow to Dez. The big guy was already moving back in, but Sully regained his feet in time to grab and throw him into a chair that toppled beneath his weight.
Sully’s eyes went to Dez’s, found him staring up at him wide-eyed. But it wasn’t the worry Sully saw. It was the blood.
His brother’s blood.
It was gasoline on a fire.