by D V Wolfe
“What are all those?” Noah asked when I dropped the stack of papers on the tabletop.
“Well, we don’t have any other leads,” I said. “So I thought we might see something in the regular papers.” I sighed and slid onto the bench across from Noah. “It’s a long shot, but it’s what we’ve got right now.”
We ordered food from a grumpy older woman who looked like she might have been built along with the building and Noah and I split the pile of papers between us.
We read in silence for twenty minutes, flipping through pages and pausing when something looked promising and then huffing in disgust when we realized it wasn’t what we were looking for.
“I got nothing,” I said, finishing the last page of the last paper in my stack and looking up at Noah. “You?”
Noah sighed. “I’ve got goose eggs. I mean, there are crimes and everything in the police beat sounds well, awful, but normal.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. No call from Nya. Great. Now what?
Our food arrived and we were dug in. Somewhere around the end of my burger but before my last fry, my phone rang and I snatched it off the table.
“Nya?”
“Sorry,” Gabe said.
“Not your fault,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Are you two in Kansas City?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Have you found your incubus yet?” Gabe asked
“Nope,” I said. “We’ve got bupkis.”
“Local papers?’ Gabe asked.
“Nothing that screams ‘supernatural activity’ or girls going missing,” I said.
“Damn,” Gabe said, more to himself than me.
“Why?” I asked.
“The Order hasn’t heard anything happening in Kansas City either,” Gabe said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything for you.”
“Thanks for checking,” I said. “I mean, it would be so much easier if these supernatural bastards wore bells or were followed around by a big red arrow over their heads.”
“From your lips to whoever’s ears,” Gabe said on a sigh. “I’ll keep checking with any source I can think of. What are you doing in the meantime?”
“We’ll be here I guess. We’re waiting on a phone call from Nya to let us know if we need to head for Denver or if the incubus has moved on again,” I said.
“She needs to carry a damn cell phone,” Gabe grumbled.
“Don’t I know it,” I said. “You should bring it up to her the next time you see her.”
“I don’t know if that would go too well,” Gabe said. “She doesn’t like me as much as she likes you.”
It was partially true. Nya was eye-rollingly protective of me. Gods knew why. But she felt about Gabe the same way she seemed to feel about Joel.
“Well,” I said, uncomfortable to let the conversation go on too long with Gabe. “Let me know if you hear something.”
“Good hunting,” Gabe said. “And be careful.”
“Good hunting,” I said. “You too.”
I hung up and tried not to think about how ‘be careful’ and ‘you too’ always sounded like they were saying more when Gabe and I said them to each other.
“What’s the plan now?” Noah asked.
I shook my head. “We wait for Nya to call in about Denver. Hopefully, she’s found a lead.”
The old man sitting with his back to us at the next booth cleared his throat and turned in his seat to look at us. I met his gaze.
“Well if you two don’t have anything else to hunt at the moment, I might have a job for you,” the old man said.
I was speechless. I thought I’d known all the hunters up around the Kansas City area, but I didn’t recognize him and he was definitely not just a random innocent who stumbled sideways into our conversation. I thought I’d test the waters though, just to be sure he wasn’t a drug dealer or a black-market arms dealer, thinking we were speaking in code.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “What kind of job?”
“A haunting, I reckon,” the man said. “I mean I know it ain’t nothing as fun as tracking down an incubus and frying it in the sun, but it might be good for a hoot and a holler.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.” I stood and moved over to shake the man’s hand. He had one leg under the table and his right leg propped up on the bench and I could see that it was a prosthetic.
“Roy Burgess,” the man said. “I used to be more of an active hunter, but mean, old Father Time started chipping away at me. He nodded down at his prosthetic. “Well him and a rakshasa.”
I shook my head. “The fact that you survived a rakshasa attack speaks for itself,” I said. Roy nodded at the bench seat across from him and I slid in, motioning Noah over.
“You two look awfully young to be caught up in this life,” Roy said. “College life a little too tame for you? Decide to take on the baddies of the world instead?”
Noah and I looked at each other and shrugged. Roy seemed nice enough but he didn’t need to know our life stories.
Roy looked at us expectantly. “Well, introduction at least? Unless you want me to call you Ding and Dong.”
“Bane,” I said motioning to my chest. “Noah,” I said, waving my hand vaguely in Noah’s direction.
“Salutations,” Roy said.
“Now what was it you were saying about a haunting?” I asked. If we were going to twiddle our thumbs, I might as well up the soul count as much as I could while we did it. Hauntings weren’t usually worth much if anything, but if it was vengeful, it might be worth one more soul, which was better than none.
Roy nodded. “You can’t be too green if you’re ready to get down to business.” I nodded but didn’t say anything so that he’d continue. Roy leaned forward in his seat and dropped his voice to a conspiratory level. “You two familiar with Kansas City?”
I nodded and Noah shook his head. Roy focused on me. “Well, there’s this building on Grand, set back a ways, in the Power and Light district. People keep going in, but they aren’t coming out.”
14
I looked at Noah and shrugged. Noah’s attention was focused on Roy and he was leaning forward, his chin only a few inches from the table.
“How do you know they’re not coming back out? I mean, are you watching the place?” Noah asked.
Roy shook his head. “No, I got a buddy who’s daughter disappeared there two days ago. She’s a teenager so the cops think she’s just a runaway, but security footage from the building across the street shows her going in there the afternoon she disappeared. I drove around the building. The only exit other than the front doors is chained and padlocked from the outside around back. The building is supposed to be condemned and be up for refurbishment, so it’s not exactly up to code.”
“What makes you think it’s a haunting?” I asked. “Could it just be that she’s holed up there, or that someone is keeping her there?”
Roy shook his head. “I tried going inside with iron and salt and my E.M.F. gauge. The damn thing was going crazy and I couldn’t get in. It about knocked me on my ass.” Roy looked down at his plate and then shoved it away. He looked embarrassed. I’d seen that look before. Hunting didn’t pay like a pro ball career, but it would knock the crap out of you like one. Hunter’s parts seemed to wear out at an alarming speed and the hunters who made it past fifty knew that it wasn’t wise for them to push the envelope. Some of them still jumped in with both feet and the job usually wound up getting them in the end. The others, like Tags and Rosetta, became ‘leg-ups’ for other younger hunters. They’d still hunt, usually when I dragged them out with me like the asshole I was, but for the most part, Rosetta did her seances, Tags made tinctures and elixirs and they both performed rites and did research to help other hunters out. I looked at Roy and wondered if he’d considered changing horses and entering the "hunter support" league. I wasn’t about to suggest it to him though. Depending on how young a hunter is when they fall into the life,
they may tote shotguns and knives, kick in doors, perform eviscerations, beheadings, dismemberments, and immolations for twenty years or more before having to pack it in, change gears, or kick the bucket. One thing that remained constant with all of them, is that the fastest way to piss them off was to imply they were too old to do the job anymore.
I scratched my head and sat back. “If this has been going on for a while, how come the Harbinger hasn’t seen it?”
Roy scoffed. “If the Harbinger had to report every little small-town haunting across the country in addition to the big stuff, the man wouldn’t sleep. He’d be a never-ending ticker tape of supernatural bullshit, everywhere. Nah, I doubt something this small has even registered on his shit-o-meter.”
I nodded slowly. Come to think of it, Walter didn’t seem to ever announce anything happening in Ft. Hope when Rosetta’s hex bags and holyroods lost their juice and the poltergeists and other hellion odds-and-ends came calling. I’d always suspected it was because Walter knew that Rosetta was right there and would be mad as hell if a bunch of hunters swooped down on her.
“So what’s the address of this funhouse?” I asked. I figured we could at least look into it while we were killing time, waiting for Nya to call. If it turned out to be nothing, at least we might be able to find the missing girl.
Twenty minutes later, we were following Roy in his beat-up GMC Sierra truck from the eighties.
“I didn’t know that there was even more stuff going on that Walter didn’t talk about,” Noah murmured in the seat next to me.
I glanced at him and saw he was having some kind of horrible realization inside his head. “It sounds like it’s the piddly stuff though,” I said, trying to pull him back to shore, mentally, before he got caught in a panic undertow. “This will be a piece of cake. We’ve done hauntings and we’ve done poltergeists and we’ve done Rawheads,” I said and Noah sat up a little straighter and nodded. “At worst, this should be like Rawhead Lite.”
“Rawhead Lite,” Noah repeated. Then he snorted.
“What?” I asked.
“That sounds like a terrible beer.”
Roy parked in an overgrown parking lot behind a convenience store just off of Grand and got out. I climbed out, followed by Noah. It was broad daylight so we were going to have to be careful about waving weapons around. I packed the sawed-off and the .45 into my duffle. There was no way the ten-gauge was going to fit. I looked at Noah. “Sorry Noah, we’ll have to leave your good buddy here.” Noah looked worried until I pointed down at the sawed-off. “You’ll take the sawed-off when we get inside.”
Noah looked confused. “Then what will you shoot?”
I shrugged. “I’ve still got some wrought iron rounds for the .45. Not quite as effective, but still pretty useful.” I made sure we had a big roll of salted tape in the duffle, stashed amongst a spray bottle full of holy water and my machete. I double-checked that we had enough ammo for the sawed-off and I zipped the bag shut. I didn’t usually bother with E.M.F. gauges and since Roy had already checked it out, it would have just been one more useless thing to carry. We already knew there was activity here.
“Ready?” Roy chuckled behind me. “Or do you need one of those flowery rolly bags for your luggage?”
I rolled my eyes. “Just taking precautions.”
We headed across the street and paused on the sidewalk in front of the building. It was an old structure. I was guessing somewhere around the turn of the century. It was limestone brick and square with a steepled roof and a wide concrete porch that looked like it had been added recently. The windows were all boarded up from the inside. The front door was heavy wood with three small decorative windows cut into the top. I could see plywood behind their tiny panes of glass.
“So what exactly was your friend’s daughter coming here for?” I asked, looking at the surrounding buildings.
Roy shook his head. “Stupid kid, apparently there was supposed to be some ‘underground’ music show here that night. Her friends had been too scared to go, but she still wanted to check it out.” Roy sighed and I watched his face wrinkle deeper in worry as he craned his neck back to survey the building. “I just hope it hasn’t checked her out.”
We climbed the steps and did one more sweep up and down the street. Some kids were heading away from us down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, bouncing a basketball between them. On the next block, a man was sneaking a smoke and looking at his phone. Besides that, the street was abandoned.
“Well,” I said, reaching for the door handle. “No time like the present.” The door swung inward and we stood still, listening. The house was pitch black. Beyond the sunshine slanting in from the open door, there were only dime-sized cracks of light coming in from between the boards covering the windows. I held my breath as I stepped over the threshold. No resistance. I looked back at Roy. “So far, so good.”
Roy took a step inside too. “Maybe the hellions stayed up past their bedtime and they’re sleeping it off right now.”
Noah followed and we formed a tight knot just inside the door’s threshold. I dropped the duffle bag on the floor and started handing out weapons. Roy had a single barrel sawed-off of his own that he pulled out from the inside of his bib overalls. I offered him some additional rock salt shells but he shook his head and patted the chest pocket on the front of his overalls. “I’m all set.”
I got Noah outfitted with the sawed-off and filled his cargo shorts pockets with more shells. I changed the clip of the .45, dropping the empty clip back into the duffle and replacing it with my last full clip of wrought iron rounds. I stuck the machete in my carabiner and duct tape holster and handed a flashlight to Noah. Roy had been fiddling in his back overall pocket while I got Noah what he needed. He’d pulled out a battery-powered headlamp flashlight. I held his shotgun while he got it situated on his head and switched on. I handed him his gun back.
“Not bad,” I said, impressed. “Headlamp is a good way to go.”
“This ain’t my first rodeo,” Roy sniffed. I pulled the penlight out of the duffle along with the roll of salted tape. I ran a line of tape behind us at the door’s threshold. We headed deeper into the building and immediately ran into a problem. The hallway split about ten feet inside the front door. Straight ahead of us was a solid wall. The only ways to go were to the left or the right.
“Let’s stay together,” Noah said.
I shook my head. “Probably faster for us to split up and just call out if we hit the big weird jackpot before the other crew does.”
Roy nodded. “She’s right. If we stay all together, we might just end up chasing our tails. If anything is stalking around in here, it might be able to loop back and get us from behind.”
We all hesitated for a moment. I definitely didn’t want to send Noah by himself and Roy wasn’t really in any shape to be hunting alone. I could see the sweat forming on his brow in the light of the penlight. This was taxing him and his leg. Noah seemed to understand too. He nodded. “I’ll go with Roy and we’ll take left. Bane, you wanna take right?”
I grinned. “Not really a question was it.”
Noah shook his head. “Nope. Have fun going right.”
I nodded. “Call out if you see anything interesting.”
We split up and as soon as they rounded the corner at the end of the hall, the darkness crowded back around me, the penlight being the only thing pushing it back from my face.
There were three doors along the hall in front of me. Old brass handles and warped black paint were the only things that clung to the old wood. The walls were shabby and there was the faint smell of smoke as if there’d been a fire at some point. As I approached the first door, I heard something.
I stopped, the board underneath my feet groaned but then it was silent and the whole house seemed to be holding its breath around me. Then, I heard it again.
Laughing. A little girl, laughing.
I allowed myself an inward groan. Poltergeist probably. Unless by some mira
culous coincidence there was another Hellgate under the building’s foundation, this only meant one thing. The body of the spirit who had become the poltergeist was here. Somewhere. What the hell had Noah and I stepped in? I was going to use this in my next argument with Nya to get a freaking cell phone. I gave myself a mental shake. I wouldn’t have been able to avoid taking this case anyway, even if Nya had called seconds after Roy had asked for our help. A girl was missing. It was slim, but she might still be alive. I inched forward.
The door next to me banged open and a wall of air smacked into me so hard that I bounced off the other wall. There was something huge with fiery red eyes and a body that seemed to be made of tree branches and oil, filling the room. It was screaming and talking and laughing as if it had rolled over a town during dinner and just engulfed all the residents, taking them into itself. It was rolling towards the hallway. I yanked out the .45 and aimed between its eyes, firing once. I had a finite number of shots. The thing turned to a black mist and zoomed down the hallway away from me, leaving the empty room behind it. I turned the penlight in time to see it whip around the corner at the far end. I debated yelling out to the other two. If it was a poltergeist, that was probably just a mirage. Or at least, that’s what we called it when a spirit set up decoys to throw you off its trail.
I shone the penlight around in the room it had just vacated. Empty except for a stack of chairs in one corner and a floor lamp with no shade, just inside the door. I pulled the door closed and headed back down the hall. The second room was much like the first, but without the mirage. I moved to the space next to the third door and I felt the temperature immediately drop in the hallway. Door number three was the winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Or so I thought.
I twisted the knob, feeling the cold brass try to cling to the skin on the pads of my fingers. I pushed it open and stared at a little girl standing in front of a full-length mirror. A white sheet lay on the ground beside it and she had her hands pressed against the glass. She wasn’t laughing or singing.