by JL Bryan
Their dying voices had been part of the boogeyman’s illusion. Thank God.
The flames around them whisked out like birthday candles, leaving black and smoldering baseboards and furniture behind. The effect spread out like a ripple from the family, snuffing out the runners of fire as quickly as Anton had made them appear.
A loud crack sounded from the front door. It swung open, and Stacey staggered in, off-balance and wielding the crowbar from the van. She stumbled toward me, gaping in surprise at the fires surrounding the door.
Then the rest of the flames blew out, leaving us all in darkness.
The sharp-fingered hand released my arm. As my eyes tried to adjust to the dim glow from a streetlight outside, I saw Anton shrivel into something black, with sharp, angular limbs.
It hissed as it leaped at me. Stacey had recovered her balance and now hit us with a flashlight.
The shadowy figure of the fearfeeder, of Edgar Barrington’s ghost, landed on the wall high above me. It scrambled like a spider on amphetamines into the high shadows of the two-story room.
I pointed my flashlight at the ghost and clicked, but I only got a brief, weak puff of light before the battery died. Barrington had drained it along with my headset, and probably every device on my belt. The most annoying and difficult ghosts are the ones that suck all the power out of my ghost-hunting gear.
Stacey tried to follow it with her light, but it shot out of sight into the upstairs hall. If Jacob was right, it could use any of its favorite doors up there to escape and retreat into its lair below.
All of us stared after it, watching to see if it would return, possibly in some new and more horrible form. After a little while, we looked at each other instead.
“Is everybody okay?” I looked at Alicia and her kids. They nodded, still in shock from all they’d just seen. I was so glad to see them alive and unharmed that I could have hugged and kissed them. I refrained.
“Everybody’s fine!” Stacey said, looking out the front door. I stepped forward and saw Calvin out there, parked in his chair at the bottom of the porch steps.
“Wow,” I said, completely shaken. “Thanks for coming, everybody. Was there any fire in your room at all, Alicia?”
She shook her head, looking at the smoke curling up from every spot the flames had touched.
“I heard a voice calling me,” Alicia whispered. She turned her eyes up to meet mine. “Gerard. I followed his voice out here.”
“Thank you, Gerard,” I said, speaking into the air.
Stacey shined her light over the blackened, smoldering furniture, then up the staircase handrail, which was in no better shape.
“Hey,” she said, “Where’s a fireman when you need one?”
Chapter Eighteen
Michael didn’t answer his phone, probably asleep at four in the morning. I went upstairs myself to wake him, leaving Calvin and Stacey downstairs with the family. I’d grabbed a fresh flashlight from the van in case Edgar decided to make a return appearance.
I knocked on his door as loud and hard as I could. I wasn’t feeling shy or nervous, because Alicia and her kids really needed him to look at her apartment and make sure it was safe. It was a strictly professional ghost-hunter-to-firefighter situation.
Eventually, he opened the door. Tousled bed hair, sleepy green eyes, thin t-shirt, red boxers. Oh, my. I was feeling less professional by the second.
“Oh, hey, it’s you,” he said, his voice drowsy and scratchy. His gaze landed on my burned sleeve and wounded arm, and his drooping eyelids raised. “What happened?”
“I played with fire, I got burned. Sorry to wake you up, but I need you to look at—”
“Come inside and take off your jacket,” he said, reaching for my non-wounded arm as if to help me walk.
“Go inside and put on your pants,” I replied, dodging back from him.
“That needs attention right away.”
“My arm can wait. There was a fire in Alicia’s apartment.”
“Is anyone else hurt?” He started forward as if he intended to run downstairs that second. I stopped him with a hand on his stomach. His firm, warm stomach. I pulled my hand back quickly.
“No, but can you make sure the fire’s not going to start up again? And the place isn’t going to come crashing down? Those would be good things to know.”
“Just a second.” He left the door open and darted inside. I followed him into the dark apartment and waited in the living room while he got dressed.
Melissa emerged from her room, blinking, wearing a sleeping gown.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“The ghost tried to set your house on fire,” I said. “It was my fault. It was taking the form of my fears.”
“You’re afraid of fire?” she asked, looking confused.
“Yes.” Well, true enough. I’ve never been one to burn candles or incense for “atmosphere.” To me, the only atmosphere created by open flames is one of impending danger and death.
“We’d better get on top of it,” Michael said, dashing out of his room fully dressed. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the kitchen.
“You’re fast,” I said.
“Fire’s faster.” He sprinted out of the apartment without waiting for me.
“Are we safe up here?” Melissa asked, rubbing her eyes.
“I think so.”
“Are Mia and Kalil safe?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” She yawned. “I’ll come, too.”
She disappeared into her room, and I waited impatiently, not wanting to leave her to walk down the all the stairs alone. She finally returned wearing jeans under her sleeping gown.
We hurried downstairs, where Michael was inspecting the apartment. Alicia and her kids sat on their couch, charred at the top and armrests, listening to Calvin. Stacey was watching the basement on her tablet while they spoke.
“...at this point, we have to consider this place too dangerous for the kids, especially at night,” Calvin said. “You’ll want to make other arrangements for tomorrow night. Friends, relatives, hotel, anything.”
Alicia nodded. “For how long?”
“We’ll finish the job as quickly as we can,” Calvin said. “Tomorrow—well, today, it’s going to be sunrise soon—Ellie and I will work out a new plan of attack. If that doesn’t work, we’ll develop another one, until the entity is gone.”
“I can’t afford to stay in a hotel too long,” Alicia said.
“This is strange,” Michael said. He stood by the staircase, where he’d been inspecting the railing. “Ellie, come have a look.”
I walked to stand beside him, trying not to picture him in his underwear again. “What is it?”
He ran his fingers along the top of the railing, revealing unburned wood beneath. He showed me his blackened fingertips.
“There’s really not much fire damage,” he said. “It’s mostly smoke stains and soot.”
“Because the fire was mostly an illusion,” I told him. “So it’s all still structurally sound? Nothing’s going to fall apart on the kids?”
“It’s fine,” he said. “The furniture’s singed, of course. But there’s no other repairs to make. All the place really needs is a good washing.”
I tried not to crack a smile, thinking of Alicia’s obsessive cleaning and organizing. Here was a job she could really sink her teeth into.
“Now we have to take care of your arm,” Michael told me.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Go!” Calvin insisted, turning to look at me.
“Yeah, your jacket is kind of gross and melted all over you,” Stacey said. “Probably want to take care of that.”
“Go on,” Alicia said. “We’re okay now.”
I nodded and let Michael steer me back to the door to the shared hallway.
“I have a first aid kit in the van,” I told him.
“Mine’s better.” He turned toward the staircase to his apartment.
“How do you know?
”
“It’s a full trauma kit.” He held my arm as we started up the stairs. It wasn’t strictly necessary, or even at all necessary—an injured forearm didn’t interfere with my ability to walk. I didn’t try to pull free of his hand, though. It was nice to let someone else be in charge for a minute. Maybe two minutes, even.
“Do you always treat burn injuries by making people walk up four flights of stairs?” I asked.
“I’m doing you a favor. Exercise stimulates endorphins. The body’s natural painkillers.”
“Funny thing, my arm still feels like it’s on fire.”
“Maybe we need to find a bigger staircase.”
Inside his apartment, he had me stand by the sink, under a bright hanging light, and examined my arm. His kitchen was small but pleasant, lots of cheerful polished wood, a row of potted herbs on the window sill flavoring the air with sweet and spicy aromas.
“I like your apartment,” I said.
“Really? All the weird-shaped rooms and attic roofs don’t annoy you?” He opened the pantry and brought out a red backpack-sized first aid kit.
“Nope. Not as much as the gateway to hell in your basement.”
“Is that what’s down there? I was hoping for raccoons or squirrels.” He heaved the kit onto the counter and propped it open. The interior was full of compartments holding everything from an oxygen mask to finger splints.
“You really are one prepared Boy Scout,” I said.
“Seriously, what do you call the thing in my basement?” He brought out a pair of steel trauma shears and gently took the shoulder of my wounded arm. “Hold still.”
“The closest term I know would be a ‘dark vortex.’”
“That wasn’t mentioned in the rental agreement.” Michael said. I watched his face as he cut my jacket sleeve around my upper arm, half-worried that the hefty shears would slice my arm open. They looked like they could snap through bones.
He cut a slit all the way down the side and carefully removed the jacket from my wound. He was gentle, but I still hissed in pain.
“Darkness and suffering attract more darkness and suffering,” I said. “It’s like gravity. Start with something small and let it build over the years—thousands of years, in this case, and you get...bad things.”
“Bad things? You’re confusing me with all these technical terms.” Michael cut the sleeve of my cotton shirt into pieces and undressed my arm, revealing the red, partially blistered forearm.
“The science is pretty scarce in all of this,” I said. “There’s not a lot of hard established facts. Just folklore and superstition.”
“I’m cleaning it off,” he said, his voice shifting to something careful and soft, like he was talking to an injured child. It was like he’d snapped into character, into work-mode. I wondered if he spoke like that to every hurt person he helped on his job. I felt myself going a bit warm and glowy in the chest area. “This should help with the pain, too,” he added.
He eased my arm under the faucet, into the running water.
“It’s freezing!” I hissed.
“It isn’t,” he said. He moved the faucet handle slightly. “Now it’s almost warm.”
“I thought this was supposed to make it feel better.”
“You don’t feel better yet?” he asked.
I became less aware of the throbbing in my arm and more aware of him standing close to me, holding my arm, a welcome intrusion into my personal space.
“I’m better,” I whispered after a while.
He turned off the water and patted my arm dry, while avoiding the burned area itself. Then he studied it again: four dark red patches, a couple of them with little flesh bubbles at the edges, burn blisters that made me think of hot pizza cheese.
“These marks almost look like fingers,” he said. “Like somebody grabbed you.”
“That’s what happened. I told you this ghost takes the shape of your fears, right? I’m afraid of...fire. It’s my fault the apartment burned.”
“It didn’t really burn, though. I’ve seen worse.”
“I’m sure you have.”
He smiled and gazed at me for a moment. I looked right back at him.
“We’d better wrap it up,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, off-guard by his sudden dismissal. “I guess I should get back to work.”
“I meant with this.” He tore open a package labeled Water-Jel Burn Dressing and carefully laid the cool, gel-soaked material across my arm. I could feel the pain seeping out while he bandaged me.
“What’s in this?” I asked, poking at the wrapping.
“Mostly tea tree oil. Nature’s antibiotic.” My fully dressed arm continued to rest in his hand, the gel pulling out the heat and pain. “Don’t be so hard on fire. It can be fun. I always wanted to build and light the fire. Back at my mom’s house, I mean, when we were kids. We don’t have a fireplace here.” He said it like it was a sad, tragic situation, not having a place to burn things for pleasure. “I used to go camping with my friends, and we’d build these huge bonfires. Fire’s alive, I think. It has a mind of its own. It’s fascinating.”
“My parents died in a fire,” I said.
“I meant to say fire is the most evil force on the planet. That’s why I’m devoted to putting them all out. Some people, they like fires, but I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”
I laughed at his backpedaling. It made him seem awkward and vulnerable for once. Something about that made me feel comfortable leaning just a little closer to him, and pretty soon after that we were embracing each other, my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
I happened to look up at him and found him looking down at me. He kissed me, and it was like a shock of energy, traveling down my spine and curling my toes.
“Cuckoo, cuckoo,” announced the mechanical bird, emerging from its house on the wall. “Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,” it elaborated. Five a.m. Boss and client waiting for me downstairs.
I backed away and looked up at him. “Does that go off every hour of the night?”
“When it’s working right.”
“How do you stand it? I think I would’ve smashed that bird a hundred times by now.”
“My mom bought that clock at a yard sale. It never worked. After she died, I just started looking at it one night, and I opened it up. I researched how it was supposed to work and how to fix it. I kind of liked bringing it back to life.” He shrugged.
Oops. My turn to backpedal. “I was just thinking that cuckoo clocks are the best kinds of clocks. Why doesn’t everyone have one. They’re much better than, like...grandfather clocks.”
“Or digital clocks.”
“That goes without saying. And then you moved on to gnome clocks?”
“Antique automatons,” he said. “Some people will pay a lot for a fully restored one.”
“The cuckoo’s telling me I need to get back to work,” I said, moving away towards the door.
“I have to get to work, too. I’m late.”
“You go to work at five in the morning?”
“Some people have it lucky,” he said. “I’m just one of them.”
“Okay. Well have fun..putting out fires and rescuing cats from trees.” I put my hand on the doorknob. I hadn’t taken my eyes off him.
“Did you know most cats are actually able to climb down the tree by themselves?” he said. “They just don’t want to.”
“Oh. Maybe you could show me the statistics on that sometime.” What? Get out of here! I was exhausted, not thinking clearly at all. “Thanks for the bandages and the...everything.”
“I should check the progress of your burn tomorrow,” he said.
“Okay. Good.” I smiled at him. Had I not been smiling already?
“Just make an appointment with the nurse on your way out. And avoid walking into any open flames for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Thanks for the advice, doc.” I walked out of the apartment and hurried down the stairs, feeling a go
lden moment of pure elation and excitement before I reached Alicia’s apartment and had to focus on stopping the monster again.
Chapter Nineteen
Any time a ghost tries to kill me, I get a free breakfast.
That’s according to a deal I made with Calvin a few years ago. Since he was at our client’s house that night, I held him to it: a blue-crab omelet at Narobia’s Grits and Gravy. This is a gem of a place, a family business located in a small building over on Habersham. It’s always crowded because the food is unbelievably good and the prices are crazy low. Calvin was able to buy breakfast for the three of us for about twenty bucks. So it’s not like I was being too demanding. Working a lot of nocturnal hours around the city, you learn where the best breakfast spots are, though I’m usually eating supper at that time.
We talked about the case, just reviewing what we’d learned and where we were. We needed a new plan, but we were all too brain-dead to really put anything together. I was still badly shaken from seeing my most hated ghost and nearly dying at his hands—even if it wasn’t really him, the boogeyman had done a pretty convincing imitation.
Anyway, the grits were buttery and amazing.
Then I went home to sleep, and my dreams were filled with fire, my parents, Alicia’s kids, Anton Clay, and the spidery black boogeyman watching me from the ceiling. I think daytime nightmares are more vivid and intense, but that could be because I’m usually having them in the middle of an investigation, when I’m working vampire hours and dealing with unsettled and dangerous spirits.
I let myself sleep until early afternoon, and my arm was still burning in pain. I guessed I would need to cash in Michael’s offer of a follow-up appointment—just thinking about it made me a little thrilled. I could still feel his unexpected but entirely welcome kiss on my lips. We’d only met a few days earlier, but it felt like I’d known him much longer than that. He made me feel safe and protected.
You’re never truly safe, I reminded myself. Especially when you let yourself care too much about other people.
I tried to shake off that downer feeling as I took a long, hot shower, leaving my bandaged arm jutting out through the curtain. Bandit watched from the bathroom floor, giving a couple of inquisitive meows about this odd behavior on my part. He obviously wasn’t too concerned, because the moment I turned it off, he hopped into the tub for his usual drink of warm water.