by H. P. Bayne
The questions were myriad, and Sully sensed he didn’t have the time nor the ability to ask them. Somehow, a veil had been lifted, and he’d been afforded this glimpse into another realm, one every Edge Creek ghost hunter both sought and would shudder to receive.
Because at the back of a car was forming another presence, this one dark and tall, face unnaturally shrouded beneath the wide brim of a bolero. His head was bowed, keeping the eyes completely hidden, and Sully could just make out a lightly stubbled chin before the shadow consumed the rest of the face. His clothing was black and marked him as something out of the Old West—slacks, vest, cravat, duster coat, boots and leather gloves—an outfit Sully had seen on the westerns his adoptive father had enjoyed watching. This could be Wyatt Earp standing at the opposite end of the carriage.
Only every fibre in Sully’s being told him otherwise.
The man wasn’t wearing a black robe and wasn’t carrying a sickle, but there was no question in Sully’s mind.
This was a reaper.
Slowly, the head lifted, exposing more of the face. The spirit seated nearest the back of the carriage shrank back against the window, placing all the distance he possibly could between himself and the reaper.
“Why am I seeing this?” Sully asked. “I’m not dead.”
Sully’s gifts had always been limited in more ways than one. He could sense but not see those who’d died in ways other than homicides. And he’d never been able to hear the ghosts, although he’d found other ways to communicate.
So he was surprised when, upon the reaper opening its mouth, Sully heard him.
“Not yet.”
As the face emerged fully from the shadow, Sully received another shock. Where the eyes should have been, two black orbs glistened.
The spirit’s lips parted in a cool smile and he drifted forward. Sully tried to step back but still couldn’t move, trapped in this spot as surely as if someone had glued his boots to the floor.
Nowhere to go. Nowhere but wherever this train was taking him.
A heavy blow from the side had him squeezing his eyes shut, blocking out the image of the advancing reaper. He waited for the inevitable feel of his body hitting the wall of the carriage and briefly wondered what had hit the train.
But as his body slammed into what felt very much like a snowbank, he realized it wasn’t the train that had been struck, but him. The cold was back as was the darkness, the only light cutting into it now coming from Dez’s Maglite. And he could move again, though barely. Something heavy lay half on top of him, making additional movement tricky. It took another couple of seconds to recognize the immovable object as Dez.
“Son of a bitch,” Dez cussed as he brought his head up to study Sully through wide eyes. “What the hell, Sull? You okay?”
Sully, too, lifted his head, allowing him to better study his surroundings. Pax laid next to him and lapped at his face, but not before Sully spotted the railway crossing sign on the opposite side of the tracks.
“We’re still at the crossing.”
Dez’s brow furrowed. “Where did you think we were?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. Nowhere good. I was on a train.”
“No, you weren’t. You were standing there in one spot, like you were frozen. And the light was all around you. Creepy as all hell, man. You weren’t hearing me, and you were starting to look like you were really freaked, so I figured best thing was to get you the hell out of the light as quick as possible.”
Sully struggled to sit up, and Dez made it easier by rolling to the side. “You couldn’t have just pulled me out? You had to tackle me?”
“Uh, you’re welcome?”
Sully met Dez’s eye and shook his head as if it would remove any remnants of the vision. “Okay, yeah. Thanks, man.”
“You going to tell me what happened?”
“In a minute.” Sully pushed to his feet. “Right now, I want to get the hell out of here.”
He gave Dez a hand up, then turned back toward the approach leading back to the highway.
A man stood there.
A dead one.
Sully caught a glimpse of him, long enough to identify what looked like a rumpled dress shirt, a pair of slacks and dark hair. Then the man turned and fled into the bush.
Sully didn’t bother pursuing. If a ghost didn’t want to be seen, it wouldn’t be.
But it left Sully with another problem. He’d caught just a moment’s glance, but it had been enough to twig something inside him.
He’d seen this ghost before.
The question was, where?
5
Dez shuddered, fighting back a familiar bubble of fear as Sully finished sharing with him what he’d seen when inside the Edge Creek Light. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting when he and Sully went out there tonight, but it definitely wasn’t this.
Dez clutched the steering wheel a little tighter and eased off the gas pedal as he realized he’d accelerated to speeds unsafe for the winter roads.
“So it’s true, then?” he asked, taking a quick glance at Sully before returning his eyes to the road. “The train, I mean? It’s real?”
“You saw the light too.”
“A light, but that was it. I thought maybe it was just a ghost. Like one ghost, not however many would fit on a damn train. How many do you think there were?”
“No idea,” Sully said. “Quite a few. Given there’s a reaper riding the rails, I guess that shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“Why do you think he was approaching you? Do you think he was going to try to hurt you?”
“Maybe. I got the feeling I wasn’t particularly welcome.”
“The whole ‘not yet’ thing seems like a threat.”
“Or maybe he was stating a fact. Who knows? I didn’t get the chance to stick around to find out.” Sully paused, then added, “For which I’m grateful.”
“So no more going out there?”
“I don’t know. I might have to. I saw that other ghost, and I got the impression he was scared. Having seen the inside of the train, I can guess why.”
Dez cast Sully another glance. “You think maybe he escaped the reaper?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. What I do know is I had the feeling like I’ve seen the guy somewhere before. I didn’t get a good enough look to say for sure.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t Gabe?”
“Positive. This guy was older, maybe around thirty. But that’s the best I can do.”
As far as Dez was concerned, they’d discussed the paranormal enough for one night. He turned on the radio, allowing music to inject some normalcy into the remaining drive. He waited until the song ended, his blood pressure coming down a little in the meantime, before voicing his thoughts.
“Tell you what. You come stay with me and Eva tonight. Tomorrow we’ll start digging into this a little further. We’re going to need to talk to someone with Missing Persons. I’m thinking that should be our next stop.”
“Your next stop,” Sully said. “I want to check into this light a little more. Given what happened tonight, there’s a chance something bad happened to Gabe as a result of having seen it. If the light is what we’re really up against here, we need to know what we’re dealing with—and if there’s a way to stop it if it’s a threat.”
The following morning, Dez dropped Sully at the downtown library.
“Glad you’re doing this bit,” he said before Sully climbed out. “I’d be asleep in the stacks.”
“Didn’t sleep much last night, huh?”
Dez turned an incredulous stare on him.
“Right,” Sully said through a chuckle. “I should have known better than to ask. You’re sure someone from Missing Persons will see you?”
“I called over and talked to Forbes. He’s going to meet me and find me the person I need. He said she’s in the office today.”
“Okay. Guess I’ll head over there after I’m done.”
“Call me first,” Dez s
uggested. “Chances are I’ll be done before you are—maybe very, very soon if no one will talk to me.”
He left Sully at the library entrance and drove the few blocks to the main headquarters of the Kimotan Rapids Police Department. He found a rare space on the street at one of the meters in front and took a moment to fish through his wallet for change. He dug out the needed coins but didn’t immediately move, eyes drifting and fixing on the front of the building.
He’d once walked through those doors in uniform, a patrol officer with dreams of one day moving up the ranks and working in one of the plainclothes, investigative units, maybe even eventually finding a place in administration like his dad. Life and tragedy had gotten in the way, had temporarily robbed him of nearly everything that mattered. Much of it had come back to him once he’d come back to himself. Not everything though. The job sure hadn’t.
The other, more important loss was his dad. Flynn Braddock had died nearly two and a half years ago, but it still seemed like yesterday. Not so long ago Dez had been making one of his many trips to the top floor where his dad’s office overlooked this section of downtown. Someone else now sat behind that desk, looked out of those windows. To this day, whenever Dez came here, his eyes wandered to those two windows. Part of him still hoped to see his dad’s face.
Loneliness swept over him, an emptiness he felt when he thought too hard for too long.
Something black swooping over the car startled him from his melancholy, and he caught sight of a raven as it landed on the hood of his SUV. It used to be he wouldn’t have taken kindly to a bird with large talons and a propensity to poop resting on his vehicle. But this was different.
This, Dez knew, was a sign from his dad.
He squeezed at the corners of his eyes to try to stave off the threatening tears. “Okay, I hear you. Thanks, Dad. I’ll try to stop being a moron.”
The bird squawked once and flapped off, leaving the SUV’s hood as it had found it—poo and scratch-free—and leaving Dez in a better mood than it had found him.
Having unfolded himself from the vehicle, Dez plugged the meter for an hour, then made his way toward the imposing brick structure that was police headquarters. Several neighbourhoods contained their own satellite detachments, allowing for quicker response times in those areas, but most of KR’s policing needs were served out of this location.
A commissionaire now guarded the front, an oddly unarmed presence providing the first point of contact for anyone seeking entry.
“Dez Braddock, here to see Forbes Raynor with Major Crimes,” Dez told the woman.
She turned to a computer next to her to tap in what he assumed was the name of the detective in question. A moment later, she offered him a smile and picked up a desk phone. She punched in a few numbers and waited for someone to pick up.
“Dez Braddock is here to see you,” she said into the phone. Hanging up after receiving some sort of response, she peered back up at Dez. “He’ll be down right away. Please, take a seat.”
He looked first at the front desk where a trio of uniformed officers was busy taking complaints from walk-ins, much as hospital staff sorted through would-be patients attending for medical procedures. No one there he knew, so Dez turned his attention to the waiting area. Most seats were taken, and Dez found himself deciding between a frazzled-looking man with a black eye and fat lip, a twitchy woman who appeared to be coming down off a drug and a man acting as if he might lose his breakfast at a moment’s notice.
In the end, he opted for an empty chair next to the guy who’d lost the fight. The man cast his temporary neighbour a suspicious stare as Dez sat. It seemed a friendly smile was in order, Dez’s size not likely to instil calm in a man who’d already been involved in a significant altercation.
“How’s it going?” Dez asked with a smile and instantly regretted it.
The man stared at him before turning back toward the front desk area without responding.
Fair enough.
Dez hadn’t bothered to time it, but he estimated a good five minutes passed before Forbes appeared from the staircase to the left. Dez stood to greet him with a handshake and fought back the surprise at seeing a genuine smile gracing the older man’s face. They had once despised each other, but events over the past year had slowly turned them to allies—not least of all the fact Forbes, it had turned out, was Sully’s half-brother.
“How’s it going with you?” Forbes asked. Then he looked around. “Sully not with you?”
“Library,” Dez said. “Doing research. He’s better suited to it than I am.”
Forbes smirked, and Dez briefly considered the fact he was no longer offended by the expression. “I believe it.” Forbes nodded his head in the direction of the stairs. “Come on. I think Lil’s in her office.”
Dez followed Forbes to the door leading to the stairs and waited while the Major Crimes detective used his keycard to buzz them through. “Lil?” Dez asked.
“Sergeant Lilian Danvers. She’s in charge of Missing Persons.” Forbes paused as he set his foot down on the first step, allowing him to face Dez. “Don’t call her Lil, by the way—and don’t tell her I called her that. She’s as no-nonsense as they come. Good cop but a stickler.”
“So what makes you think she’s going to help out a P.I.?”
“I don’t,” Forbes said. “I’m just getting you in the door. Rest is up to you.”
Dez fell into step next to him, observing they were moving at a fairly slow pace. “How you feeling these days? Kind of figured you’d have become an elevator guy.”
“Trying to get myself back to where I was before the shooting,” Forbes said. “Can’t do more than one flight of stairs at a time yet, but this is a damn sight better than I was doing last month. One of these days, maybe I’ll be running marathons.”
Dez doubted it. Forbes hadn’t exactly been a marathon man even before his brush with death two months ago. Even so, there was a lot to be said for his desire to get himself back into some semblance of shape, and Dez told him so.
“I know I used to rib you for being a stubborn asshole, but you’re really turning it in your favour these days,” Dez said.
“Fuck off, Braddock,” came the expected response.
As anticipated, Missing Persons was located one floor up, and Forbes buzzed them through the next door before leading them down a carpeted hall. Little had changed around here in appearance, the halls still boasting the same grey-hued rugs, the walls the same uninspiring shade of off-white. They made a turn at the end of the hall, then headed through the first door on the right. A small bullpen greeted them, three desks and a tiny office in the back corner, barely big enough for the desk that filled it. None of the investigators were present, and Dez could only imagine they tried hard to be anywhere else to avoid this oppressive, windowless space.
Or the woman in charge of it.
At first glance, little about Sergeant Lilian Danvers suggested she’d be much help to Dez. Somewhere in her forties, she’d eschewed makeup and kept her salt-and-pepper hair closely cropped in an unflattering, almost mannish style. She was seated behind her desk, so there was no way to know what she was wearing below the waist, but her top half was clothed in a shapeless button-down and a severe black blazer. She was staring at her computer screen, and two deeply embedded frown lines between her brows gave the impression they’d had plenty of practice. No wedding band from what Dez could see, which was about the most natural thing he could imagine.
He turned to Forbes. “Don’t leave me here alone with her.”
Forbes chuckled. “Hey, you dealt fine with me all those years before you realized what an awesome guy I really am.”
“Yeah, right. I put up with you. That’s about it.”
“Just turn on the ol’ Braddock charm.”
“Think it’ll help?”
Forbes snorted. “No.”
Dez glared at the back of Forbes’s head as he led the way to the small office.
“Lilian?” Forbes s
aid. “Wondered if you have a minute.”
She didn’t bother to look up. “For you? Never.”
Forbes stood his ground, crossing his arms over his chest until she at last sighed and lifted her eyes. “What?”
Forbes smirked, then turned to Dez—likely in part to make sure he’d actually followed him in here. “Lilian, this is Dez Braddock. He used to be one of us until he got his ass canned a few years back. Braddock, Lilian Danvers.”
Lilian turned narrowed eyes on Forbes, the question clear in her expression: What are you doing bringing a fired cop into my space?
Dez made the best of a bad situation, extending a long, thick arm over the desktop. “Nice to meet you.”
She stared at the hand a moment before seeming to decide proprieties must. Her grip, for a small woman, was firm. She didn’t, Dez noted, return his polite verbal greeting.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Forbes said.
Dez resisted grabbing Forbes’s arm and forcing him to stay. He watched him leave the unit, then turned back to Lilian. Her eyes were on him, piercing in a way that made Dez shift from his current foot to the other.
“You’re Deputy Chief Braddock’s son,” she said.