EJ06 - Maze of Souls

by JL Bryan

  “It's over,” I told Hiram. “Let them go in peace.”

  The horseman and his two new passengers passed out of the gate. There was a single clomp as they crossed the bridge. On the other side, the dead horse broke into a gallop, speeding them all toward the distant explosions and cries of the battlefield. Tonight, the entire swamp seemed like a wide-open gate to the underworld.

  Then I was alone with Hiram and his descendants, all of them looking angry as they closed in around me.

  “Wait,” I said, but they didn't wait.

  I backed away as they approached. As soon as I was outside the gate, I grabbed it and pushed it shut.

  The freezing-cold rusty latch wouldn't quite close, though, as if something invisible were blocking it.

  The shades approached, clearer than ever now—generations of dead men, some in waistcoats or frock coats, others in more modern business suits, all of them decaying inside their burial clothes, with pieces of their faces missing. Their dead eyes stared at me.

  Hiram lifted his hand, and the gate flew open against me. It slammed into my chest, knocked me off my feet, and sent me tumbling into the shallow, muddy creek below the bridge.

  The gate swung open all the way, one of the rusty hinges cracking at the impact against the uneven brick and wrought iron fence beside it.

  I got to my feet as quickly as I could, but it was too late. The ghosts were escaping.

  They crossed the rotten old foot bridge, one after another, heading toward the swamplands full of ghosts. They seemed to be pursuing the horseman, but he was well away, barely visible in the shadowy woods. I had the impression that they could follow and follow but never quite catch up. Not unless they found ghost horses of their own.

  I stood in the creek, the water gurgling around my boots, and watched the shades of the Neville men grow distant and less distinct as they walked into the swamps.

  Symbolism matters to ghosts. For countless years, they'd come and gone by the front gate, which led them to the road, to the farm buildings, to the land of the living. The horseman himself had ridden up and down that road, though the shades of Hiram and the others had blocked his way to the farm, even when he'd tried to sneak out of the woods through the corn maze.

  The back gate, however, led out into a system of muddy waterways. Whether you're talking about the Styx or the Jordan, river crossings have long served as the symbolic boundary between life and death.

  Tonight, the swamp itself stood for the land of death, with the doorways to the next world wide open. The old battlefield on Halloween was a place where the line between living and dead was temporarily blurred, at least for a night or two.

  All of the dead, from Josef and Mildred to Hiram and his family members, ought to find it easy to cross over from there.

  I climbed up the slippery bank, then closed and latched the gate as quietly as I could, blocking the shades from retreating into their burial ground. My symbolic message was clear, if they noticed it—they could not return, they had to move on. All of them.

  Then I sat down by the gate, caught my breath, and watched to make sure none of them tried to return.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  By the time I emerged from the woods, things had changed pretty drastically.

  Jacob, after escaping from his car trunk, had alerted the authorities on his way up to the farm. Blue and red lights flashed all over the little dirt road, and the local fire department was soaking the acres of smoldering ash where the corn maze had been.

  Stacey and Jacob stood at the front of the house, along with a few local police officers. Michael was being loaded into an ambulance, so I hurried in that direction, but Stacey saw me and yelled that I needed to come over. The police were staring at me without a grain of trust in their eyes.

  I didn't look forward to explaining any of this to the local cops. It was one thing in Savannah, where ghosts are all over the place, and anyway Calvin still had a number of friends on the police force.

  On the bright side, Amber's Suburban was arriving, nosing its way down the dirt road, so at least the actual property owners would be there now. Otherwise, we looked like a few out-of-towners who'd apparently just rolled into the area for a little trespassing, vandalism, and arson.

  “Ellie! Are you okay? What happened?” Stacey dashed a few feet in my direction as I approached, which drew a sour look from one of the cops, who obviously didn't want her running away.

  “The horseman, Mildred, and their baby rode off to the other side,” I said. “Just one happy dead family, I guess. Hiram and the others chased after them in fast pursuit. Well, not really fast, more of a lurching walk. But that obsession that's kept old Hiram here all these years, the determination to keep his daughter and the highwayman apart...he followed that obsession right on out of here, and he seemed to take his descendants with him.”

  “You'll have to catch me up on this,” Stacey said. The cops were moving closer to us, wanting my information.

  “Later,” I told her. I looked to the ambulance again, but they were already closing the doors and starting up the lights to take Michael to the hospital. I'd missed my chance to see him.

  The Suburban parked nearby. Jeremy climbed out on one side and Amber on the other, and from how they bickered, it was obvious they'd had some disagreement about who would go to the farm and who would stay at the motel with the kids.

  Clearly, nobody had won that argument. The two kids were in the back seat, and six-year-old Maya began to open the door on her side.

  “Stay in the car!” Amber and Jeremy shouted in unison. I guess they still agreed on some things.

  “Looks like the corn maze is officially closed for the year,” Jeremy said when he joined us. The fire department was rapidly turning what remained of it into mud.

  “Where's Corrine?” Amber asked.

  “Over at the stable,” Stacey said. “She's fine. A hundred percent.”

  “How is Michael?” I looked in the direction where his ambulance had gone. “I didn't get to see him.”

  “He should be okay,” Stacey said. “I mean, he was breathing, and he didn't even have any open wounds. Just a big scar. Other than that, he seemed okay physically. As for mentally, or spiritually...”

  Stacey and I both looked at Jacob. The cops were momentarily busy jawing with Jeremy, still trying to figure out what was going on.

  Jacob took in a deep breath, then blew it out, as if buying time to frame what he had to say.

  “I don't think he's possessed anymore. I did have a chance to touch him before the medics loaded him up, and I think the ghost has left him.”

  “You think?” I asked. “I sort of need to know whether my boyfriend is still controlled by a mass-murdering spirit who wants to watch me burn to death. That's going to have an effect on our relationship.”

  “I think he's gone,” Jacob repeated, more quietly, not looking at me. “That's all I've got, Ellie. It's not an exact science.”

  “Great. Okay, well, thanks for coming out and helping us. Sorry Michael locked you in the trunk of your car.”

  “It's fine, seriously,” he said, while Stacey rubbed some grease from his cheek. “I usually end up burned or bleeding by the end of these things. Lying around for a few hours was a nice change.”

  “Sounds relaxing,” Stacey said.

  “It would have been, if not for all the kicking and shouting I had to do until somebody heard me.”

  The police came back with more questions. We just answered them truthfully, which only made the cops annoyed with us. They decided to wait for the county sheriff to arrive so we could repeat everything to him (or her, as it eventually turned out).

  “Is it over?” Amber asked me later, while we stood on the front porch amid broken floorboards smeared with crushed pumpkin. I don't think she meant the police investigation.

  “I think so. I'd say the horseman and the girl who crawls into your house are definitely gone, and those were the ones who caused you the biggest problems.
I also believe we've emptied the restless ghosts out of the old cemetery, too, and moved them on to the next world. I'd still avoid that area at night until we can come back to follow up. Everywhere else on the farm should be safe.”

  “Thank goodness.” Amber hugged me. “We just couldn't move again, not after we invested so much into fixing up this place.” She glanced around at the damage. “It's going to take some work to clean all this up, and of course we'll have to plant a whole new maze next year...” She headed to the stable to round up her wandering daughter Corrine.

  I took a final look at the dark woods. Nothing sinister or horrific waited there any longer. Daylight would arrive soon to seal up the doors to the land of the dead. For a while.

  Jacob and Stacey stood near his car, embracing. Jeremy opened the Suburban door to let the kids out, so their family could join together, too.

  Unlike everyone else, I'd be going home all alone, just me and my cat. First I'd stop by the hospital to see Michael, but he would probably still be out cold.

  That was okay. Being alone seems to be my natural state. You eventually lose everyone, anyway, somehow or another.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “So Anton Clay is on the loose,” I told Calvin, many hours later. I'd gone home to sleep, but hadn't slept. Too much on my mind. I'd been in touch with Michael's sister Melissa. She was at the hospital with her unconscious brother now. I'd be there again later, waiting to see who he was when he awoke. “Jacob doesn't think Michael is possessed anymore. Maybe the horseman's sword helped with that.” I hesitated, then added, “I summoned the horseman toward us. On purpose. I knew he would attack Michael.”

  “You feel guilty about that.” Calvin watched the road ahead. He drove his truck, a hefty green Chevy Blazer modified with accelerator and brake handles. His wheelchair lay folded in the camper-covered truck bed behind us.

  “Of course I feel guilty,” I said. “I should feel guilty. He could have killed Michael. Now Michael might be in a coma, and who knows if he'll wake up?”

  “Why did you make the choice at the time?” Calvin asked.

  “Because he was going to burn everybody alive. Not just me, but Stacey and the client's daughter, too.”

  “And Michael, too?”

  “Right. Anton would have burned us all.” My gut tightened as I turned past a boxy wooden sign that read RIVERSIDE POINT. Despite the name and the peeling sailboat painted beside it, the neighborhood was not located on any river, creek, lake, or pond. My mom had joked about that plenty.

  I drove down the once-familiar streets, past little houses that were decades old. Some were charming and cute, especially near the front of the neighborhood, but many of the others had fallen into gradual neglect, the yards shaggy with weeds. A couple were for sale, according to sagging signs in their yards. The signs looked like they'd been there a while.

  One brick bungalow stood dark and empty, an eviction notice taped to the front door. It had belonged to a grandmotherly lady named Mrs. Davis, I was pretty sure, who had given out marmalade cookies on Halloween. I wondered whether anyone from my childhood still lived in the neighborhood at all. I had certainly avoided the place as much as possible.

  I slowed as I looked at the home of a girl I'd known—Alison something. She was a year or two older than me, but she'd been friendly, let me play on her swing set when we were little. Her house was a 1970's contemporary, asymmetrical with steep roofs pointing in different directions. I could see the rusty remnants of the old swing set now, fallen over in the back yard.

  “You know what I'm going to say,” Calvin said, after giving me a few moments to reflect.

  “That if I hadn't risked Michael's life, he would have died anyway,” I said.

  “So you made the right choice. The fact that Michael is still alive now is an added blessing.”

  “I don't know. It still pretty much feels like something I did to him. All of this is my fault. He was possessed by Anton Clay. How did that happen? How...”

  I fell silent as Calvin brought the truck to a stop. I stared out the window.

  The cheap wooden fence, which had surrounded the weedy lot to discourage juvenile delinquents and other trespassers from hanging out there, was completely gone. Heavy machinery had churned up the space where my family home had once been, exposing a deep trench of sandy red earth. It was a light red, not an unusual shade for Georgia dirt. A little bit of orange plastic netting had been set up for erosion control, but other than that, the site was ripped wide open.

  “Oh, no.” I opened the truck door and stumbled out toward the construction site. “How can they do this? People died here.”

  “Careful, Ellie,” Calvin said. “Watch your step.”

  I stopped at the broken chunks of the curb. The entire lot, including the old trees that had stood at the back, had been completely leveled and then ripped open. Some construction company had really ravaged the place.

  “How can they build a new house here?” I asked. “Why? The whole neighborhood's gone to...” I glanced around to make sure none of the neighbors were outside. “...gone to seed,” I finished, in a lower, quieter voice.

  “At least we have some idea of why Anton Clay is running around,” Calvin said. He remained behind the wheel of his truck. “There's been interference with the site.”

  “It's a start,” I said. “But he's always been rooted to this site, as far as we know. And he doesn't have any known history of possessing the living, either. He's growing more powerful and more dangerous.”

  “I did not foresee this,” Calvin said.

  “Well, you're not psychic.” I gave him the most obviously fake half-smile I could muster. “Anyway, it's not your problem. You'll be escaping down to Florida and leaving this with me. I bet you're pretty happy you sold the firm before this happened.”

  “I'll stay in town until this is resolved,” he said. “Anton Clay is too dangerous for you to face on your own.”

  “But you have no problem leaving me alone to face all the other dangerous ghosts in the world.”

  “You won't be alone. You'll have the resources of a much larger organization behind you. It wasn't an easy choice, but believe me when I say I have put your safety first,” Calvin said. “You will be less alone than ever, and you'll have more backup than just an old man in a wheelchair.”

  “You're not as old as you act.”

  “I'm not as old as I feel, either,” he said.

  I stared at the ripped red earth in silence for a moment. It seemed insane that someone was building a house here yet again. Maybe they didn't know that six houses had burned down on the same spot, or that the ashes of generations were mingled into the soil. Maybe they just didn't care.

  “I wish you weren't going,” I said. “I wish you hadn't sold out. Especially now. It feels like everything's turning upside down.”

  “There will be a number of moments when your life turns upside down,” Calvin said. “Each difficult challenge makes you stronger for the next.”

  “You should put that on a poster. Maybe with a fuzzy little kitten stalking a big eagle or something.”

  “I'm not joking.”

  “But I am,” I said. “Okay, I get it. You have to move on. I have to get shoved out of the nest like a baby bird or something. Tough love. It's what's best for me. I guess I'm lucky there's just so much of it available.”

  I looked into the deep trench carved about where the kitchen had once been. A light, drizzling rain had begun to fall, slowly converting the sandy earth to soft mud, bit by bit. Droplets vanished into the shadows of the trench. Maybe they'd dug so deeply that they'd unwittingly released Anton Clay. Some part of him might have been cracked open, some old bone fragments turned to powder and set adrift on the wind.

  The rain grew heavier. The drops were icy cold, hinting of the winter to come. I turned and climbed back into the truck.

  “We have to find him,” I said. “Sometime before he burns down half the city.”

  Calvin n
odded. He'd taken some images of the site with his clunky, whirring old film camera. He set the camera aside as I buckled my seatbelt, and then we drove away.

  I kept my eyes on the side mirror, watching the site of my old house retreat behind us. I didn't visit it often, but whenever I had, I'd always felt something. Usually it was Anton himself. I could feel his heat, his anger and desire, his craving to burn and destroy. I might even catch a glimpse of him, sometimes looking youthful in antique finery, a silk cravat, and long golden hair. Other times, he would look like a smoldering corpse, tongues of fire licking out from his eye sockets as he stared back at me.

  This time, I felt nothing. The churned-up, muddy lot was just an empty place where my childhood and my family used to be.

  The monstrous old ghost hadn't returned to his usual haunt after the corn maze. He was out there somewhere, charged up and powerful, eager to kill me and anyone who happened to be close to me.

  Later, I returned to the small hospital in Sylvania where Michael was still unconscious. I sat with his sister Melissa, who was his only immediate family. Their mother had died, and their father had taken off with no forwarding address many years earlier.

  Michael didn't stir. He lay somewhere in the gloom between life and death. I tried to call out to him mentally, to steer him back into the direction of life.

  Through the hospital window, I watched the sun gradually set, painting the lawn outside with reds and oranges. Then darkness settled in for the night.

  From the author

  Thanks so much for continuing to read this series. I love researching and writing these books and I’m glad so many of you keep asking for more!

  I’m already hard at work on book seven. Things are about to get very complicated for Ellie with Nicholas and Kara moving in!

  If you’re enjoying the series, I hope you’ll consider taking time to recommend the books to someone who might like them or to rate or review it at your favorite ebook retailer.