by H. P. Bayne
“You know, it’s more likely something in treatment triggered her, and she went off somewhere to get a fix,” Dez said. “She’ll turn up.”
“Probably,” Forbes said. “But I can’t take a chance of it being something else.” One side of his mouth quirked up. “I may be new to this whole big brother thing, but I’m pretty sure looking out for him is one of my jobs now.”
Thankfully, Dez waited until Forbes was out of earshot, back in his car and driving down the block, before responding. “Big brother. The guy doesn’t know the first thing about it.”
“He’s trying, Dez. That’s something, right?”
Dez shrugged. “Guess it beats him looking for ways to arrest you. Let’s just keep in mind, where big brothers go, you’ve already got the best.”
Sully met Dez’s goofy grin with one of his own. “Yeah, no arguing that.”
Dez patted Sully on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see what Kayleigh’s picked out. If I have to suffer through Princess Bride again, so do you.”
“I’ll be right there. Just need the bathroom first.”
He didn’t really have to go, but he needed a moment to himself. He’d spent the past few days in this house—save a quick surreptitious trip to Lockwood with Dez to rescue the trio of trapped ghosts—and time to himself was hard to come by.
And he needed it. With everything that had been going on—the David investigation, facing his past at Lockwood, dealing with the fact he had a new blood relation—Sully had put the manner of his own creation onto the back burner. None of it, none of the good things he’d done or the people he’d helped, erased how he came into being. He could change people’s lives for the better, but he would be forever helpless to change the one thing he so desperately wished he could.
So here he was, staring at the bathroom sink faucet as he tried to get up the nerve to look in the mirror.
He hadn’t studied his own reflection since discovering the truth about his background, and he wasn’t keen to now. But he’d have to face it sometime, would have to accept this part of himself if he was going to find a way to exist within his own skin.
He hadn’t seen his birth mother’s ghost since back at the Dules’ old house in The Forks, and he hadn’t expected to either. She’d told him she would stay close to her mother and sister and would return to him if they were closing in again. Her image was in his mind as he forced his head up, hoping to find parts of her in his reflection. The more he resembled Lucky, the fewer traces of Roman Gerhardt he’d find.
The initial glimpse of his own face had him averting his eyes. He returned to studying the sink, his hands clenched around the sides of the bowl.
A small, white hand reaching for his made him jump and turn.
She was there. Lucky. The petite, pale, blood-covered teenage girl who’d given him life and then saved it more than once. Large, kohl-rimmed blue-gray eyes stared up into his before going to the mirror. He followed her gaze, saw the two of them side by side in the mirror, mother and son, him eight years older in physical age and six or seven inches taller. She moved a little closer, sealing the remaining distance between them, her energy joining his at the edges. The bite of cold against his left arm and hip was uncomfortable, but he didn’t move away. The rest of him, the parts inside himself that really mattered, were enveloped in enough warmth to render the chill meaningless.
He found it there, just as he needed to. His height and body structure, there was no getting away from the fact those were Gerhardt. But from Lucky had come his eye colour and shape, the fine bone structure in his face, even the soft half-smile she was giving him now. Her hair was dyed purple, but he knew from photos in Lachlan’s possession that it was naturally a shade very similar to his own. As his gaze moved from his own face to hers and back again, a small shred of hope took root inside him.
“I’m not like him, am I?” he asked.
She shook her head.
He sought out and held her eyes in the mirror. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. There are no words for how wrong it was, how wrong I am for existing the way I do. I’m only here because something awful happened to you, and that’s not right.”
He watched the mirror as she turned to face him. It was obvious she was demanding he meet her, so he turned to gaze directly down into her eyes. A chill against his hand told him she’d touched him, and then he was flooded with a memory.
Hers, not his. The image of a crying, blood-covered newborn baby held tight in her arms. Her first image of him. And it wasn’t revulsion she’d felt, nor horror or pain. It was the most intense joy, her vision clouding through tears so she’d had to blink them away. And love. The kind of love Sully had not yet had the pleasure to feel for another human being. He loved his family, and he loved them intensely. But this, this bond between a young parent and her child, was beyond anything Sully could describe.
She didn’t hate him or regret the fact he’d come into existence.
He completed her. He gave her meaning. And he was the first real joy or love she’d ever known.
Her hand came up to touch at his face.
And then the smile slipped from hers.
Another image, this one not of her or of him, but of Greta. She was peering from a window, a street below shadowed by the night. From one of the shadows emerged a blonde woman pushing a wheelchair. In the chair sat a thin woman with a pointed face, which lifted until a set of cold eyes met with Greta’s. A smile, as icy as the rest of her expression, formed, and she lifted an arm, index finger extending and retracting in a “come here” gesture.
For a long moment, Greta didn’t move. She stood frozen to the spot as she regarded the two women. While the younger one appeared slightly anxious, the woman in the wheelchair showed every sign of confidence, as if nothing stood between her and the power she still held over the young woman inside the treatment centre.
The vision ended, leaving Sully chilled and disquieted.
Because there was no doubt in his mind what Lucky was trying to tell him.
“The Dules,” he said. “They’re back.”
THE STORY ENDS IN SPIRIT CALLER. CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT.
Spirit Caller
1
Sullivan Gray curled inside his sleeping bag, eyes fixed on the dwindling flames as he listened to the early morning scratching and banging within Ravenwood’s walls.
He knew he’d have to get up to prod the fire back to life, but the thought of crawling out of his still-warm nest into the biting cold was unpleasant.
He’d woken a couple of times in the night to rekindle the blaze in the small lounge’s fireplace. Each time, he’d had the sensation of being watched. It wasn’t unusual, not in a house sheltering at minimum six ghosts. But with no way of telling whether or not the watchful eyes belonged to a living—and potentially dangerous—intruder, Sully was edgy.
His skin crawled as he pushed himself off the fainting couch he used as a bed. Whatever or whoever was watching him was still there, and a shiver beyond the cold coursed through him. Long ago, Sully had learned how to cope with seeing ghosts, but he’d also discovered he only saw ones who had been the victim of homicide. That left a whole dimension of spirits he couldn’t see or interact with. Most of the time, there was something comforting in being able to see who lingered in the shadows, staring.
But not always.
As Sully poked at the fire, sleeping bag clutched around himself to seal in the remaining warmth, he chanced to look up at the window.
A man stared back at him.
The one glance glance revealed a sneer beneath a heavy beard. But the eyes were more disturbing. Sully had seen many people on drugs, and this man’s eyes possessed the wild look of someone in the throes of a serious binge. Sully had seen this particular expression before—on the faces of the men who’d attacked him and his brother Dez a couple of months ago in Dr. Roman Gerhardt’s former house.
They’d barely escaped with their lives.
Sully leapt up
, his sleeping bag slumping to the floor around him. He stepped free of it as the man dashed from the window.
Sully grabbed his phone and dropped both it and its portable charger into his coat pocket. As he ran from the room, a wrought iron fireplace poker in hand, Noisy Ned—the abandoned mansion’s resident poltergeist—went into hurricane mode.
Usually Ned made quick work of convincing people this wasn’t a house they wanted to spend more than a few seconds in.
Not today. Coming from inside, a man’s wild, high-pitched cackling suggested someone was enjoying playing dodge ball with Ned’s collection of heavy household goods. More sounds, more voices followed.
The man wasn’t alone.
Sully was decent in a fight, but people on certain types of drugs didn’t always experience pain the same way. He could deliver multiple blows with fists or a heavy object before his opponent decided it hurt. The easiest solution lay in the basement, which held a secret passage he’d discovered shortly after first coming here.
He made it to the basement door, relying on moonlight and memory to show him the way. After slipping through and closing the door behind himself, he withdrew his cellphone and enabled the flashlight function.
He took the stairs more slowly than he would have liked, keeping the sound of his boots on the stone steps to a minimum. Not that it would have mattered much, the way this latest group of intruders was rampaging through the main floor.
Once downstairs, he picked up the pace, jogging through the various rooms and hallways until he reached the shelving unit forming the hidden entrance to the passage. It scraped across the floor as he pulled it open, but the house was sturdy, making it unlikely anyone had heard from an upper floor. After stepping to the other side, Sully dragged the shelving unit back into place.
Closed at the back, the unit acted as a solid door, allowing Sully to leave the flashlight on without fear of being seen. He used it now, enabling him to find his duffel bag in the dark. He’d taken to keeping his belongings down here; during the past couple of weeks, he’d seen more and more people this side of The Forks, and he expected they were on the lookout for different places to shelter or loot with the onset of another freezing winter. With Ned’s recent level of increased activity, he figured people had been coming closer, glancing through windows, working up the nerve to enter. This morning proved it.
His phone vibrated in his hand, and Dez’s name popped up on the display.
Dez wouldn’t deal well with this.
Sully answered, keeping his voice low. “Hey.”
“Hey, how’s it going? Didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No. I was awake.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
A pause. One unlikely to end well.
“Someone’s in the house,” Dez said. A conclusion rather than a guess.
Sully considered lying but couldn’t think up another plausible excuse for needing to speak in a near-whisper. “Yeah, a few people. Don’t worry. I’m in the tunnel.”
“Sully—”
“I’m fine. What’s up?”
Dez uttered a humourless chuckle. “You just finished telling me you’re hiding from intruders, and you’re asking what’s up with me? Seriously?”
“Listen, I’ve been in this situation before. I know how to handle it. No one’s ever found the tunnel, okay? I’ll wait it out here until they go. Ned will convince them to leave eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“I spent two days in here once. I can do it again if I have to.”
“One problem, man. It’s the middle of winter, and it’s freezing out. You’ve got no way to keep yourself warm in there, do you?”
Dez had a point. “I’ll be fine. Seriously, D, can we talk about whatever it was you were calling about? I could use the distraction.”
“I want you back on mainland, Sull. I’ve been telling you that for close to two months. It’s almost Christmas, and we all want you here. I get you left to keep us out of harm’s way, but I still say we’re safer as a unit than separated. Lowell hasn’t made a move since everything blew up at Lockwood. I don’t see the situation changing now.”
“I didn’t leave because of him.”
“Okay, so the Dules then. Same difference. We can handle your crazy grandmother and aunt.”
“Lorinda and Rhona aren’t the type to go toe-to-toe in a fight. I’m more worried about the possibility they’ll figure it out if I’m with you guys and burn your house down with all of us inside. And I can’t go back to the apartment because that’s where they tracked me from last time.”
“But Greta and Brennan saw you in The Forks last time, right? Isn’t that how they started tracking you in the first place? Damn it, Sull. I wish you’d taken Pax with you. He and Kayleigh are damn near attached at the hip, but I’d rather you had a solid set of canine teeth on your side right now.”
A clattering from the other side of the shelving unit had Sully pausing in the conversation. He picked up his bag and moved farther into the tunnel, using the dim light from his phone screen to guide him through the pitch black.
A voice sounded from the device. “Sully? What’s going on?”
He stopped, lifting the phone back to his ear. “Just moving a little farther out,” he said.
“Why?”
“They’re in the basement.”
“That’s it,” Dez said. “I’m on my way.”
“No, you’re not. Stay where you are. There’s nothing to worry about. So why were you calling?”
“Damn it, Sully. Not now. Stay on the line with me until they’re gone. How’s your battery?”
“Fine. I charged it all night.”
“And your portable chargers are okay? I haven’t seen you in nearly a month.”
True. The river had been freezing up, staying in that in-between state for a while: ice too thick to get a boat through and too thin to safely cross on foot. Sully had checked again yesterday and was relieved to see the recent cold snap had rendered it safe enough to cross.
Loud thudding near the shelf had him taking a few more steps into the tunnel. “One charger still has some juice left. Good idea keeping a few on hand. The river ice hasn’t been thick enough to get across.”
“It should be okay now. It’s been cold. Like brutal cold. Bloody hell, are we seriously having a conversation about the weather? What’s happening there?”
More thudding. Really close this time. Almost as if someone were banging right against the shelf. “I should probably hang up for a minute.”
“Why?”
“They’re close. I’ll call back.”
“No. You stay on the line. I mean it. Just don’t talk.”
Sully heard the sound of a car door from his handset, then a vehicle starting. “I told you not to come,” he whispered.
“Too fucking bad.”
“Dez—”
“Shut it, Sull.”
So much for waiting this out in the tunnel. If Dez turned up, the last place Sully wanted to be was hunkering underground while his brother battled alone with a bunch of tweaking and potentially violent drug addicts. He’d have to make for the exit and hope he could get across the river unnoticed.
The sound of the shelving unit grating against the floor upped the ante significantly.
“Shit,” Sully hissed.
“What?”
“They found the tunnel.”
“Jesus, get out of there!”
Sully didn’t need to be told twice. He didn’t bother being quiet as he took off down the passage, no point as he needed to leave the flashlight on to keep upright on the uneven floor; even if they couldn’t hear him, they’d see him. His only chance at escape was to reach the exit near the river and hope to hell he was right about the solid state of the ice—and that he could outrun the intruders once he got there.
The echo of rapid footfalls behind him told him he’d become a target, if he hadn’t been already.
As he burst into the cold outside air, something hard slammed against his head and threw him off his feet. He collided with the ground, protected from the worst of the fall by snow, thick grass and shrubs.
Pain seared across the back of his skull as his head gradually cleared of shock. He got his hands beneath him and prepared to push himself into a sprint when a second blow landed.
Everything went black.
2
His head throbbed with the return of consciousness.
Sully cracked open one eye, enough to reveal his surroundings. He recognized one of the main-floor sitting rooms at Ravenwood—water-damaged, wood-panelled walls encasing what had once been a comfortable, grand space for entertaining.
Nothing was comfortable about Sully’s current situation, nor anything entertaining about the mansion’s current guests.
Four men: three solidly built, the fourth a wiry sort of lean. One—the guy Sully had seen at the window—had the look of a resident of The Forks, a ratty wool hat stuffed over a shock of wild, dark hair and a coat he’d likely taken off a dead body, judging by the tears and long-dried blood stains on the material. The others appeared clean enough to suggest they’d arrived on the island as recently as last night or this morning, faces either clean-shaven or neatly trimmed, hair still maintaining some semblance of a style, clothing free of stains and smell.
All of that, Sully had gauged from his place on the floor, his slight attempt at movement revealing he was bound hand and foot, wrists secured behind his back.
“He’s awake,” one of the large men said. “Should we knock him out again?”
“What for?” said another. “He’s not going anywhere.”