“Spirit,” said the woman—looking at Evan. “You have brought these strange children here?”
“I’m not a spirit, Jeff is.” He pointed at the ghost. “I’m a boy.”
“Your eyes have light.” Crossbow Man gestured at him. “This is an omen.”
“Come, little ones.” The woman offered a hand. “You will be safe here.”
Maela eyed the hand hovering in front of her. “We’re not looking for a place to live, only somewhere to wait for help. We need to go back to the surface.”
“Don’t be foolish, girl,” said the beardless man. “You’re too small to run around out there. Monsters’ll get ya. This your home now.”
“Safe in ’ere. None monsters grab yas.” The woman smiled, and offered Walter her hand.
Evan glanced up at Jeff. “You said this place would be safe?”
“It is.” Jeff nodded. “These people won’t hurt you. They’re a little, umm, uneducated, but they will protect you from the other stuff down here.”
“Umm…” Evan looked at the adults. “We only need to stay here until my mom finds us. We live on the surface and need to go back up.”
“Aww, them’s just little kid stories,” said the woman. “All that’s out there is space and vacuums.”
Shawn pointed up. “That’s a metal ceiling, and there’s a big city out there.”
The younger man shook his head. “Ain’t nothin’ but planets out there. An’ outer spaces. They don’t want no one to know it, but the Earth blowed up. We’re all that’s left, inside the lifeboat ship.”
“Oh, wow.” Maela whistled. “You guys… it’s not a ship. We’re still on Earth, under the city.”
“Yeah.” Shawn nodded. “This isn’t a spaceship.”
Crossbow Man grabbed at Maela, but she jumped back. “Someone told ya stories. Sad ya believe such nonsense. Is okay. We safe here. Nothin’ will get ya here.”
Evan skimmed the adults’ surface thoughts. All three thought the kids made up stories about there being a city, genuinely believing themselves trapped in some kind of massive ‘escape pod’ ship that left Earth soon before it exploded. They intended to drag the kids inside as permanent members of the tribe. It didn’t look too scary, except for the whole ‘not letting them leave’ part. His mother could come down here looking for them and never find him.
“They’re gonna keep us forever,” yelled Evan, before bolting into a run.
“Sorry. We can’t stay here,” said Maela, backing up.
“Go!” shouted Shawn.
Walter waved. “Uhh, bye.”
Evan looked back at his friends running away from the adults. The woman chased after them, while the two men hurried back to the settlement, calling for someone to bring more light-throwers.
The clap of sneakers on pavement rushed up behind him, along with spots on the road where flashlight beams darkened the sepia brown to the physical world’s blacktop. Evan hauled ass to the nearest corner, dashing around and sprinting down the sidewalk for two blocks before jumping a fallen wooden pole covered in wires. There, he paused to look back and wait for the others, who hadn’t moved quite as fast due to having limited vision.
“Watch out for the pole,” said Evan, past gasps of air.
Maela reached the fallen pole first and cleared it like a hurdle jumper. Shawn tripped over it but somehow fell into a somersault that bounced him back to his feet. He didn’t stop, continuing to run past Evan and Maela. Walter leapt the post and also kept running.
“Ugh,” rasped Maela.
Evan gave her a ‘yeah, I know’ look.
They turned at the same time and hurried after the boys.
Debris from a collapsed house blocked most of the road up ahead.
“Wait, there’s junk in the way,” yelled Evan. “Stop.”
Shawn and Walter slowed enough for him to run past them and veer left.
“This way.”
He dashed over a lot full of dry hay, likely a former lawn, scaled a fence, and cut through a backyard with a long-dried-out swimming pool. The wooden fence on the other side had collapsed already, making for a quick exit to the next street. Evan looked around for a hiding spot, saw nothing of interest, and kept going to the left.
A few minutes later, he randomly took a corner instead of going straight. Two houses down, a large van sat half up on the sidewalk, all the rubber of its tires missing. It looked like a nice place to hide, so Evan dashed straight for it. He stopped at the back end, turning to face his friends so they could see his glowing eyes. He stood there, holding the door open as they all ran up and climbed inside.
Once Walter got in, Evan followed, pulling the door shut behind him… or at least as shut as a bent door could get.
Everyone collapsed, wheezing.
“Holy crap we almost got kidnapped,” whispered Maela, her legs shaking. “I hate Earth gravity. I can’t run anymore.”
Shawn flopped flat on his back in the middle of the mostly empty cargo van. “Whoa. Yeah.”
Walter shut off his flashlight. “Guys, turn the lights off, or they’ll find us.”
“But it’ll get dark,” whispered Shawn.
“Yeah, and it’s super easy for people to see flashlights when it’s totally dark.” Maela shut hers off. “Do it.”
Shawn sat up and clicked his light off.
“Wow, Ev,” said Walter. “Your eyes are glowing bright enough that we can see a little in here.”
“Maybe you should stop seeing in the dark?” asked Maela. “They can see that.”
Evan sat beside her. “Yeah… I guess.”
“Crap, crap, crap.” Shawn shivered. “Are there really monsters down here?”
“No.” Maela rolled her eyes. “Those monsters are about as real as us being in a spaceship.”
Walter kept picking his fingernail at the flashlight.
Maela trembled. “They’re not gonna find us in here.”
“That’s good, right?” whispered Shawn.
“Not really.” She poked Evan. “You’re still glowing. And, I mean people from the school. No one is gonna find us down here. People are afraid to go to the Beneath. I’ve only been on this planet for two weeks and even I know that.” She sniffled, her voice warped with the tone of imminent crying. “We’re gonna die down here.”
“Guys, relax.” Evan looked around at them. “Calm down. We’re going to be fine. I got an idea.”
“What?” Walter sat up, wrapped his arms around his legs, and let out a long, slow breath.
“As long as it doesn’t involve us dying down here, let’s hear it.” Shawn bumped him on the knee with a fist.
Evan scooted around to lay flat on his back and closed his eyes. “A lot of cops are afraid to come down here. But my mom isn’t. I’m gonna go get her. It doesn’t matter if we’re hiding, I’ll bring her right to us.”
“Huh? How?” asked Maela.
“Astral Projection. I’m gonna jump outta my body and fly up to the city. Don’t freak out, okay? I’m gonna look like I’m dead, but I’m not, just sleeping.”
“Little Man,” muttered Shawn. “You ain’t gonna look like anything ’cause it’s too damn dark to see.”
“O-okay,” said Maela, her voice shaking. “That’s not a bad idea. How long is it gonna take?”
“Umm. I don’t know. Only a couple seconds to get to the city, but I still gotta find Mom… and lead her back.”
“Do it, Little Man,” said Shawn. “Everyone, stay quiet.”
Evan inhaled a deep breath, let it out slow, and did it again, trying to calm down. It didn’t take much effort to feel out the separation between his energy body and his meat body. After over a year of using projection to get away from having to feel his birth mom’s boyfriend hitting him, hiding in a van from well-meaning but dangerously stupid people didn’t even rank as scary. He could find the ‘necessary calm’ to project with a drunken asshole throttling him. Best of all, his real mom had totally destroyed that guy right in front o
f him. Every time Evan thought about Mick’s ghost exploding into scraps of ectoplasm, he smiled at the sense of safety that came with knowing he would never again see that guy.
Coolness washed over him as he sat up out of himself. Maela had her hand in front of her face, gawking at how dark it was to her in the van. With no one able to see him, Shawn stopped trying to appear brave and had the wide-eyed expression of a frightened nine-year-old.
Walter felt around until he found Evan’s shoulder, then fist-bumped it. “C’mon, Little Man. You can do it.”
“Be right back,” said Evan, not that any of them could hear.
He floated the rest of the way out of his legs, his shimmery amber energy body making the whole inside of the van glow. Fortunately, only astrals or spirits could see this light, and he wouldn’t give them away if the ‘spaceship people’ even bothered following them.
A mental nudge launched him straight up toward the city…
And Mom.
13
Witchcraft
Kirsten hurried down the street chasing the ghostly man to the building he’d pointed at.
It turned out to be a residence tower, abandoned for being far enough past the demarcation between grey and civilization. The instant she followed him in the door, her eyes watered from caustic smoky fumes. Though she didn’t see anything burning, that smell could only come from a fire-in-progress. Of course, it might’ve only been some idiot burning stuff in a metal drum for heat. A few dosers lay passed out on the floor in the lobby, using plastic trash for blankets.
She coughed, hurrying to the far end of the lobby where the ghost had gone into a corridor marked ‘management staff only.’ Kirsten tapped the bud in her left ear.
“Ops, need Division 1 backup at my location.”
“Copy that Lieutenant Wren, oh… crap what are you doing in the grey?” asked a young man. “Umm. Hang on. This is probably going to go to Div 6.”
“Whatever.”
The ghost darted past a few grey doors and phased through a closed red door at the end of the corridor. Kirsten skidded to a stop and raised her left forearm, about to transmit an override code, but realized the door didn’t have any electronics in it. Also, it had been broken open already. She pulled it aside, releasing a blast of dark smoke that hit her in the face.
Coughing, she ducked and backed up, letting the black mass rise out of her way.
“Ops,” she croaked. “Be advised. Possible fire in progress.”
“May your unclean soul suffer the purification of fire,” shouted a woman.
“Back to the devil with you!” roared a man.
Kirsten froze, eyebrows flattening to a line.
“Let me go!” shouted a child’s voice before breaking into sobs of “Daddy!”
“Your daddy’s gone, sweet pea,” drawled another man. “He ain’t gonna help you now.”
The ghost paused halfway down the stairs, sending an anguished look back at Kirsten.
She held her breath and ran into the smoke, grabbing the metal railing at the switchback to swing around to the second set of steps. The air cleared the deeper she went, revealing a cinder block wall aglow with the shifting orange light of a large fire. Chain clanked against metal, and the low, murmured chants of several adult voices invoked prayer-like phrases. One even muttered in Latin.
E-90 up, Kirsten took the last six steps as quiet as she could, advanced another few feet to the end of a tiny corridor, and aimed around the corner.
The fire raged in the middle of a large basement room, between a pair of massive tanks that could’ve been industrial hot water heaters or boilers. A young girl with the same light brown complexion as the ghost struggled at the center of the flames, wrapped up in a thick chain that secured her to a crude cross made of steel I-beams. Wild dark brown hair framed a face smudged in dirt and full of terror. Flames rose part way up her chest. The child stared down at a burning pile of mashed furniture and debris stacked against her legs, her expression grim.
At the sight of a little girl Evan’s age being burned at the stake, Kirsten nearly fainted… until she noticed the child hadn’t suffered any injury, not even her hair had ignited. The same couldn’t be said for her clothing. All that remained of whatever she’d been wearing existed as flakes of ash on the wind and a scrap of fabric on her shoulders covered in flame.
“Save this poor tainted one’s soul, O Lord,” wailed a woman in a frumpy purple dress.
“The fiend isn’t burning.” A man pointed at her. “Shoot it.”
The woman shook her head. “No. The creature grows tired. It will eventually burn. Only the purification of fire will save its soul. If we destroy the shell with the crudeness of lead, the innocent this creature should have been will be lost for eternity.”
Six adults—two women and four men—stood in an arc around the pyre, as close as they could get without catching fire. They all appeared roughly in their thirties, their clothing shabby but not fringer dirty. The woman in the purple dress and one man held e-readers, the rest chanted or spouted off ‘scripture’ from memory. A pudgy man with short black hair and darkish brown skin nursed a bloody nose.
Holy shit… She briefly thought back to Ashley Harris being so worried that her grandfather’s ‘flock’ would burn her alive if they found out about her psionic abilities. Wow… She wasn’t saying that to be dramatic.
The girl’s futile struggle to free herself caused the burning scrap of fabric still clinging to her shoulders to fall into the pyre.
“No one will question it if you summary these bastards,” said Dorian out of nowhere behind her. The darkness in his voice left her no doubt that had he not been a ghost, he’d have started shooting already.
Only seeing the child unhurt allowed her to maintain composure. If that girl had been burning alive, she had little doubt she’d have simply opened fire without a word. But… the girl, somehow, didn’t appear in immediate danger. Executing these people still didn’t feel right.
“I’d question it.” She scowled, raised her E-90, and shouted, “Police! On the ground now. Do not make sudden movements or you will be shot.”
All six adults rotated in slow, telegraphed motions and locked stares with her.
“Help!” screamed the girl, squirming. “It’s getting too hot! I don’t wanna die!”
“That’s not a cop; it’s one of them,” shouted the woman with dirty-blonde hair, perhaps the oldest of the lot at nearly forty. She wagged her fist at Kirsten. “Surrender to the purification of righteous fire or suffer the damnation of eternity.”
“On. The. Ground. Now!” shouted Kirsten.
Something in the pyre exploded with a snap and a shower of sparks that scattered over the dry concrete behind the zealots. The girl gasped in response and stopped struggling, taking on the visage of a meditating monk while focusing all her attention on the flames surrounding her.
“Demon spawn!” roared a thick-bodied man with a ginger beard, as he grabbed for the handgun on his hip.
Kirsten pivoted and fired. The dark azure laser from her E-90 bore into his chest, passing through him with little perceptible delay and hitting the wall in the distance. His body fell away from a stunned ghost clutching at its chest. The other five zealots drew handguns like a vigilante firing squad from an Old West holovid. Dorian rushed at them, reaching his arms out to either side, but three shots went off before tiny threads of light leapt from the weapons to his fingertips.
Flinching from a spray of pulverized cinder block dust in the face, Kirsten fired at the woman in the purple dress; the laser pierced the blue muzzle flare erupting from the zealot’s gun before nailing her high in the chest—not a kill, but the woman went down.
The remaining four clicked useless triggers.
“You son of a bitch!” shouted the ghostly father while attempting to punch the spirit of Red Beard.
His fist and the man’s face both burst into clouds of indistinct light for a second before coalescing back to normal.
“Help me!” shouted the child. “It’s starting to hurt! I can’t move!”
“Concentrate on the flames. Don’t look at me!” yelled Kirsten.
A man in a green shirt pulled a knife.
“Don’t.” Kirsten pointed the E-90 at him.
“I act in the name of the Lord thy God. Yea though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. He shall protect me from the likes of—”
“Get down!” shouted Kirsten, her eyes flaring bright in response to the Suggestion.
Green Shirt dove for the floor like someone had thrown a grenade at him.
“Foul witch,” hissed the blonde woman, also pulling a knife.
“Pleeeeeease!” shouted the girl over the rattle of chain.
“Sleep!” said Kirsten at the woman, who dropped in place.
“Fiend!” shouted the man with the e-reader. He pulled a short sword from behind his back and ran at her at the same time the pudgy dark-skinned man charged.
“Hug the floor!” shouted Kirsten.
Spreading her Suggestion over two brains dimmed the effect. The heavyset guy staggered to a halt with a bewildered expression, but the other man zombie-walked closer, raising his blade. Fury at what they did to a child plus her innate loathing of people who cloaked their sadistic natures in false claims of virtue almost made her shoot the man in the face. An instant before she clicked the trigger, a sense of not wanting to lash out in anger and hate won out.
Kirsten lunged into the man’s charge, spinning under his arm and managing a passable ju jitsu flip that left him flat on his back with his arm in her grip. Before the man could process he’d wound up on his back, she fired a laser blast into his shoulder. The wound cauterized in an instant; he screamed.
“Stay still.”
A flash of white light in her eyes glowed upon his face. His expression glazed over. She released his dead arm and spun to point the E-90 at the pudgy guy, who continued staring at her like he couldn’t even remember his own name.
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