by DM Sinclair
She led him out of the storage facility and along the tunnel of pipes and ducts. As they neared the door to Margie’s exam room, she slowed. Overhead they could hear the whine of a vacuum cleaner. Dulled through the ceiling and channeled through the ducts, it sounded to Ryan in his nervous state like an alarm. “Ethan and Ewan don’t come down here, even to clean,” Margie said. “Roger tells them not to. We should be fine.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself. As she crept forward she kept glancing upwards, listening for the vacuum.
“Will they hear when we use the Box?” Ryan asked.
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly. “And it makes the lights flicker in the whole building. Sometimes it throws the breakers.”
“So how are we going to do this?”
She didn’t reply. Her silence put Ryan’s nerves on high alert. Does she even know?
“Margie? How are we going to do this?”
She dipped through the door and into her dark exam room.
He knew the room didn’t look different than it had any of the other times he had been in it, but somehow being there secretly in the middle of the night made it feel even more oppressive. The light seemed harsher, the shadows deeper. Every sound seemed thunderous. Ryan wanted out of there quickly.
Margie was already pulling the Box out of the corner on its cart. The wheels screeched like attacking birds. Ryan winced, but Margie seemed unconcerned. She moved quickly, but not frantically.
Ryan headed for the exam table, remembering how the procedure had gone when they detached Sye from his chair. “Do I have to lie down?”
“No,” she replied, checking that all of the Box’s attachments were securely attached to the cart.
“So how do we do this?”
“Like this,” she said. And unplugged the Box from the wall. She coiled the long cord around her shoulder.
Ryan would have scratched his head in puzzlement if he had a head and anything to scratch it with. “It works when it’s unplugged?” he asked, knowing immediately that it was a stupid question.
Margie wheeled the cart towards the door. Its wheels shrieked in a chorus as though screaming for help. “Check the hall,” she said.
Ryan was stunned. “We’re taking it?”
“Yes, we’re taking it!”
“That’s why you made us take the casket lift! You were planning this all along!”
“Check the hall!”
Ryan’s mind raced. If they took it, Roger would certainly know it was them. He would come after it. He could call the police and have them arrested. He could send his giant monster twins to hurt them and take it back. This was an action that could lead to any number of bad things. But all he could think to say in protest was: “But…”
“Ryan, check the hall!”
Ryan stuck his head out into the hall and looked both ways. It was as empty and subterranean as always. He could still hear the muffled drone of the vacuum overhead. “There’s nobody,” he whispered. “But…”
Margie charged into the hall, pushing the cart ahead of her. She turned hard left to head away from the stairs and towards the casket lift. The screech of the cart’s wheels became even louder as they turned, and the noise echoed up and down the tunnel like the cries of panicked bats. Ryan froze, expecting to hear the vacuum noise stop. But it didn’t falter.
Margie jogged down the tunnel. The squeaking wheels fell into a steady rhythm. Ryan winced on every screech.
“Why don’t we just do it here?” he demanded.
“I told you,” she said, “they’ll hear it. And it makes the lights flicker. They’ll know.”
“They’ll know we took it!”
“Do you want to get off this snow globe or don’t you?”
“Yes! But…”
The cart stopped dead. One of its front wheels had caught the corner of a dent in the floor. The full force of Margie’s momentum slammed into the back of the cart. It rocked forward, and the Box slid to the edge.
Ryan leapt, trying to stop it. But of course he couldn’t. And Margie tried to yank the cart back upright. But it was too late.
The Box flipped over the edge of the cart and fell.
Wires whipped out behind it in a tangle, briefly dangling the Box above the floor before unwinding themselves and pulling free. The Box plummeted the last foot.
It hit the floor with a sound like a train broadsiding a truck. The echo washed over them several times and seemed to take minutes to fade completely.
They both stood frozen, waiting. The Box lay on its side on the floor.
The vacuum noise kept on, undisturbed.
And then it stopped.
The dull thump of heavy, fast footfalls pounded across the ceiling.
“They’re coming!” Ryan knew it was obvious but said it anyway.
Margie yanked the cart out of the pothole that had stopped it, and swept past it to the Box. Even now she moved with a cool deliberation that Ryan had to admire. She crouched and lifted the Box, shaking it gently.
It rattled like a box full of old credit cards.
“That’s unfortunate,” was all Margie said.
“Hey!” a voice thundered at them from down the tunnel.
Ryan spun around to see the ghost brother—Ewan, was it? It was his head and shoulders only, upside down and poking through the ceiling halfway back to the exam room.
Margie ignored him and heaved the Box back onto the cart. She pushed the cart ahead of her as she broke into a run. “Come on! Come on come on!”
Ryan caught a glimpse of Ewan flipping himself upright and dropping to the floor of the tunnel. He was an immense, glowing form in the darkness. He came hurtling at them like a meteor on fire.
Ryan raced after Margie. She struggled to keep control of the cart, zig zagging through the storage facility. The cart’s wheels protested with screams as though terrified of speed.
Ewan caught up to them just as they reached the other end of the morgue. Ryan glanced back and the huge man’s form filled his vision. Ryan screamed involuntarily.
Ewan surged right through them and for a moment Ryan felt like he was lost in a storm cloud. And then Ewan was blocking their path, a wall as wide as the exit. He folded his arms across his immense chest, a feat that served to emphasize both how enormous the chest was, and how gigantic the arms were to be able to fold across it. Margie pulled the cart to a stop, careful not to let the Box spill off of it again.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Ewan growled.
“Just give it to him!” Ryan shouted. He tried uselessly to pull Margie back the other way. He just wanted out of here, away from this monster.
Margie glanced at Ryan. There was no fear in her face at all. “Why?” she said.
She shoved the cart ahead, straight through Ewan. Like he wasn’t even there. Which, in the physical sense, of course he wasn’t.
Ryan berated himself for being so stupid. What could Ewan possibly do to stop them?
“Sorry,” Ryan said, and dove through the storm cloud that was Ewan to stay on Margie’s heels.
But they had to stop again immediately, just outside the door to the casket lift.
Because the other twin, Ethan, was there, blocking the door. His arms were folded just like his brothers. And Ethan could most definitely do things to stop them. Bad things.
Margie stared at the big man, breathing fast but still showing no fear or panic. Ryan hovered behind her, not at all sure what to do.
“Ethan…” Margie said, as though scolding a child.
Ethan squinted at Margie, recognizing her for the first time. He unfolded his arms. “Dr. Sandlin?” He sounded surprised.
“Yes, Ethan, it’s me.”
“Ewan, it’s Dr. Sandlin,” Ethan said. And to Ryan’s considerable surprise, he actually seemed to be smiling. “What are you doing here? We didn’t see you come in.”
Margie glanced at Ryan with a look that said “don’t blow this”. And Ryan understood. They don’t know she was fired.
>
Margie softened her face, took on a friendly tone. “Could you help me get this upstairs?”
Ryan tensed. She was pushing her luck. That’s not going to work. They’re not that stupid.
Ethan shrugged and stepped forward. He picked up the whole cart, Box and all, and hugged it to himself like a toy. He motioned back down the hall with his head.
“Come on,” he said. “The lift sucks. Take the stairs.”
He carried the cart and the Box up the stairs, chatting jovially with Margie the whole time, and all the way out the front door onto the sidewalk. It took all of Margie’s persuasive powers to convince him to leave it there, and not carry it home for them.
TWENTY-FIVE
Myrtle Beach was on fire. The hotel, already half melted into the sand, spewed acrid smoke in a twisting black coil.
Margie blew on it to put it out. Ryan was relieved that she got to it before the smoke detector went off again. The landlord, Gabriel, had looked galled enough on his last time up the stairs that he might evict Ryan if it happened just one more time.
“Let’s try again,” she said. She balanced the still-sizzling snow globe on one of the paddles and held the other paddle out towards Ryan.
Ryan sighed. He was already resigned to the fact, which Margie refused to acknowledge, that the Box was broken. Nevertheless, he stepped forward and let her position the paddle in front of his chest.
She started the Box charging again. Rather than the steadily climbing drone he had heard it make before, it made an unsteady, warbling chord like a punctured accordion. Most of the readouts on it stayed dark, but the one that managed to light up said only “8888.86”. He wondered about the 6.
Margie waited while the sick tone rose to a crescendo. There was no notification to let her know the Box had reached its peak, so she seemed to be guessing. “Ready? 3… 2… 1…” She squeezed the pedal, and the Box shuddered and let out a searing hiss. Both paddles blasted blue sparks and she yelped and threw them down, nursing her hands.
Myrtle Beach caught fire again. Any survivors still in the hotel would now certainly be dead. Margie blew it out and looked at Ryan questioningly.
Ryan walked across the room, putting as much distance between himself and the snow globe as possible. It was only three or four steps before he started to feel the gentle tug, and by the time he reached the far end of the living room he desperately wanted to turn around.
He hurried back, shaking his head. “It’s worse than before,” he said. “It didn’t pull nearly that hard back in the dump.”
Margie made an exasperated noise and kicked the Box.
“It’s broken,” Ryan said.
“It’s not broken. It’s damaged.”
The distinction was not clear to Ryan. “Can we get another one from somewhere?” he suggested.
She snorted in reply and twisted at the back of the Box with a screwdriver.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Ryan asked.
She smoothly lifted the top off the Box and set it aside. He watched as she deftly sorted through the components inside, tapping each one with the screwdriver as though taking inventory. She popped open a snap hinge, pulled a blackened circuit board out, studied it, and slotted it back in.
“Wow,” Ryan said, impressed. “You’ve done this before.”
“I should hope so. I built it.”
Ryan blinked in surprise. And then he was surprised at how surprised he was. He had always assumed that she was some kind of junior medical assistant with a weekend’s cursory training in how to remove ghosts from people with dangerous high voltage equipment. It didn’t seem like something people got a university education in, or made a career out of. Not once had he considered asking her “so, how’d you get into ghosts?” And the Box, he had thought, was probably slapped together by Roger in his basement while listening to evil pipe organ music.
She glanced up at him and must have read the surprise on his face. “I didn’t build all of it. It’s about fifty percent defibrillator. The paddles are from a barbecue set. The case was two different toaster ovens.” She yanked on the wires that attached the paddles to the main Box until they snapped free. It made Ryan wince. He couldn’t help feeling like she was breaking it more when she should be fixing it.
“So, removing people’s ghosts… that was your idea?”
“You’re assuming that’s what it was made for.”
“It wasn’t?”
She sighed and pressed her hand against the side of the Box as though petting a horse. “This was my PhD.” She lowered her voice, and her eyes. “Supposed to be.”
“PhD in what?”
“Neurophysics.”
“Brains?”
“It’s a branch of neuroscience incorporating the methods of experimental physics.”
Ryan blinked. “So… brains?”
“Yes, brains.”
“What do brains have to do with ghosts?”
She looked at him in a way that made him think he had asked a stupid question. “That’s a stupid question,” she said. He was quietly pleased that he had learned to accurately read her expressions. “The brain and nervous system control your body. It’s your body’s central processing unit. So when your ghost is in your body, giving it instructions, what must it communicate with?”
“The brain?”
“Correct. And when your ghost is out of your body, as it is now, it actually takes over some of the functions typically associated with the physical brain. Memories, for example. The ghost and the brain are intertwined in ways we haven’t even begun to untangle.” She hammered hard at something inside the Box with a rubber mallet. The sides of the Box rattled and shifted like the whole thing was going to fly apart.
Ryan raised his voice to be heard above the pounding. “So you did your PhD in ghosts and brains?”
“Do you seriously think I could get any reputable institution before the Blackout to back a study like that? That would be parapsychology, where crackpots lived.” She tossed the mallet aside and, to Ryan’s astonishment, started wrenching at the Box with a crowbar instead. She seemed to think she was repairing an M-1 battle tank rather than a sensitive piece of medical equipment. “My study had to do with epilepsy and the angular gyrus. The Box was designed for probing unexplored parts of the brain with electrical stimuli in ways never thought of before.”
“I bet it makes great tuna melts too.” She didn’t smile, so he explained feebly. “Toaster oven. Never mind.”
There was the smile. She hid it by looking deep into the Box again, aiming her cellphone light around its corners. “But while I was tweaking the box, experimenting with different charges and targets, one of my test subjects reported an experience of having left their body. That wasn’t totally unexpected.”
“Roger told me about this. Out-of-body experience.”
“Correct. It happens when you stimulate the brain in certain ways. We always assumed it was a malfunction in sensory processing caused by the electrical stimulation. But the thing is, at the moment she said she felt like she was out of her body… she was.”
“How do you know?”
“I could see her.”
“Before the Blackout?”
“Yes. There must have been some localized charge in the air, I don’t know. But she was there. She looked at me.” She threw the crowbar away and it clanged loudly and shook the walls. Ryan expected to hear Gabriel coming up the stairs again any moment. “Obviously I couldn’t report that I had observed a ghost. Again, I had no desire to cross into the land of the crackpots. But I definitely saw it. This Box had done something I never intended it to do. I wanted to test it further. But nobody could know.” Margie slammed the case back onto the Box and slammed it home with the heel of her hand. And then with the heel of her foot, which seemed to work better.
“I guess you figured it out.”
“Not exactly. For three weeks, a month maybe, I was obsessed. I tried everything. Different voltages, different transmission met
hods, different subjects. When I didn’t have test subjects I could fool into thinking I was trying to help them, I spent hours just firing electrical pulses into the air, hoping ghosts would just be there. Nothing worked. And then…”
“And then?”
She sat down and set her tools aside. The Box didn’t look fixed, but she seemed to be done with it. She looked at her hands. “The Blackout happened.”
Ryan couldn’t figure out why that was bad. But the shift in her voice made it seem like it was. “And… that was good, right? It proved you right.”
She ignored the question. From the way she kept her eyes down, he could tell he was way off somehow. And it was the first time he had seen her slouch even a little. “I found out there were eleven ghosts haunting the lab. Pretty typical. It was a big, old building. I was thrilled at first. I talked to them. They told me…” She closed her eyes. “They told me, all that time I had been doing tests, blindly throwing pulses into the air from this…” She jabbed the Box with her elbow. “I had been… hurting them.”
Ryan sat down. Oh. That’s why it was bad. “Hurting…?”
“I didn’t know they were there, but they were. And my tests were tearing them apart, attaching them to objects in the lab, or to each other. Totally against their will. And I think…” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “They told me before I started there were twelve, not eleven. One of my experiments… one of the ghosts was just gone. I think… I think I…”
She still wasn’t looking at him. He didn’t know what to say. So he tried: “You didn’t know.”
“No. I didn’t know.” She sniffed once and got her clinical face back. She grabbed a screwdriver and tightened the bolts on the back edges of the Box. She was stunningly fast at it. “Anyway, I shut down the study. I was too scared what it might do to the ghosts. And of course they made me pay back all the financial aid I’d received up to that point. I’m still paying it back.”
“Which is why you live in apartments you steal from dead people.”