by Gary Jonas
I walked right up to Dr. Anderson and shoved my gun in her face. “Move,” I said.
Her eyes went wide and focused intently on the barrel of the Glock. She did as I told her and stepped to the side. “You can still leave,” she said. “You don't have to do this. We can still try to hold it.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“You don't understand!” she yelled.
I pointed the gun at her face again. “You want to die?”
“Please don't do this.”
I pushed her out of the way, and Esther popped over to me.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked.
In reply, I fired two shots at the chains. The links shattered. I yanked the chains from the door and kicked it open.
The smoke let out a horrible screech and flew away from Kelly and through the doorway until it blended into the darkness there.
At the same moment, Dr. Anderson burst into a cloud of smoke and swirled through the door as well.
The sound of pops sounded behind me, and trails of smoke shot through the door. I glanced back, and all the inmates were gone.
A multitude of voices screamed in pain and anguish in the dark. I cradled my gun and pressed my hands to my ears. I fell to my knees and tried to scramble back. Rayna cried out and I heard her only because she was behind me, so the scream came from a different direction.
“Get out of there!” Rayna yelled.
“No!” Esther screamed. “It's my fault!” She popped away.
As soon as she disappeared, the lights went out, the screams ended, and all I could hear was a steady ringing in my ears. I broke out in a cold sweat, and my heart raced. My thoughts scattered from worrying that we'd be killed to thinking I'd never hear properly again to feeling that something was watching us, hunting us.
“There's nothing here,” Kelly said, calm. A light flared and I realized she had the flashlight function of her smartphone shining.
My ears settled a bit, and I pushed myself to my feet. My hands felt like they were covered in spider webs and sawdust. I holstered my gun and brushed my palms on my jeans. Shattered chains littered the floor. The door had been real, and so had the chains.
“You all right, Jonathan?” Kelly asked.
“My ears are ringing. They haven't been this bad since I stood next to the speakers at a Metallica concert.”
“There's a lot of asbestos in the air. We should get out of here.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But I want to see what's through here.”
“Asbestos won't bother me. You and Rayna go outside. Send Esther to me. If you're right, I'll be with the screaming darkness, whatever the hell that was, and I'll check it out.”
“I need to be here for it,” I said, “whatever it is.”
Rayna moved past me to go through the door. “Are you guys coming?” she asked.
“Send Esther in,” Kelly said.
“What about me?” Rayna asked. “I want to see what's here too.”
“We'll come back,” I said. I walked toward the exit.
“You're afraid?” Rayna asked.
“I just want earplugs,” I said, though the place was definitely creeping me out.
“I'm not afraid either,” Rayna said, but her voice cracked. “Well, maybe a little, but it's kinda cool.”
I was nervous, but not afraid. After all, I had Kelly with me, and while she wasn't exactly my friend at the moment, she would protect me. Well, she might protect me. I guess it depended on where her self-interest happened to figure in the equation.
Outside the abandoned hospital, I brushed the filth from my shirt and pants. I shook some dust from my hair. Kelly and Rayna followed me and sat down in front of the door.
“We’ll wait here,” Kelly said.
I nodded and walked down the sidewalk. The sun sank behind the skyscrapers, and shadows seemed to reach for me. That unsettling fear nibbled at my guts.
“Not again,” I said.
“What again?” Esther asked behind me.
I jumped and spun around. “Goddamn it, Esther. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Everything jake in there?” She cocked her thumb toward the hospital.
“When you popped away, it went back to normal. I need to get some earplugs. Then I want to go back in, and once I'm there, I want you to pop inside.”
“You think whatever woke up on the island is in there?”
I shrugged. “I don't know what that was.”
***
After making a run to the drugstore to get earplugs, I returned to Kings Park. It was worth the extra time to save our ears. On the walk to the drugstore, I felt uneasy, but I pushed those thoughts aside. Maybe it was the neighborhood, though it didn't seem bad. Maybe it was residual worry from the weird feelings I'd had before. More likely, it was that this wasn't a big enough threat to keep Kelly around. That, I realized, was what really scared me. If she realized I was making this into a big deal when it was child's play, I would lose her. But as things stood, I was losing her anyway. What choice did I have? I pushed all those thoughts into the background and compartmentalized them.
Kelly and Rayna sat outside the front door of the hospital.
“There's nothing in there,” Kelly said.
“You checked it out?”
“Of course.”
“I told you to wait,” I said.
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“We're going to check it again.”
“You don't believe me?” Kelly asked. She respected me less and less. She was drifting away, and I had to grasp at invisible straws.
“I want to see the place for myself. Then I want Esther to come in so we can see what it's like then.”
Kelly shrugged. “Whatever.”
I passed out earplugs. “For the screaming,” I said.
Esther gave us a head start.
Kelly led the way to the hallway, and she was right. There were plenty of spider webs and lots of dust but no ghosts and no shadow demon.
Esther popped into the hospital beside me, and the place went from dark and abandoned to dark and occupied by disembodied voices howling in pain. A strip of light fell through the open door. I could hear the voices, but with the earplugs in, they weren't deafening.
Esther said something, but I couldn't hear her, so I shook my head and pointed to my ears. She rolled her eyes and pointed toward the open door. I glanced over and didn't see anything. She frowned, folded her arms, and walked toward the door.
Something glinted in the shadows, and Kelly vaulted forward, sword ready. Whatever it was backed away from her.
As the light from the hallway behind us wasn't sufficient, I used my phone to illuminate the walls. They were scratched and scarred with slashes, some of which were rust colored. I moved the light over and saw words scrawled into the wall: Set Us Free!
The darkness shifted.
Kelly altered her fighting stance, ready to counter whatever might leap from the shadows.
Rayna maneuvered her way to the forefront. She let loose a blast of fire that lit up the corridor. The smoke recoiled and moments later, the darkness took most everything into its embrace. In the light from the brief flame, I thought I saw human faces. Scared, angry, insane faces stretched away from the fire. But they had to be a figment of my imagination, unless they were some new kind of ghosts that manifested only in the flash of fire. The faces of the men had old-fashioned mustaches and beards. The women had their hair pulled back in buns. They reminded me of the disembodied heads at the beginning of the Vincent Price movie House on Haunted Hill, which had creeped me out when I was a kid. I felt a familiar chill race down my spine.
The screams still filled the air. I moved to the wall, ran my fingers along the letters of the message, then looked at my fingertips. I half-expected them to be covered in blood, but instead they were covered in dust.
“Okay, Esther, pop out.”
Esther nodded and disappeared.
We stood in the vac
ant corridors of the abandoned hospital. The smell of old urine filled the air. I removed my earplugs and pointed toward the entrance, and we began the long walk back to civilization.
“I'm covered in filth,” Rayna said. “I need a shower.”
“We all do,” I said.
“Well, something is in there,” Kelly said, “but I'll be damned if I know what it is.”
“Ghosts,” Rayna said.
“They're not like any ghosts I've ever encountered,” I said.
Esther waited for us outside. She kept herself visible.
“What were they?” Esther asked.
“Ghosts,” Rayna said again.
Esther shook her head. “I'm a ghost. I'm not smoke and I'm not weird faces.”
“My hypothesis,” I said, “is that those faces are people who died in this hospital and they're manifested by whatever the hell Pedro and Juanita first woke up on Ellis Island.”
“Why do you think it has anything to do with Ellis Island?” Kelly asked.
“Because the first two victims went to the island the night they died here. I think they brought an entity back with them.”
“So a few kids went to the island,” Kelly said. “How did they bring this so-called entity with them? And why is it manifesting itself now? Didn't you say those kids died back in the seventies?”
“I don't know why it's here now. Maybe it's been here the whole time.”
“Then it's not particularly dangerous.”
“But it killed Juanita and Pedro.”
“People die every day. These kids are old news. Why should I care about them?”
“They didn't deserve to die, Kelly.”
“Whatever.”
“Okay,” Rayna said. “Kelly might not care about them but I do. They died here in a weird way. Did it kill others too?”
If I lied now, Kelly would walk, and I knew it. So I made my admission without saying how tenuous the connection was. “I don't know,” I said.
“But you think it was from the island?”
I gave her a nod. “It might not have stayed here. It could have gone back to the island after killing Pedro and Juanita. Then a photographer went to the island, and weird things happened.”
“Define ‘weird.’”
“Odd things turned up in some of the photos—light from unknown sources, weird mists, darkness that shouldn't be there.”
“But no deaths?” Kelly asked.
“Well, not that I know of, but remember that Pedro and Juanita were listed as suicides, so it's possible that this thing has caused others to take their lives as well.”
“Let's roll with it,” Rayna said. “It escapes the island briefly but gets pulled back. Then again, for all we know, it's a separate entity that stays here and might not have anything to do with the island.”
“It's speculation, I know. But then they started the Save Ellis Island initiative and began renovations, and more weird shit happened. People heard voices when nobody was there. Doors opened and closed on their own.”
“Sounds like normal ghost stuff to me,” Kelly said. “Find what it's attached to and destroy it.”
“But three workers committed suicide.”
Before Kelly could roll her eyes, Rayna asked, “On the island?”
“No,” I said thankful that she was hoping for some kind of adventure. “One in Brooklyn, one in Battery Park, and one jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Then Hurricane Sandy stirred things up, and still more weird shit happened. Finally they opened the tours of the island, and now people are tracking things back to the mainland every single day, so even more weird shit is happening. Plenty of suicides and murders, which could be related, and Pedro and Juanita's sister has some kind of darkness that seems to be stalking her.”
“Good enough for me,” Rayna said. “This place is creepy, and I still feel like something's watching us.”
Kelly laughed. “Nothing's watching us. I would feel it.”
“We don't have your confidence,” Rayna said.
Kelly turned to look at me. “Is that why you came to my room and woke me up last night?”
I spread my hands.
She rolled her eyes, and I knew that if I'd gained any ground with her, I'd just lost it all.
“Regardless, I think this entity is killing people,” I said.
“It was little more than smoke,” Kelly said.
“Granted,” I said. “But for the first time in ages, the murder and suicide rates are up in the city.”
“You're reaching,” Kelly said. “Crime rates fluctuate. You can't prove that it has anything to do with anything from the island.”
“I know, but we should look into it anyway.”
“You're wasting my time,” Kelly said.
“Says you,” Esther said.
“I wasn't talking to you, ghost girl.” Kelly walked toward the street.
Esther blew a raspberry at her.
“It's all right, Esther,” I said.
“No it's not!”
I smiled at her and gave her a wink because I had one more card to play. Then I caught up to Kelly. “One more thing,” I said.
She turned to look at me. “What?”
“You're on my payroll,” I said.
Kelly frowned. “For now.”
“As you're getting paid for your time, it has not been wasted.”
“I can offer my services to a variety of companies and people.”
“Not really.”
“I have a reputation in the magical communities.”
I grinned. “You forget that you're not the real Kelly Chan here. She works at a dojo in Denver. You start taking jobs killing people using your real name, you'll attract the wrong kind of attention. The Men of Anubis will show up, and they'll pluck you out of time, and you'll be gone before you can lift a finger against them.”
“Bullshit.”
“I've seen them. They have power the likes of which we can't understand. But hey, if you have a death wish, sure, walk away. Hire yourself out. See how long you can steer clear of beings who can scour all of time.”
“Then why haven't they already found us?”
“We haven't attracted their attention yet.”
“And when we do, they could arrive right now to destroy us before we ever do attract their attention. So your argument doesn't make any sense.”
“Unless,” I said.
“Unless what?”
“Unless they're using magic to track people.”
She glared at me. “So you think while I'm with you, I'm safe. But if I go off on my own, I'm dead.”
“I don't know that,” I said and left it hanging there.
She fumed.
“Feel free to take a stroll,” I said. “Not sure how far my influence will have an effect. Might be half a mile, might be a city, might be a state. But they will find you if you do too much even if you use a false identity. That much I guarantee.”
She considered it. Finally she sighed. “I'll stay for now, but I have a condition.”
“Name it.”
“I want a raise.”
“Done.”
We walked back to Esther and Rayna.
“Hey, Esther,” I said. “You tried to get my attention in there, but I couldn't hear you. What were you pointing at?”
“Nothing. I thought I saw Martin in the hallway again, but when I went to check it out, nobody was there.”
“He wasn't real,” Kelly said.
“He seemed real before,” I said. “This is a strange case.”
Kelly rolled her eyes. “This is hardly a case at all.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Isabel Sanchez leaned against the railing on the ferry and stared at the island as we moved closer. Kelly and Rayna chose to go along for the ride. Esther was there too, but she kept herself invisible to everyone but me. I stood next to Isabel and gazed at Ellis Island, wondering how many people's dreams of a new life ended on those shores.
“Which one i
s your wife?” Isabel asked. “I'm guessing it's the Chinese woman.”
“Sorry,” I said, confused. “What?”
“Your women?” she asked, nodding toward Kelly and Rayna, who sat on benches with most of the other passengers.
“Oh. Neither. We all just work together.”
“Hunting things.”
“Trying to make a difference for people.”
“They look at you like you're more than just a coworker or employer.”
“Really?”
“A woman notices these things,” Isabel said and pulled a tangle of hair from her face to tuck it behind her ear.
“This guy doesn't,” I said.
“All men are clueless. Well, most men,” she said. “Some get it.”
“Did you think this was going to be a date?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “If your idea of a pickup line is to ask about dead siblings, you've got a lot to learn about romance.”
“I didn't think so,” I said, “but the way you reacted, I just . . .”
“You're way too young for me,” she said.
Oh, if she only knew.
“Maybe you're a cougar.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I am.”
“Oh, baby.”
“Don't get any ideas, buster.”
“Because my women are watching?”
“They can watch if they want. I'm terrible with names. When you introduced them, I tried to repeat them in my head over and over, but I saw a squirrel, and they're both gone.”
“Happens to the best of us,” I said.
“Right. The Chinese woman looks like she wants to kill you. The other looks like she's trying to be everything you could possibly want in a woman and is worried she's failing. The cold looks make me think the Chinese woman is your wife, while the other is your mistress who thinks you're going to leave your wife.”
“Truth be told, Kelly--she's the Chinese woman--probably does want to kill me. Long story. Rayna and I were an item at one point, but that's old news.”
“Not to her.”
“You think she's still interested?”
“How old are you?” Isabel asked.
“Thirty-five and holding,” I said.
“And you still haven't learned about the hair flip?”
“I know about the hair flip,” I said. “I'm not ten.”