I grabbed the stump of Raven's arm to help hoist it back up, effectively adding my strength to hers. Vikki followed our lead too, and now, with the strength of all three of us focused into Raven’s ghost forearm, we were able to stand, and push the lich back.
The lich growled at us and tried to pull the scythe away.
“No,” I shouted, pulling at Raven’s arm.
If we could just get the scythe away from him, I reasoned, maybe we could use it against him.
With a mighty twist, however, the lich wrench his scythe from Raven's grasp. It seemed that even though we could collectively win a tug-of-war with the lich, Raven’s lone ghost hand was no match for his two in handling the weapon. I briefly considered chopping off my own arm to help her, which I might seriously have considered, had there been any objects sharp enough within reach.
The lich pulled back a few feet and growled.
“That…is so…annoying!” he spat.
“Run, Gavin,” I could faintly hear one of the wraiths moan. “Take Raven and run.”
“Help me,” said another unfamiliar faint voice. It sounded vaguely young, and female.
I listened closely for a moment and realized that every single one of the enslaved wraiths emanating from his phylactery was calling out in some way. It was like they were all trapped in bodies that wouldn’t obey their commands, yet they were still conscious of every terrible thing their master made them do. How terrible that must be for all of them! And I realized that shortly—imminently—that was to be our fate as well.
I looked at my weapons belt—the one that had belonged to my father. There had to be something here I could use.
“What do I do?” I said.
I hoped some of the wraiths swirling around Danko might have some inkling of what to do, and might somehow be coherent enough to tell me. I quickly realized this was futile. We probably had only seconds left to live. Raven’s ghost arm had bought us a few more seconds, but Darius Danko wasn’t likely to fall for that gimmick again.
I looked at the metal phylactery around his neck, and then back at the weapons belt around my waist. I looked at the dial on the implosion grenade which extended from the black, which Larry had said was the safe zone, to the yellow, which would break glass, to the red zone, which would cause metals to destabilize. I looked back at Danko's metal phylactery, said to hold a sacred scroll enabling him to enslave all these souls.
Can you guess what I was thinking?
I wasn't certain if the metals the imploder could destabilize included ghost metals. But I figured, what the hell.
I took the last imploder grenade off my weapons belt and cranked it all the way into the red.
“Gavin, what are you doing?” shouted Vikki.
“Either something really brilliant, or incredibly stupid,” I said.
I pressed the button to prime it and chucked it out at the lich.
Danko looked down at the imploder and began to laugh.
“You tried that one already, remember?” he taunted.
The implosion was bigger this time, though it didn’t seem to ruffle his cloak any more than the last time. What was different, however, was that the metal phylactery around his neck began to warp, then sag, then disintegrate.
“Eh?” he said.
Danko looked not at all as terrifying as normal. He looked almost comical as he stared down at the phylactery, watching it melt off him, turn to powder, and spill to metallic dust on the floor.
After it all melted away, a small paper scroll was revealed, a scroll which seemed to have Hebrew writing on it. He just stared at it, stupefied.
Now was my one shot, I realized.
“Vikki,” I said. “Do you think you have enough fairy power to slow him down?”
“I…I can try,” she said.
“Good. Cover me.”
I sprang to my feet and ran straight for the lich.
Danko looked back up and me, and then swung full-force and full-speed at me with his scythe.
Then he began to slow. Vikki's power was working!
Nice going, Vikki! I hope I'm not wrong about this…
I dove under the lich's comically slow swing, then through his legs, and grabbed the scroll off the floor. I skidded to a stop on the other side of him. Then I stood. I held the scroll out with my left hand, and dug around in my pocket with my right. I promptly produced my trusty Zippo lighter, and flicked out a flame.
Darius had just enough time to turn his faceless head my way, and give me one last confounded look before I made my final, checkmating move.
“Yippie ki-yay, sucker-bitch!” I exclaimed, and lit the scroll.
“Nooooo!” Darius shrieked.
The lich tried to dive for me, hoisting his scythe into the air. But behind him, Vikki concentrated. She was managing to keep a field of slowness around him.
The Hebrew scroll burned away.
One by one, the wraiths seemed to change form around the lich. They seemed to be reverting to the spirits I imagine they must have been before Darius had taken possession of them. They were all free now. They were all free, and—I imagined—they were all, understandably, quite pissed off.
The horde of spirits began to claw at the lich's cloak, taking over for Vikki in slowing him down to a grinding halt.
Vikki collapsed to the ground, panting.
So did I.
The ghosts continued awakening around the lich, and clinging to him like flies to honey.
“I’m free,” said one of the spirits.
“Me too,” shouted another.
“Vikki?” said another.
Vikki squinted her eyes at the spirit, like she couldn't believe what she saw.
“Stephy?” she said.
The spirit smiled back at her.
“Hello, Vikki,” the spirit said.
“Stephy…I…”
“You did it, Vikki. You finally did it. I knew you could!”
“Stephy, I…I don't even know what…Oh, Stephy, I'm…I'm sorry.”
The ghost of the girl shook her head.
“No. it's okay.”
“I didn't know…about Porter…You tried to warn me. I never believed you. I should have believed you!”
“I know, Vikki. But you know what? You've made it better now! And look! My tooth is fixed!”
Vikki tried to laugh. I think. But she ended up crying instead.
The lich growled and picked up his scythe.
“Guys?” I said.
“You saved us,” said Vikki's friend. “So now it's our turn. Let us save you.”
'Stephy' closed her eyes and opened her arms to the ceiling.
That’s when the first corridor of light appeared.
Then another.
And then another.
Then several more.
Soon, there were corridors of light all around us. Spirits began ascending to the great beyond, wherever that might be. Soon, we found ourselves enveloped in competing corridors of light, which all seemed to merge and intensify into one giant luminescent corridor.
“I love you, Vikki,” said the dark-haired spirit.
“Stephy, I…” stammered Vikki.
“I'll see you on the other side,” said the spirit
With that, the ghost of Stephanie ascended into the light.
“No!” shouted the lich. “This cannot be! Let go of me! Get off of me!”
“Try dodging this corridor, you evil, psychopathic piece of shit!” I hollered as the lich Darius Danko, towed by so many ghosts now, began to be dragged upwards into the Light of the Netherworld.
Danko had just enough time for one final cry before the overwhelming number of ghosts seemed to weigh him down—or perhaps more aptly up—into the giant corridor of light.
Then he was gone, and a hundred spirits or so, seemed to swirl around the light too, like water circling a drain. That great drain of eternity.
I looked over and I saw Raven clutching a spirit’s hand, trying to hold it down.
“Dad!” I shouted.
I ran and tried to help Raven hold onto him, again adding my strength to her ghost hand. Vikki, wiping away her tears, rushed over and tried to do her part to help us as well.
“Dad,” cried Raven. “Don’t go!”
“I don’t want to go, Raven. But…I have to. I can’t stay.”
“No, you can stay,” Raven cried. “Larry’s wife stayed for thirty years. You could stay too!”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” he said, with an eerily soothing smile.
“Please, dad,” Raven sobbed. “Please don’t, don’t go.”
“Jack?” said another familiar voice.
A second spirit—a woman's—grabbed him by the other arm, linking with him, as though a chain of spiritual light.
“Sarah?” He said, and then laughed. “Sarah, it is you. It’s really you!”
“Mom?” I said.
I couldn't help it. I started to cry. I hadn’t heard my mother's voice, nor had I seen her face in ten years. Yet here she finally was, and all at once, it’s like I’d last seen her only yesterday. Mom looked like she'd somehow aged a hundred years, and yet hadn't aged a day since she left us.
“Hello Gavin. Rivkah. I’ve missed you both so much. My gosh…you're both so…big now.”
Hearing her old name seemed to drive Raven into a tearful frenzy. Raven and I both pleaded almost incoherently for the two of them to stay. But the force pulling them upwards seemed to grow more and more intense as fewer and fewer spirits remained on Earth. Very few were left now, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Doc off in the distance saying his own tear-filled farewells to his wife and son.
“You have to let us go now, kids,” said my dad. “But it's going to be okay. We can finally be at peace now.”
“We love you both so much,” said mom. “Take care of each other.”
“No, mom,” I cried. “Don’t go. I don’t want you to go.”
“We could finally be a family again,” added Raven.
“No,” said my mom. “We can’t. This…isn’t our world anymore.”
“No, mom,” shouted Raven. “No. No, dad, don’t…don't let go! Please! I can’t hold on, dad. Please!”
“It’s all right, Raven. Gavin,” said dad.
With that, dad's hand released from Raven's grasp, and flew up into the light.
“Be safe, kids,” he said. “And don’t worry. Someday we’ll meet again. I'm sure of it. We'll catch you on the flipside!”
Our parents disappeared into the light, as did the last of the spirits, including Vikki's friend, Larry’s family, and so many others.
Then, at last, it was just the four of us. Just me, Raven, Vikki and Doc, left alone in his darkened, cluttered home. Emotionally wrecked, all of us. Raven and I held each other close and cried.
Chapter 50
For a time, things quieted down, and Bordertown finally started getting back to normal. Normal for Bordertown, that is. For a few days, anyway. Bordertown, I’ve come to learn, has its ups and downs.
In the week that followed, Raven spent a lot of time with Doc in his machine shop. With Doc’s now-starkly-empty home, he welcomed the company. And Raven wanted more than ever to work on a project to keep her mind occupied. They got back to working on her ectoplasmic interface arm, or so I gathered. Maybe they were working on a new weapon. I think there was even talk about building some kind of servant robot. At a certain point, I decided that the less I knew, the better.
“Just nothing that’ll explode or anything, okay Doc?” I said.
Doc returned his trademark shrug.
I went home and packed away all my notes, content to have finally put the Nefarious Darius Twins case to rest.
In the days that followed, I endeavored to write the story you're reading now, tentatively titled Ghost Mortem, for publication in the Bordertown Chronicle. Well…that had been the original idea. I guess it got kind of long. Sorry about the size. But then again, I’m not really sorry. Chuck Wood did promise me a hefty sum per word, after all. Though this isn’t exactly the sexposé he wanted. Sorry, Chuck, but I wanted the world to see my dad and Vikki the way I do. As heroes. And I never could have survived this, or solved the Nefarious Darius Twins case without them. If I’m to live here now, and continue to write stories for the Bordertown Chronicle, I’m doing it on my terms, celebrating what I think makes this community great.
I’d completed most of this monster-sized manuscript when Vikki stopped by to tell me our new Oversoul had arrived. She asked if I’d come to court with her to process Perry Porter’s ghost, who I remembered was still trapped in the imploder unit from the night we finally took down Darius Danko.
I shuddered at the thought of facing yet another Oversoul. I would probably forever have trust issues with beings granted as much power as they have. Alas, more than ever, I wanted closure. So together, Vikki and I went back to the courthouse and sat in on the new Oversoul’s first session.
The new Oversoul made an almost entirely different first appearance from his predecessor. For one thing, the room didn’t fill with black smoke the way it had with Darius Danko. Instead, a pale white fog blanketed the room. There was something soothing, and almost benevolent about it. When the smoke column sprouted behind the podium, the Oversoul appeared and peered around himself with genuine wonder instead of menace. The black space where his face should be…it somehow didn’t seem half so terrifying as with Danko. In fact—and I can’t explain it—but I felt a great comfort when I saw him. Unlike the fear I felt when looking into the hood of the other judge, this Oversoul seemed to represent something else. Something totally different. Something—I'd like to believe—good. But who knows? Maybe that was just my desire to be optimistic.
“All rise,” said one of the undead court clerics.
We all rose and stood until asked to be seated.
“Oh, it’s my turn, is it?” said the Oversoul. “Right. Um…bring forward the first case I guess.”
His voice sounds so familiar, I thought. But no…it can’t be…
The cleric took the imploder device from me and placed it in the salt pile in the center of the courtroom
Then, out from the imploder, swirled the spirit of former sheriff Perry Porter.
“Perry Porter,” the new Oversoul began. “You stand here accused of serial murder, torture, sexual assault, abduction, impersonating a police officer, impersonating a human being, and generally being a huge douche. I should also add that I think you’re the scum of the Earth, and if it were all up to me—which it is, by the way, or so I'm told—I’d ride your sadistic, psychopathic, fat ass straight to hell. Wait. That sounded a lot creepier and dirtier than I meant.”
“What is this?” said Porter's ghost. “Who are you?”
“Take a guess, genius,” he said. “You hired me, after all. You…evil…fuck-ass.” He turned to the clerk beside him. “Can I call him fuck-ass in court?”
“You can do whatever you want, your honor,” said the cleric. “You’re the Oversoul now.”
“Nice,” said the new Oversoul.
Although I couldn’t see his face, I would swear I could feel him grinning under the blackness of the cloak.
“Dad?” I said, causing a stir of shushes from the courtroom.
“Hey, son,” he said. “Nice work collaring this A-hole, by the way. You get a gold star. I’m not sure if I can actually give you a real, like, a gold-gold star or anything, but yeah. Kudos.”
I was stunned speechless. And happy. I laughed a little. And I didn’t cry at all. I swear. No matter what Vikki or anyone else says.
“I demand a trial,” said the spirit in the circle.
“And a trial,” my dad—the new Oversoul—began, “you shall have. I’ll let God judge you.”
The Oversoul banged his gavel, and a beam of light shot down from the ceiling, straight at the spirit in the salt pile.
“No,” shouted the spirit, sc
rambling for something to hold onto as he was pulled into the corridor of light. “You can’t do this!”
“I’m pretty sure I can,” he said, “and I’m pretty sure, I just did.”
Porter's ghost let out one final cry before he vanished, along with the corridor of light.
“Yippie ki-yay…motherfucker,” said the Oversoul.
It took every inch of self-restraint I had not to cheer my dad on. I realized this was still a courtroom, after all. But Vikki and I exchanged a smile.
Court proceeded for a few more…well…proceedings. Then, finally, dad, er, the Oversoul dismissed the court.
“Dad, wait,” I said, before he vanished into the fog.
The hooded figure turned to me, and waited expectantly.
There was so much I wanted to say to him. But somehow, I wasn’t able to put it all together into anything coherent. So I stuck to the basics.
“I miss you, dad,” I said. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Aw, come on son. Don’t embarrass me in front of my whole court like this.”
“Dad, you’re a big, arrogant jerk and I miss all your nagging and your smug, smart-ass derision.”
“That’s better,” he said.
Again, I could feel his smile beneath that shroud of darkness.
“Don’t worry, son,” he added. “I’ll be around to hassle you lots, lots more. And bring your sister around sometime. She’s not getting off the hook that easily either.”
“You got it, dad,” I said.
“And Vikki,” he said. “Make sure this one doesn’t get into too much trouble.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “No promises, though. I'm just a deputy, after all, not a miracle worker.”
He nodded. “Goodbye for now, son.”
With a puff of white smoke, the Oversoul—my father—was gone.
Moments later, I found myself back outside the courthouse, standing at the entrance, feeling like a great emotional weight had lifted off me. I was feeling lighter than air.
“So this is some development, huh?” said Vikki, coming up behind me.
“I’ll say,” I said.
“Did I just make your day or what?” she asked.
“You knew when you came to get me this morning, didn’t you?”
Ghost Mortem (Bordertown Chronicle Book 1) Page 31