by Misty Simon
“No worries. You got us here, and we’ll figure it out from here. Why don’t you hide out so the ghost can’t detect you’re here?”
“I was going to ask…”
“No need. You did plenty, and we appreciate it.”
With Becker at her back, they went up the stairs. She had no idea what she was looking for, or how to tell where the spirit might be. She had no affinity for finding them like her father did. What she wouldn’t give to have him here, too. Between the three of them, they could have wrestled anything into submission. As it was, she was going to have to count on Becker for anything having to do with muscle, which left her as the brains. She didn’t hold out much hope, to be honest.
Chapter Nine
Four doors led off the hallway at the top of the stairs. Fortunately, this was one of the shorter buildings in town, so the three apartments should be all they had to deal with. They’d just knock on each door until they found someone doing something nefarious. Yeah, it wasn’t much of a plan, but she didn’t have any other.
Becker took care of knocking on the first door. An old woman with curlers in her hair and a remote control in her hand opened the door with a smile.
“Dr. Becker! Are you making house calls now?”
“Mildred.” He smiled and draped an arm over Mel’s shoulders. “How are your cats?”
“Almost time to get Toodles spayed. We’ll be in, a week or so from now.”
“That’s good, good. Sorry for disturbing you. We knocked on the wrong door.”
“I always enjoy seeing you, Dr. Becker. Besides, I have one of those DVR things, so you didn’t interrupt my show.” She tittered. “May I ask who you’re looking for? Ronda is on vacation up in Maine, and Joseph works the swing shift over at the paper plant. I don’t think anyone but me is home at this time of evening.”
Becker looked at Mel with his brow crinkled. Yeah, she didn’t know what to say to that, either.
“I must have written down the wrong house number,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Oh, dear, I do hope you find who you’re looking for.”
A thump sounded above their heads as Mildred swung the door closed. She stopped it at the last moment, popping her head back out. “Say, you don’t know an exterminator, do you, Dr. Becker? I know you save animals, but I think a family of raccoons moved up into the attic. I haven’t been brave enough to go find out, but they’re up and about at all hours of the day and night. I called the landlord. He said he’d come out, but he hasn’t yet.”
That thump had sounded a lot louder than a couple of raccoons romping around in the rafters.
Mel’s pants buzzed hard enough that it took everything in her mental capacity to not jump straight up from the jolt. What on earth did Horace need now?
She muttered her apologies as Becker said goodbye to Mildred. Stepping down the hall, she went halfway down the stairs, to where she couldn’t be seen, until she heard the older woman’s door close. Then she pulled the compass out of her pocket. “We might need to come up with a different signal.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t exactly pop out. Mildred is my youngest sister’s granddaughter.”
“Your grand-niece?”
“Small world,” Becker said.
“Yes, and something’s wrong. Some part of her is blocked off. As if someone or something has tampered with her. I couldn’t feel what, but it activated as soon as that thump happened.”
“It could make sense. You know that didn’t sound like any kind of rodent, even a mid-sized one. It sounded like a full-grown human.”
“Do you think the guy is operating out of the attic?”
“It would make more sense than it being Mildred, and since the other two people aren’t here, we can’t exactly ask them what they’ve heard.”
“True. I don’t like the prospect of the attic, though, or someone who can tamper with minds.” Becker placed a hand on Mel’s shoulders. She felt the same way, but they had to stop this before another person was turned into marble.
“I think we’re going to have to chance it.”
“How are we going to get up there?” Becker peered down the hallway.
“Well, it stands to reason that if there are three tenants on this floor, the fourth door might lead to the attic…”
“Let’s get this over with.”
****
Creeping up the stairs was not really an option. The house was at least a hundred years old, and if the floorboards on the second floor creaked, it was almost a surety that the attic stairs were not going to be silent.
There was really nothing to do except burst into the room upstairs and hope they could catch the ghost by surprise, along with whoever had made that thump.
The surprises had already started, though, when Horace buzzed her again. When she took him out of her pocket, he’d opened the compass to its full extent and climbed out of the small brass piece.
“I might not be able to do much, but if there’s a ghost involved, I might be able to do more than the two of you.”
Horace floated through the door at the end of the hall a second before Becker whipped it open and ran up the stairs. His thundering footfalls would make Mildred think there was something far bigger than raccoons up here. Hopefully by the time she called the landlord, again, they’d have this whole thing taken care of and be out of there with no one the wiser.
Upon their arrival at the top of the stairs, there appeared to be no one around. Cobwebs festooned the corners and dust lay heavy on the floor. No way was anyone up here, nor had anyone been up here in years, if the amount of dust was any indication. Horace couldn’t be totally wrong, though. He’d been so sure the ghost was here. Where, though?
A gust of wind smelling like an open grave flowed through the room, chilling Mel to the very bottom of her Vans.
“What the…?” But she didn’t finish the sentence because right before her eyes Becker went stock still, his mouth open in horror as he appeared to be frozen. He was most certainly not going to be turned into a statue. That was all she was going to say about that.
Yelling to him and at him did nothing, so she jumped up onto the landing of the stairs and trucked through the large attic. Dust or no dust, this could not be the entirety of the attic. Maybe there was another door somewhere and the ghost was on the other side of the wall she was fast coming up on. She banged on the wood partition, not caring who saw or heard her. Glancing behind her, she saw Becker’s black dress shoes were now blindingly white and hard as stone.
She had no real plan other than knocking the damn wall over if she had to, when she backed up for ramming speed.
A yell and a full charge had her up against the wall and through it without a single scratch. What the hell was that? Because she’d come in full steam, though, and expected at least some resistance, she far overshot her mark and ended up running into the wall on the far end of the house. This one was completely solid.
Her ears rang and her head hurt on impact. She staggered around, though, knowing somehow that she was not alone up here.
Apparently the ghost was not only capable of turning flesh and blood into stone, it could also freeze other apparitions. Horace looked like he was in a stop-motion movie, his legs permanently pumping as he was stuck mid-run and shouting something she’d never hear if she couldn’t get out of this mess.
A dapperly dressed man, his hair slicked back like they were in a dance hall from the 1920s, stood across the room. His handlebar moustache was waxed. His top hat was nestled under his arm, the tails of his coat hit the backs of his knees, and his spats had been spit-shined. She would have believed she’d accidentally come across a Halloween party but for the fact that everything about him was overlaid with a filmy shadow, like he was hiding behind a gossamer curtain. He was there but slightly indistinct. Was this the ghost? He was far more substantial than any she’d ever seen before.
“Thank you for bringing the last to me,” he said in a voice tinged with formality and p
erhaps some haughtiness.
Now that she’d had time to look past him, she saw the dog groomer tied to a chair in the corner with a gag in her mouth. Her eyes were so wide, Mel could see more white than iris. Silently she tried to communicate that everything would be all right, even if she didn’t believe that herself. They might all be the next statues out at the gazebo. Would anyone think to put clothes on her, or would they leave her naked out in the town square for everyone to judge how many brownies she really ate instead of the one she reported on her daily food log?
“What do you mean? The last what?” Without being too obvious, she was trying to look around for the washboard. She had a feeling that if she could get her hands on the object he was attached to, she would have the upper hand.
“The last donor, my darling girl.” He moved a step closer, his footfall making no noise. So he wasn’t as solid as he looked.
“Donor?”
“Do you really mean to tell me you came in here completely ignorant? You have no idea what I’m doing or how I’m doing it?” He chuckled, and it was all she could do not to lunge at him.
“All I know is that whatever you’re doing I want it stopped now, and I want those people put back in their rightful lives, healthy and happy.” Well, not that Mrs. Buzzard was ever truly happy. Mel would settle for just healthy for her.
“And I want to live. I think we both know who’s going to win this one.”
“You already lived, or you wouldn’t be a ghost.”
“I want to live again.”
“But you can’t.” Even when a ghost possessed someone they weren’t really alive, simply controlling a vessel.
“Oh, but I can. I simply need the lives of others to sustain me. I even picked the older people so no one would get upset over the life of a child or worry about a husband or father of middle years. I was very thoughtful, I believe.”
She sputtered, not sure what she wanted to say first, and so all of it ended up coming out at the same time.
“The two of you, along with this woman in the corner here, will make this all move a little bit faster than I had anticipated. However, this will actually work out very nicely. Once I get rid of you, I’ll have a place to live and more people who will want to join me in my quest for life, out at that junkyard of yours… We could have a commune of sorts. No one goes out there, anyway, and it would be a perfect place for us to live again.”
“But you can’t.” Her mind was racing with the possibilities.
“I believe you already said that, darling girl. Repeating yourself is so pedestrian. Now if you’ll just hold still for a moment, I assure you this won’t hurt but a moment. I’m almost through with your significant other. I’ll take care of this nice woman next, and then it will be your turn, in a jiff.”
The man walked toward the woman in the chair. Her eyes widened even more, though Mel would have bet that wasn’t possible. She was afraid the groomer would faint any moment now.
She needed to find the washboard and get them all the hell out of here. But how was she going to do that?
She happened to glance at Horace, who was still hanging in the air. Something was different, though. It took her a moment to realize his cheeks were blue like ice. She turned to her right and looked back over her shoulder. His cheeks turned a warm blush. She walked a step ahead and looked back again. His cheeks were ruddy like he’d been running. A door stood in front of her. It could be a closet; it could be the other set of stairs down into the house.
Another step and Horace’s cheeks were on fire like he had a 104-degree fever. She was going for the door, and the bad ghost was not going to stop her.
She ran, jerking the door open and stumbling through before anyone realized she had gone. She heard a thump against the door and wondered if the ghost was too substantial now to be able to float through. Worked for her.
On the floor at her feet lay the washboard, and next to it her dad. What the hell was going on here?
Chapter Ten
Picking up the washboard from where it lay against the far wall, she raised it above her knee with every intention of cracking it in half to destroy it, hoping to destroy the ghost at the same time.
“Don’t,” her father said weakly from his place on the floor. He was propped up against the stairwell, his jeans dirty, his hair a mess, and his skin sallow.
Had he been here long? She opened her mouth to ask, and he interrupted her before she could get started.
“We can talk about everything once we’re out of here. I need you to go back out to that room and keep Sir Pompheroy distracted while I destroy him.”
“Sir Pompheroy? I thought he was Henry Folsom.”
“He was Henry, but he was Pompheroy first. He’s done this before, but it didn’t work all the way. Now he knows how to make it permanent.”
“Oh, God! If you destroy him, will that bring back all the energy of the people he turned into marble?”
“What?”
“What?” The look on his face made her nervous and so did his vague question.
“What energy? What people?”
Oh, that was not good. How long had he been out of it? “This Pomf guy has been taking people from the town, draining their life force, and using it to make himself live again.”
“Christ Almighty. He got farther than I thought.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“No, this is really bad. We’re going to have to be careful, or we might never get those people back. How many has he drained?” Her dad scooted up against the wall as a tremendous bang sounded behind her on the door. How close was the guy to breaking through now that he knew he couldn’t float through? She did not want to find out.
“What do we do?”
“Let me handle it.” He climbed to one knee with effort.
“I have to help. The guy I’m dating is out there, and so is one of our resident ghosts. I can’t just let you take over when you don’t even know what’s going on.”
He sighed, but she could tell he was trying not to order her around. They hadn’t had a normal relationship since she’d turned fourteen, and they weren’t going to start today.
“Fine. Take the washboard, and we’ll have to do this together. Get ready, though, because it’s not going to be pretty.”
“I kind of figured it wasn’t going to be.”
****
It wasn’t much of a plan, and it was missing a key element, but they might just have to wing it.
She slammed open the door after taking a quick breath, half hoping she would hit Pomf with it and knock him down. But he was hovering over the groomer, who was now three quarters statue. Did that mean that Becker was completely solid? She didn’t have time to check on him behind the false wall right now. She’d just have to hope he was okay.
Pompous Boy turned from his task, his mouth dripping with some kind of shiny substance. It wasn’t blood, and it wasn’t saliva. It had to be the energy of the people. God, that was gross.
She held his washboard over her head. As she and her dad had speculated, he rushed at her with a snarl. Okay, step one was done. Her dad rushed from the door behind her, but something else beat him to the substantial ghost, shocking them all.
At first she thought it was Becker’s spirit, and she almost lost the coffee she’d drunk earlier. He couldn’t be dead! She screeched without opening her mouth. But the more she watched him grapple with Pomf, the more she saw subtle differences.
The person looked like Becker but was a little taller. The clothes were older, the hair longer and darker. Where on earth had this ghost come from?
She took a precious second to rip through the invisible wall and found Becker on the other side, his shoes back again, but now he was slumped on the floor. She ran over and was vastly relieved to find a strong but slow heartbeat. As long as he was still among the living, she was okay with that.
A shout from across the room brought her running back through the invisible wall. It wouldn’t matter how okay
Becker was if they couldn’t shut this bad ghost down.
Her father had the washboard on his lap, pulling the thing apart piece by piece. He dug a knife into the screw holding the top and side together and twirled until it came out in his hand. He dropped it into a box at his feet and went to the next screw. Pomf flinched with each piece that was removed, but he couldn’t come after her dad because the other ghost held him immobile. She had no idea how he was doing it, but she wasn’t going to waste time trying to figure it out.
“Can I help?” she asked her dad.
“Yeah, can you finish this? My hands are cramping.”
She took over, whipping out her trusty Swiss knife set and popping out a screwdriver. She had the thing disassembled within seconds, and the ghost put the bad guy into a headlock.
“Do you know who that is?” she asked as she placed the corrugated metal that made up the main part of the washboard at her feet.
“No, but we should be grateful for his help.”
“Okay, but what did disassembling the ghost’s receptacle do? I don’t see anything different.”
“This is the iffy part. We need someone to funnel out the energy he took.”
“Someone or some ghost? And what’s involved?”
The helpful ghost turned with Pomf under his arm. “I know what is involved. I’ll take the brunt of it.”
“But we don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m Becker’s great-grandfather, my dear girl. He’s been carrying me for years in that pocket watch of his. He’s never known it. I will not let him die young, and if this keeps him from being tainted, then you won’t have a better chance.”
Mel and her dad looked at each other and shrugged.
“I don’t have a better idea. Do you?” Mel asked.
“Nope.”
“Let’s get this taken care of, then, shall we? We need to go where the statues are,” Great-Grandpa Becker said.
“What about Becker?” Mel wasn’t sure she wanted to leave him up here alone without anyone to watch over him.
“Have your father stay with him. I need the current owner of the junkyard with me, or all will be lost.”