Harbinger

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Okay. We’ll be right there.” Evan smiled and hung up.

  “Aren’t you supposed to salute him or some bogus thing like that?” asked Maela.

  Evan turned away from the console. “Nope. I’m not a cadet and he’s not an officer.”

  “Besides, only the buttheads make little kids salute them.” Walter rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, cool. So we’re done? I kinda wanna get outta here.” Maela edged toward the door, giving the back of the room a wary stare.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Shawn in an uncharacteristically timid voice.

  Evan and Shawn locked eyes for a second, another mutual note of agreement that the secret of Shawn having a teddy bear would not leave Evan’s lips. Since he didn’t fear the spirit anywhere near as much as the other kids, he let them all go out into the hall first, keeping watch on the corner. Whoever it was, they didn’t show themselves.

  He feels mean. I should tell Mom about him later.

  Shawn led the way past a bunch of empty classrooms and labs used by the high school kids to the elevator at the far end of the corridor. White plastisteel with all the warmth of a hospital surrounded them, making the eeriness of emptiness stronger. The continuous paranormal energy intensified the sense of dread flooding the area. By the time they reached the plain white door marked ‘Level 04,’ Shawn, Walter, and Maela all clung to each other, not quite trembling.

  “You see anything?” whispered Walter. “Something is definitely here.”

  Evan twisted around to look down the hall. “Nope. He’s hiding.”

  “He who?” asked Maela.

  “I dunno. A ghost. Maybe he’s mad for being a ghost.” Evan faced the hall and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, I can see and talk to you. If you need help, let me know.” His voice echoed a few times to silence.

  The other three kids stood in the corner by the elevator, watching in rapt silence.

  “Nope.” Evan poked the elevator button. “That means he probably wants to mess with us.”

  “Can they hurt us?” asked Shawn.

  “Old ones can, but this one isn’t that old.”

  Maela eyed the corridor. “How do you know that?”

  “I can feel it. Old ones give off more power. This guy is too new to do anything to us. He’s just being a creepy butthead.” Evan folded his arms. “He thinks he’s scary.”

  Ping.

  The other three all jumped.

  Evan grinned, but held back the laugh.

  They filed into the elevator. Shawn hit the button for the ground floor. The doors closed again. In seconds, light pulses slid up the four corners of the cube-shaped chamber, a visual indicator of going down. The numeric display at the top of the panel ticked from four, to three, to two, to one, then negative one, negative two, negative three.

  “You hit the wrong button,” said Walter. “We want the first floor, not the basement.”

  “There’s no basement.” Maela looked up at the ceiling. “We’re down inside the plate.”

  “We’re not allowed here.” Evan poked the button for the ground floor.

  “No shit.” Shawn also hit the button. “And I didn’t hit the wrong one.”

  “You had to have.” Walter flailed his arms. “Why else would we be down here?”

  The elevator reached the negative fifth floor.

  “Dude!” shouted Shawn. “It’s totally going the wrong way.”

  “Stop hitting the wrong button,” snapped Maela.

  Shawn whirled on her. “I’m not! These floors are restricted. It shouldn’t even let us go here.”

  “I think the ghost did it.” Evan stared down at his Monwyn the Magnificent T-shirt, the mage in a dramatic pose with fire streaming from his outstretched hand.

  “Hey…” Walter nudged Maela. “You’re a techno, right? Make the thing take us up.”

  “O-okay.” She reached out and pressed her hand on the panel, her nails flaked with mostly-worn-off black polish.

  “That’s really cool the way they can plug into machines just by touching them.” Shawn nodded.

  “Dude, quiet,” whispered Evan. “Let her concentrate.”

  The elevator hung in silence for a moment, save for soft breathing.

  Sparks erupted from the panel with a loud buzzing crackle. Maela jumped back, screaming and waving her hand. Sudden acceleration threw all four kids to the floor as the elevator shot upward. Evan landed sprawled on top of Shawn. He pushed himself up to look at the counter. It stopped at -1.

  “Better than neg five,” whispered Shawn.

  Another burst of sparks flew from the console.

  Evan leapt up and hammered the ‘door open’ button, but it didn’t work. The spectral fingers of a black glove appeared, then sank back into the metal.

  The lights went out.

  Everyone screamed as they plummeted for a few seconds, then jerked to a stop, again crashing into a tangled pile of limbs. Someone’s sneaker hit Evan in the side of the head.

  Maela emitted a loud oof, then yelled, “Get off meeeeeeeee!”

  The elevator dropped again, turning her demand turned into another scream.

  Near weightlessness came to a harsh end with a loud metallic boom and the elevator cab tilting slightly to the left. Evan crashed down on top of someone else, though he couldn’t tell who. His elbow hit something soft, and a wheezing gasp flooded his right ear.

  Silence.

  Evan waited two breaths before asking, “Anyone hurt?”

  “Umm. Ouch, but I don’t think serious,” said Maela.

  “I’m good.” Shawn grunted. “Sorry. Can’t see anything. Not like I tried to land on top of you.”

  “Ow,” whispered Walter. “My balls.”

  Evan activated Darksight; his surroundings appeared in a wavering sepia-toned blur. He glanced down at his elbow in Walter’s crotch, and moved it. “Oops. Sorry.”

  Skinny Maela looked like a gummy bear run over by a truck, splayed out on the floor with Shawn crawling off her. A little blood ran down her chin from her lip.

  “Crap, you broke the elevator,” said Shawn, in as un-accusing a tone as possible for such a statement.

  Maela sat up, gazing around blind in the dark. She appeared frightened and on the verge of erupting in tears. “Sorry.”

  Everyone jumped at another bzzt and flash of sparks from the control panel.

  “She didn’t mess up. The ghost did it.” Evan looked down at where his hands touched the floor, and concentrated on Blockade. As soon as he sensed the power take effect, the lights came back on.

  A male voice outside the elevator growled.

  Shawn grabbed the handrail on the side and pulled himself up before offering a hand to Maela. Walter curled up on his side, cradling his groin.

  Evan stood, scowling at the door. “I made it so ghosts can’t come in here.”

  “Is it broken?” Shawn pointed at the floor display showing ‘ER.’

  “Yeah it’s fried.” Maela held on to the railing to keep from sliding. “We’re tilted. This elevator isn’t going back up ever again.”

  Walter and Shawn fell quiet.

  Another spark sizzled out of the control panel. The doors snapped open with a loud metal scrape, revealing a man dressed in a long black coat over an armored vest, also black. Shawn and Maela both yelled in surprise at the doors moving, but didn’t react to the man.

  Evan clenched his hands into fists, worried at seeing a ghost ignore a Blockade. They shouldn’t be able to open doors… but he realized the spirit had only tweaked a circuit, not actually touched the door. Still, he did not like this ghost, and missed his mother. “What do you want?”

  The man scowled, stepping into the elevator and grabbing him around the throat. His strangulation grip squeezed with less force than a dress shirt collar.

  “Whoa. It just got creepy in here again.” Shawn backed against the innermost wall.

  “Ghost’s here, trying to choke me,” said Evan in a calm voice. “He hasn
’t been a ghost very long.”

  Snarling, the spirit abandoned his attempt to choke him to death, took a step back, and exploded into a mangled mass of smashed limbs with a crushed head and dangling eyeballs.

  Evan cringed. “Eww. Are you trying to scare us or something?”

  He collected himself back to a relatively normal appearance, and glowered, pointing. “That bitch did this to me, and she’s going to regret it.”

  “I can help you. Just tell me who you need to send a message to and I’ll make sure they get it.”

  “Damn, kid. You’re as dense as your mother.”

  Evan blinked. “My mom killed you?”

  “Now he gets it.” The man grumbled. “Damn elevator didn’t work.”

  “That’s because you broke it.” Evan tapped his foot.

  The other three kids stared in silence. The feathery tickle of surface reads poked at his brain. He let them all in so they could see the guy, too—via his thoughts.

  “It was supposed to break through the bottom and fall fifty meters so you went splat like I did.”

  Evan nodded toward the others. “Why do you want to hurt them?”

  “Collateral damage. Nothing personal.” Again, he tried strangling him, but couldn’t manage much of a solid grip.

  “At least let them go back up.” Evan poked at the control panel, to no effect.

  “Bit late for that, kid.” The man gave up trying to choke him and pointed. “Sit tight. I’ll be back with some friends.”

  He stormed off to the left, revealing a narrow metal-walled passage with a grating mesh floor, pipes everywhere, and numerous signs warning of ‘restricted area’ and ‘hardhat required.’

  Evan narrowed his eyes at the departing spirit.

  “Hey, Little Man,” whispered Shawn. “What did he mean by getting friends?”

  “Umm. I dunno. Maybe he’s going to look for an older ghost who can affect the living. Or, he’s gonna lure monsters to us.”

  “There’s no monsters down here. That’s all made up.” Walter rolled onto his back, wheezing. “Damn that hurt. I think my nuts are smashed.”

  Shawn emitted a nervous laugh. “What?”

  “Someone ran me over like a truck,” said Maela. “And I think those are my teeth marks on your forehead.”

  “Umm.” Shawn rubbed his forehead. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Bit my lip. No big deal.” She tugged Evan back from the door. “Stay calm. We just need to sit here and wait.”

  “Wait? What for?” asked Walter.

  “For someone to notice the elevator crashed and send help.”

  Shawn wagged his eyebrows. “Or for monsters to find us.”

  7

  More Demons

  Kirsten fell heavily into her chair at the squad room, glaring at her terminal.

  Fortunately, the case had gone from worst case scenario—anyone could’ve done it—to merely an awful one: four unidentified Diablos. But, they’d only dropped off the body. The killer could’ve been someone else entirely. She planned to find them and hopefully prolong the inevitable shootout enough to pluck the identity of the actual killer from their thoughts. Of course, even finding those four particular Diablos would be a task.

  “Someone dumping a body has to know who killed the guy, right?” she whispered mostly to herself.

  “If we were investigating the Syndicate, I’d say not necessarily. But these clowns? Probably.” Dorian sat on the side of her desk, arms folded. “More than likely, one of those four did it.”

  She reached forward and opened the medical examiner’s report on Juan Miguel Esparza. The remains had already been cremated and sent off to a mass grave, standard procedure for anyone with no family to claim the ashes. Whether or not it was true, she pictured a giant chamber with a single mound of ashes in the middle, the commingled remnants of thousands of people too poor to matter to ‘society.’ The ‘mass grave’ might consist of a storage room filled with small boxes of individual ash, but after her run in with Senator Winchester, it seemed unlikely the government would spend the money.

  She sighed at herself.

  “What now?”

  “Disposed of the remains already. Can’t check out the body.”

  “That sigh was too introspective for that.” Dorian teased her with a half-smile.

  Kirsten glanced sideways at him. “Just annoyed at the mass grave thing. You know, in all the years I’ve been seeing spirits, I’ve never run into one who had been upset about ‘improper burial.’”

  “Of course not. What defines a burial as improper? Mostly mythology. Dumping a body on the side of the road or in an alley is considered bad, but throwing one overboard at sea or blowing them out an airlock in space is somehow proper?”

  “I don’t really know why people decided this crap. Just that no ghost I’ve ever run into has been lingering because they weren’t buried on sanctified ground or no one muttered the funny words over the grave.”

  “But you have encountered sanctified ground.”

  Kirsten crossed her arms on the desk and set her forehead down on them. “I can’t explain that.”

  “It bothers you that it appeared to exist?”

  “If an engine falls off an intercoastal shuttle and lands on some tribal out in the Badlands, his friends will think some magical sky man decided he should die. Random objects from the clouds don’t prove a conscious action from a nonexistent higher power. The interior of a so-called church destroying an abyssal doesn’t necessarily prove the existence of a higher power either.”

  “So, Father Villera had garden variety incendiary linoleum installed?”

  She couldn’t help herself and laughed. “No… I mean, maybe those Seraphim saw him and liked him and decided to help out. Yeah, there are two opposing forces on the other side, but that doesn’t mean there’s like a king or whatever. It doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t something like that make itself known? Especially if it demands worship?”

  “I can’t answer that. Haven’t stuck my head through that door yet. Sometimes I think there may be something out there akin to a creative force, but it’s so vast and incomprehensible to us, communication is impossible. Like a human looking at an anthill.”

  “What the heck is an anthill?” She lifted her head off her arms.

  “All that time you spent in the Beneath as a kid and you don’t know what an anthill is?”

  “Oh… you mean those little dirt piles with the ants crawling on them?”

  “Yeah. The ants probably didn’t have much awareness of you standing there looking at them. You couldn’t talk to them.”

  She chuckled. “Nor do I particularly care if they gather in an expensive building once a week. Any ant that claims I want them to do something is lying for personal gain.”

  Dorian snickered.

  With a sigh, she leaned her chin on her hand and re-read the file. The autopsy report indicated Juan Miguel died to a single stab wound in the heart approximately twenty-four days ago. Bruising and cuts consistent with metal binders were found on his wrists, along with several bruises around the left eye socket, broken ribs, and some missing teeth. The medical examiner’s opinion stated that she believed the decedent suffered a beating that likely rendered him unconscious prior to receiving the fatal wound.

  “Hmm. They found him a little more than two weeks ago. He’d been missing for two weeks before his body turned up, so the Diablos didn’t keep him around long after killing him. And… if this was some kind of revenge issue, they’d have just shot him where he stood.”

  “I agree.” Dorian hopped off the desk and proceeded to pace around. “Perhaps we should open ourselves to the idea that the Diablos we saw disposing of the body were not, in fact, actual Diablos.”

  Kirsten grabbed her head in both hands. “What are you saying now?”

  “Maybe Juan Miguel had gotten involved in something over his head and someone wanted him disposed of. What better way to make an investigation go nowhere than t
o cast blame on a gang so notoriously psychotic that almost everything involving them goes straight to Division 6 when it’s not simply thrown into the ‘oh, fuck that’ basket.”

  She pulled at her hair for a second before flopping back, feeling overwhelmed. “Exactly what could a kid like Juan Miguel get involved with that anyone would go to this length to get rid of him? Hell, he ran with a street gang, even one as… tame as the Scorpionz. They could’ve just shot him and it probably would’ve sat in P10 hell forever. In order for anyone to have checked the Citycam feed to see the Diablos dumping him, an investigator would’ve had to actually take the case.”

  “That only rules out anyone who would understand the inner workings of Division 2. The public at large doesn’t know murdered gang members tend to be ignored.”

  “Argh! Investigating a case is supposed to narrow it down, not make it seem harder.”

  “Now you understand why most Division 2 detectives wind up either drunk or in mental health care.” He chuckled.

  She side-eyed him again. “That drunk detective thing is a stupid cliché.”

  “Just like cops and donuts.” He grinned. “Doesn’t mean no cop ever eats a donut.”

  Again, Kirsten read over the file. Stab wound to the heart. Handcuff marks on the body. Abyssal-tainted energy at the murder site. It all felt far too familiar.

  Emitting a continuous mutter of “no more demons,” she bent forward and banged her head on the desk over and over, though not hard enough to hurt—much.

  “Most cops use booze for that,” said Morelli.

  “See?” Dorian gestured at him. “Now please stop that before you hurt yourself.”

  “What happened to Konstantin’s mask?” Kirsten sat up, swiped her hands at the screens to move the search aside, and opened the screen to start a new one.

  “In the Archives.”

  “Still?”

  Dorian walked to his desk and stuck his hand into the terminal. When it turned on, Morelli jumped with a yelp. Kurosawa and Montez startled at him almost falling out of his chair.