by Allan Burd
Miguel leans his head over the trough’s edge, stares at me. “There is something else in the room with us.”
My ears are still ringing. I don’t fully understand what he’s saying.
He shakes me back to reality. “Not the monsters. A presence. A ghost.”
“A ghost?” I say, still too stunned to understand.
A table goes flying over our heads. I can’t see anything from the trough but I hear the sounds of metal scratching stone and inhuman howls.
“Quit fucking around, you two. These dead things aren’t dead yet,” shouts Cooper, who’s thankfully back in action.
It’s a total SNAFU. We were barely holding our own against these abominations of demonic science and now Miguel’s telling me we’re being attacked on two fronts. I shake my head to clear it. “You’re saying a ghost put a scalpel through my hand?”
“And the scythe through Cooper’s neck and worked the levers,” responds Miguel.
“That’s seriously fucked up. Any suggestions for what to do next?”
“Yes. Next you die,” says Miguel.
Before I can react, Miguel plunges a syringe into my neck and empties whatever fluid it contained directly into my bloodstream. A few seconds later, it ends my life.
Chapter 22
Death isn’t at all what I pictured. Up until a few months ago, I always figured dying would be a void, a big black hole leading to eternal oblivion. When your body turned off, it’d be the same as turning off a television. Your screen went dark and that was it. But after my adventure in Hell, and meeting up again with my dead brother, I pictured the opposite. That I’d be a floating shiny bright sphere zipping through the ‘otherverse’, evading evil demons on my way to heaven where only amazing things would happen to me for eternity.
This is neither of those things.
I’m fully aware, floating above the fray at a height that allows me to see the whole room. I see my unmoving body lying in the trough. I see the carnage as our massive battle continues without me. I’m having a true out-of-body experience, reduced to being a spectator as my friends fight for their lives.
A wolf cadaver leaps for my helpless body. Instinctually, I move to stop it but my body below doesn’t respond. Thankfully, Miguel turns and destroys the thing with a staccato burst from his weapon. A bird lands on my corpse, about to pick out one of my eyes. Miguel saves me again, smashing it with the butt of his rifle. He’s keeping my dead self intact, but at great personal expense. His latest save gave the closest thing in the pack that resembles a human the opening it needed to slice a knife across his arm. Miguel shoots its head off, dropping it, but he’s more concerned for my dead body’s safety than he is about his own. I see plenty of nearby places which provide a more advantageous fighting position. I know he knows that. Instead, he stays by my side. He killed me, but now he’s willing to sacrifice himself to protect my corpse.
A few feet away, Cooper tears a deer’s head off a bear’s body and smashing its skull into soup. Then, without hesitation, he leaps into a hostile crowd, snapping bones and metal, and biting and cleaving through rotted muscle and flesh. I taste the acrid odor in the air. I smell the fetid corpses. I hear the rata-tat-tat of Miguel’s weapon fire and Cooper’s snarls. How can I be dead if my senses are still alive?
It’s like I’m a ghost.
I get it now. Miguel didn’t kill me without reason. He turned me into a ghost so I could fight a ghost, and he’s protecting my body on the chance I can get back to it. So where’s the other ghost? And does it know I’m here?
My answer comes in the form of a knife spinning at me from out of nowhere. Instinctively, I go to catch it, but it passes harmlessly through my hand. I look in the direction it was tossed and see the ghastly silhouette of a tall naked man glaring at me. It appears clothes don’t follow us into the afterlife. I inspect myself to make sure and notice something I had almost completely forgotten about, the outline of the magical implant Eliza attached to my chest. I touch it. It’s more solid than the rest of me, like a device of some sort.
Three minutes.
The memory pops into my head. That’s what Eliza told me after she had sex with me. How could I have forgotten about that? This device is what must be keeping me from voyaging to the afterlife. I see the other ghost has a similar outline in his chest. That’s what must be keeping him around here as well. When I rip it out of him, I’ll send him to Hell where he belongs. Apparently, he’s thinking the same thing about me. He scowls and glides toward me. I fly at him as well. We meet in the middle. He grabs my waist, attempting to tackle me like a football player, but he doesn’t realize how skilled I am. I easily slip free of his grasp, rotate in the air, and plant my elbow into his neck. Then, without gravity to worry about, I execute a Capoeira-style kick right into his transparent face.
It’s nice to know one ghost can hit another. Unfortunately, I’m just getting used to this astral form, so I don’t generate the full impact I wanted. Still, I bet it stings. The evil sonuva bitch probably hasn’t been hit in the face in a really long time. He descends to the floor, glowering in anger.
“Who are you? Did my prize creation send you to destroy me as he has sent others before?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. “My name’s Silas Hill and God sent me here to kick your ass,” I answer.
“If I have learned anything in all my time, it is that there is no such thing,” he says. “The world beyond ours is inhabited by demons more powerful and more frightening than anything you can imagine. Nothing more.”
“You seem to be doing a pretty good job of making this world just as frightening,” I say.
“It was you who entered my burg with a human wolf.”
My burg. “You’re… you’re Victor Frankenstein.”
“Doctor Victor Frankenstein, conqueror of death, creator of life,” he boasts. “Look upon them and tell me they’re not wunderbare.” One of his creations, a grotesque combination of a boar and a dark-skinned man, fused together with more bolts and metal than you’d find in an erector set, harmlessly passes through him as if he doesn’t exist.
“They’re sick and twisted creations that both of us know you didn’t create on your own,” I say. “Tell me, Vic, was all this really worth selling your soul to Balzuzu?”
At the mention of the name, I see Victor bristle. “Balzuzu, a true demon who is truly the antithesis of everything I believe. I stand for eternal life. All he craves is infinite death. I outwitted him long ago. If it was he who sent you, I will carve out your soul and send it to him as a reminder of his failure to claim me.”
He looks enraged and frightened, as much afraid of Balzuzu’s possible return as I am. Fluorescent green light appears in the middle of his implant and radiates outward down his arm and into his fingers. His glowing fingers lift a surgical knife off the floor.
“My guess is you don’t fully understand how to use your soul catcher yet. I, on the other hand, have had hundreds of years to master all its vonderful abilities, discovering how to break down the barrier between the ethereal and physical and interact with the world in ways an ordinary spirit cannot. This blade has already tasted your blood once. Perhaps I’ll use it to carve your soul from your heart.”
We attack each other again, though, having seen what I can do, this time he’s prepared. He swings the knife with the precision and skill of a surgeon, keeping the blade close and his strikes centered. I manage to dodge and deflect his blows, and when the chance presents itself, I catch his wrist and counter. I pivot and thrust with a sidekick that connects perfectly with his knee. But he doesn’t buckle. He feels it, but in our ghostly forms our bodies apparently don’t sustain the same type of damage. It’s a fact I come to terms with too late as Victor uses his superior strength to break my grip and slice me across my chest. There’s no blood. Just pain as a wisp of white separates from my spirit form.
“I’m also content vivisecting you a piece at a time,” he says with a sneer. “Your obvious
fighting skills are useless here. Our astral forms have no bones to break, no joints to snap. However we can in a sense bleed, a byproduct of the force that holds our souls together. It’s quite painful, isn’t it? As if your entire nervous system were set on fire.”
The bastard doesn’t lie. It hurts like blazes. Plus he’s smart enough not to give me time to recover. In seconds, he’s on top of me, pinning me down. He raises the knife, tries to bring it down into the middle of my implant. I catch his wrist with both hands, but he’s too strong and all I’m doing is slowing him down. I struggle as the sharp point of the blade slowly moves closer and closer to my chest. I hit a pressure point in his wrist, which accomplishes nothing except make him laugh. The pointy tip of the blade scrapes my implant, setting off blue and purple sparks.
I hear a ping and his surgical blade flies across the room. Doctor Frankenstein turns. It’s Miguel. The barrel of his gun aimed in our direction as Miguel unloads the entire clip of his automatic weapon, all the bullets passing harmlessly through both of us. They distract Victor enough to give me an opening. I reach up and grab his soul catcher, my ghostly fingers digging deep into his chest. I can feel the device, something tangible… something I can pull. Then Victor’s fist smashes into my face and he leaps off of me.
“I’ll kill you in a minute. After I kill him first. Prior to my adding both your body parts to my collection,” says Victor.
Miguel reloads his weapon, his eyes scanning the room. He doesn’t know where the ghost is, nor does he see the magical green fluorescence flowing through Victor as he grabs an axe off the floor. There’s too much chaos, too many other threats for Miguel to keep track of and deal with. He doesn’t notice the floating axe heading his way.
In a second, I’m on my feet, racing behind Victor who’s too focused on Miguel to notice. Victor raises the axe high above his head, about to cleave it through Miguel’s skull. I leap, perform a flying kick into Victor’s back, pushing him forward and diverting his strike. The axe blade cuts the stone by Miguel’s foot, who wisely backs away. But Victor still has a good grip on the handle. He swings the axe at me like a baseball player. I jump over it, corkscrew in the air, and counter with a butterfly kick to his jaw. I follow by rotating my body to gain maximum power and thrust my open palm through his chest, wrapping my fist tightly around his magical implant.
“A true fighter doesn’t need a weapon. A true fighter is a weapon,” I say. Then I rip the soul catcher from his chest, watching with a terrified whoosh as Doctor Frankenstein’s essence gets sucked away into the afterlife. He’s on his way to the other side where I have no doubt a demon is waiting to claim his tortured soul.
The axe clangs to the floor. Miguel looks puzzled. He’s uncertain that this is over, that I won. I have around thirty seconds left. I wave my hand in front of Miguel’s face screaming at him to revive me. He doesn’t see me and can’t hear a word. I race to my body, try to grab my physical hand with my ghost hand which goes right through it. But if Victor could do it, so can I. I calm myself. Focus. Green fluorescent light oozes forth from my chest. I keep concentrating, extending the light until it reaches my fingers. Once it does, I grab my lifeless body beneath the armpits and lift myself up.
Miguel notices immediately. He takes a second syringe hidden within his coat and jabs it into my neck, injecting a colored fluid into my blood stream. My ghost form dissipates. My physical form drops. Miguel catches my body and gently lays me back down.
I awaken again, returning to life in a fit of wild gasps. I quickly sit up. Miguel is gently slapping my cheeks, checking my vitals. I grab my Lupara while he’s leaning over me and aim it at him. Then I angle the weapon sideways and shoot out the legs of a half boar, half man with antler horns plowing our way.
Miguel exhales. “I thought you might want to shoot me,” he says. His fingers trace my neck, checking my pulse. “Did you get him?”
I nod, unable to speak yet, my breath slowly returning to normal.
Miguel turns to Cooper. “It’s done,” he yells.
“Not just yet,” Cooper yells back, continuing to fight.
Miguel looks me in the eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Whole,” I answer. I get to my feet. I see Cooper’s busy dismantling the last few abominations. Nothing Miguel or I need to help him out with. I see the look in Miguel’s eyes. “No worries. I’m not angry. However, I am a little bit confused. You could’ve warned me”
“I didn’t warn you because I didn’t understand the situation until a few seconds before I…”
“Before you murdered me,” I say.
“An unfortunate term. But, yes,” Miguel laments. “I finally figured out God’s plan the moment the scalpel entered your hand. It only made sense that a ghost was behind this and that I needed to turn you into a ghost to defeat it. But by the time I figured it all out, there simply wasn’t time to explain to you what must be done.”
“You bought two syringes with you,” I point out.
“I was asked to kill you. It wasn’t specified how. I certainly had no intention of shooting you. This toxin seemed to be the most painless way and I brought along the antidote in the event I changed my mind.” Miguel looks skyward. “As he knew I would.”
“Well, I’m glad your faith is renewed. But the big guy owes me one.”
“I’ll relay that message to him the next time we chat.”
Cooper’s done mopping up. A battlefield worth of carcasses lay at his feet. Oil and bodily fluids coat his fur. “Are we finished? Cause if the mission’s been accomplished, I’ve really had my fill of this haunted hellhole. Let’s get what we came for and get the fuck home.”
“Amen,” I say. I show him the map and dangle the keys. “Let’s go find the prize behind door number one.”
Chapter 23
“Not just yet,” says Miguel. “We must gather as many ruby shards as we can.”
“Aw, really?” Cooper complains.
I look around. We turned the room into organic pudding, a puree of animal parts and junkyard scraps that fifty maids couldn’t clean up. “You’re asking us to find ruby needles in this grotesque haystack?”
“The gems are far safer in our possession than in Baecker’s,” answers Miguel.
“Aw, shit,” says Cooper.
“He’s right,” I say.
“I don’t expect you to find every gem fragment. Let’s just do the best we can,” says Miguel.
“Double shit,” says Cooper.
Miguel picks two off the floor then starts digging through some guts. I see a loose one a few feet away and while we’re combing through the nauseating remains, I fill them in on my adventure in the afterlife.
“So you were wrong?” I say to Cooper.
“C’mon. Victor instead of his Monster… that’s close enough.”
“Horseshoes and hand grenades,” I say.
After we gather as many as we can, we head through the far exit and up a set of stairs. At the top, a rat with a mechanical eye is crawling along the wall. I raise my Beretta and shoot it. The vermin’s head explodes into a pile of flesh, springs, and cogs.
“I hope that’s the last of ‘em,” I say.
“Idle hands are the devil’s playthings and that psycho had century’s worth of time,” says Miguel.
“That door is the X on the map,” I say, pointing a few feet ahead to a locked wooden door.
We approach it. There are three locks to match Kiltrace’s three keys. I pull them out, ready to insert them but Miguel stays my hand.
“Do you smell anything?” Miguel asks Cooper.
“Just the suspense,” he answers. “What’s your concern? It seems to me that we’ve eliminated every threat in this castle.”
“Yet Baecker spoke of a possible cataclysmic threat,” says Miguel. “As horrifying as the ghost of Herr Doctor Victor Frankenstein was, I don’t believe the danger posed by him was an extinction level event.”
“He was pretty fucking bad,” I respond. “Imagine an arm
y of those Frankenfucks bent on taking over the world.”
“Maybe, but maybe there’s something else.”
“Killjoy… yeah, yeah. I hear you. We’ll go in hot,” says Cooper.
I insert the keys, turn them, and hear the locks snap open and the bolt slide out of place, all the while keeping my weapons ready. I push the door. It slides open with a loud creak. Immediately, we recoil. The stench in here is even more potent than downstairs. We cover our mouths and noses and move inside.
Miguel scans the room with a flashlight. It’s dark, damp, and heavy with the overwhelming smell of rot, death, horror, and decay. Piles and piles of dead bodies, both human and animal stack the space. Miguel and I remove our shirts and tear them into strips we turn into facemasks. Then we hear the sound of retching behind us.
Cooper wipes his chin. “Boo,” he says, after he’s finished.
“That’d be funnier if I wasn’t just a ghost,” I say. Then Cooper involuntarily regurgitates again. “Now that’s funny,” I say. I see fur mixed in with the chunks. “Ohhh, that’s not funny. How many goats did you eat last night?”
“Fucking stench! I had a feast and now it’s all gone,” says Cooper. “I don’t get it. Why send us all this way for this? It’s a charnal pit, a graveyard for the lost.”
“It’s a tomb sealed from the outside so no one could get in,” I say.
“Shhh… There’s something powerful in here. I can feel it,” says Miguel. We all go silent as Miguel explores. “Strange. The malodor is fading rapidly. Unnaturally so.”