Shades (14 page)

Max started back into the hospital. Liz followed at his heels.

"Somebody help me!" a different male voice roared.

Liz recognized the voice at once. She never broke stride, running a step behind Max. "That's Kyle," she said.

"I know," Max replied. He rushed through the swinging doors that led to the care center.

Liz had been to the emergency room center before and recognized the room instantly. Beds lined both sides of the large, long room, and were given the illusion of isolation by the pale blue curtains hanging from tracked runners on the ceiling.

Kyle, one arm bare and bloody where his shirtsleeve had been cut away, held an old man in the bed next to his. The man looked like he was at least seventy, pale and wizened. Plastic tubing ran from IVs in both arms to bags hanging on either side of the bed.

"Get him away from me!" the old man roared. "He's dead! He's come after me!" He screamed in fear.

Kyle's wounded arm bled over the old man's sheets as he struggled to keep the guy down on the bed. "Somebody help me!"

Nurses and two doctors in scrubs ran over to the old man's bed. Then an electrical strike strobed the floor and the lights in the emergency room went out.

14

Michael stared at the specter that hung in the air behind Jim Valenti. The "ghost" stood almost ten feet tall, looking even taller because the creature had to bend and stoop to fit under the basement ceiling. Loose cloth clung to the specter, folds that barely covered the emaciated figure and flapped in the wind. Dark circles surrounded the black eyes, and the creature was bald.

Staring at the creature, Michael felt certain the thing had stepped out of some horror movie, not a grave. The static-charged air whipped through the garage, and sparks leaped across some of the boxes of ore samples.

"Michael!" Valenti yelled across the roaring winds. "Get the girl out of here!" He tried to step forward, but the winds sucked him back into the basement room. The door slammed shut with a sudden fierceness that swallowed the beam from the flashlight Valenti carried.

Suddenly aware that Kelli was screaming, fighting, and clinging to him all at the same time, Michael guided her out of the garage. The garage door slipped free of the jammed position it had been in and dropped back down with a heavy clank behind them.

Spotting Valenti's truck parked in front of the house, Michael sprinted for the vehicle, half carrying Kelli as she struggled to keep up. When he reached the truck, he shoved the girl inside. "You'll be safe here," Michael said.

"Where are you going?" Kelli demanded.

"To help Valenti."

"You can't leave me here!"

Michael closed the door and said, "Keep your head down," and ran back to Wilkins's garage. He narrowed his eyes against the spinning grit and dust that rose from the garage floor. The wind slashed him with icy talons.

Summoning the energy that was part of his alien heritage, Michael threw out a hand. The energy struck the garage door and forced it back up into the tracks. However, the garage door only traveled something less than three feet.

Michael threw himself under the garage door's edge, sliding and rolling like a base runner stealing second. He pushed himself up on the other side, summoning more energy and creating a ball of light in his left palm. The light illuminated the garage.

Lightning struck the Willis jeep, causing the vehicle to rock violently for a moment. A black singe marked the place where the lightning had struck.

The static electricity discharge still raced through Michael, but somehow seemed dimmer. Either whatever was causing the buildup was dying down, or using his powers was negating the effects. He increased the size of the ball of light in his hand, amazed at how the electrical disturbance retreated before him.

"Valenti!" Michael yelled.

"Here!" Valenti yelled back. "Door's stuck. I can't get it open."

"Step back from the door," Michael ordered, then focused his energy on the door. When the force he generated smashed into the door, the basement door blew open.

Valenti lay inside, covering his head with one arm and holding the flashlight he'd taken from Kelli. He glanced up at Michael.

Without hesitation but with an acquired knowledge of what one of the creatures was capable of, Michael crossed the room, watching as the elongated and emaciated form of the poorly robed man turned toward him.

"Do you see it?" Valenti asked.

"Yeah," Michael replied, watching the creature floating through the air. The wraps that covered the ghost flapped in the wind. The dead face remained emotionless, the mouth and eyes all open in perfect black circles. "Don't you?"

"No," Valenti answered.

Even as Michael wondered about that, and wondered what he was going to do, the thing changed shape, mor-phing into a young woman with a broken face.

Valenti cursed and backed away from the creature.

"Do you see it now?" Michael asked.

"Yeah," Valenti answered hoarsely. "That's the first woman I ever saw murdered after I became a deputy."

Feeling braver and more certain of himself, Michael shook his head. Sand and grit still whirled in the room, stinging his eyes and scratching at his face and arms. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the wind. "That's not a ghost. That's something else. Something that can change forms. That isn't what it was a moment ago. I never heard of a ghost that could do that."

"Jim Valenti," the ghostly woman said. She stood straight and still despite the winds cycling within the darkened basement. "You could have saved me. You could have prevented my death. I died because you didn't take me out of that house and away from my husband."

Valenti stared at the ghost. Panic darted through his eyes, but he stood his ground.

"It's not real," Michael said, sensing that the ghost was somehow touching Valenti's fear, making it stronger. "It's not a ghost; it's something else."

"It looks pretty real to me," Valenti said. His eyes never left the ghost walking toward him. "I tried to save her. I got her to leave her husband once, but she went back. And when she did, he killed her."

The ghost continued walking toward Valenti. It flickered like an image on an old black-and-white movie. A hand lifted, pointing, then a huge spark of electricity flashed from the fingertips.

The electricity caught Valenti in the chest and knocked him back against the wall. A cry of pain tore from his lips.

A silver shine tracked across the basement floor, drawing Michael's eye. He missed whatever caused the shine, and thought maybe it was an ore sample that might have been in the basement, but he noticed the crowbar that Valenti had dropped.

"You killed me," the ghost-thing told Valenti, closing in on him. Electricity sparked at her fingertips as she moved toward him relentlessly.

A desperate idea formed in Michael's head as he stared at the crowbar. He picked the curved piece of metal from the basement floor and turned to the ghost. Grabbing the crowbar like a baseball bat, he swung at the ghost's back. The crowbar passed through the ghost's body.

Okay, Michael thought, the Neanderthal approach is definitely out. He fell to his knees and stabbed the straightest end of the crowbar into the basement's stone floor.

"You are responsible for my death, Jim Valenti," the ghost said, reaching for him. "And you harbor the Outsiders. They don't belong here. They've already brought death to this community. More will follow. They are not like your people. The Outsiders will never care about your people."

Valenti stood his ground and tried to shove against the ghost. His hands passed through the thing, then a massive surge of electricity dropped him to the floor.

On his knees, both fists around the crowbar, Michael poured his energy into the metal length. The crowbar started glowing red. He pictured the energy pulling at the ghost, and willed the power to suck the thing into the ground, whatever it was.

Abruptly the ghost jerked back from Valenti, feet skidding against the stone floor.

"Nooooo!" the ghost howled as it continued sliding toward the crowbar. The creature whirled around.

Michael kept pouring his energy into the crowbar.

The ghost levered an accusing arm toward him. "You will die, Outsider! You will die! You can't remain here!"

Michael didn't bother to reply. The ghost was scared of him. That had to be a good thing.

The ghost came closer, sparks playing between its fingers. The eyes changed, becoming dark, bottomless pits. "You're going to die, Outsider! This is not your place! You can't stay here!"

Michael poured more power into the crowbar, trying to draw the creature into the bar and ground it. Whatever else the creature might be, it consisted of electrical fields.

A huge static energy charge exploded in front of Michael's face, blinding him for an instant and covering his face in a sudden wash of heat. Then he watched as the ghost stretched and became disproportional, like a strip of taffy being pulled. In the next instant, the ghost was sucked into the crowbar, yanked along the lines of electromagnetic force Michael had channeled the creature into.

The ghost disappeared, and the wind disturbance died away. An eerie silence descended over the basement area.

Valenti pushed himself to his feet cautiously. "Is it gone?"

Michael held the crowbar fast in both hands. The power he contained still throbbed within the length of metal. "I don't know. I've got it contained for now."

"What is it?"

Michael shook his head, trying to keep concentrating on holding the force within the crowbar. He imagined the energy striking the stone floor and burning itself out of existence.

A silver surface glinted to Michael's right, drawing his attention to a pile of rags and bones lying against the wall to the right. The thing, whatever it was, moved arthritically, rocking back and forth. It was about the size of a quarter, barely seen in the beam of the flashlight Valenti held.

An explosion of light filled the basement again. Through slitted lids, Michael saw lightning shoot from the crowbar and strike the bobbing silver object trundling through the pile of rags and bones. The crowbar was suddenly dead weight in his hands.

Sparks smoldered in the pile of old clothing, like coals in a campfire.

Valenti joined Michael, walking a little unsteadily. He aimed the beam at the pile of clothes. "You saw it, didn't you?" Valenti asked.

"Yeah," Michael croaked.

The pile of rags turned out to be the remnants of clothing that had rotted away. Inside the rags was a skeleton. The eye patch had fallen as the flesh had melted away over the years, but still hung around the dead man's neck. A leather pouch on a rawhide thong around his neck had a hole torn through the side. The whole left side of the skull was crushed; bone fragments barely clung to the damaged area and the empty cavity where the brain had been.

"Terrell Swanson?" Michael asked, struggling a little to keep from backing away from the skeleton. Standing up to a ghost that he didn't believe was a ghost was one thing, but this was definitely a dead guy.

"Probably take the forensics people a little while to agree to that," Valenti said in a tired voice, "but I'm betting they do."

"Wilkins killed him," Michael said.

"That would be my guess too. When that old man gets out of the hospital, he's going to be up on murder charges." Valenti shifted the light to the gaping hole in the back wall of the basement.

The edges of the hole were jagged concrete. A pick and a sledgehammer lay on the floor nearby.

"Wilkins killed Swanson and buried him in here," Michael said. "Then he dug him up. Why?"

"We don't know Wilkins dug up the body," Valenti pointed out. "That's just guesswork."

"Want to bet against me?"

"No." Valenti probed the cavity in the wall with the flashlight. Spiderwebs filled the space, but they were old and covered with dust. "Spiders lived in here for a while." He played the beam over the dead spider bodies cluttering the floor space at the bottom of the cavity.

"Something killed them?" Michael asked. "Maybe the ghost-thing that was trapped in here with the dead guy?"

Valenti knelt. "No. This wasn't sudden, like through an electrical surge. They starved to death."

Michael stared at the hundreds of bodies inside the makeshift crypt. "Why would Wilkins wall up so many spiders with the corpse?"

"There probably weren't many spiders at first," Valenti said. "The few that got locked up inside the wall had babies." He shone the light on the desiccated corpse at their feet. "They had food. At first."

"Okay," Michael said, edging toward a gross-out meltdown. "That's plenty of bug food chain stuff for me. If somebody like you were teaching biology at the high school, more people would stay awake and lunch wouldn't be such a big draw."

A piece of silver glinted on the dead man's clothes. The material still sustained glowing embers from the lightning strike.

Valenti knelt and took a folding pocketknife from his jeans. Carefully, he speared a delicate network of wires that looked like a bit of shredded aluminum foil. Black stains showed on it, offering mute testimony to the fact that the lightning had hit it.

Michael looked at the metal piece. "What's that?"

"That," Valenti said, "is what I'd call a clue." Then he directed the flashlight beam over stacks of plates containing half-eaten food, beer bottles with cigarette butts floating in them, and a thick book. "So are those."

Michael took in all the dishes and abandoned food, the beer bottles holding cigarette butts. "Somebody put in a lot of time down here."

Valenti studied the food. "None of the food looks more than four or five days old."

"So what?" Michael asked. "Wilkins sat down here spending time with his old, murdered buddy?"

Valenti reached in among the plates and took out the book. He showed the thick tome to Michael.

"The Bible?" Michael asked.

Valenti opened the book at the marked sections. "Yeah. And judging from the areas Wilkins was reading, he was studying how to perform an exorcism."

Staring at the pile of bones lying in the basement floor and remembering the ghost he saw at the Crashdown, Michael said, "Yeah, well, I guess he didn't learn enough."

"It's okay," someone shouted in Kyle's ear. "We've got him. Back off."

Feeling the throbbing pain in his injured arm, Kyle remembered how the room on the remodel job crackled with static electricity before the dead man showed up. He gratefully moved back from the old man lying in the bed.

"He's coming for me!" the old man yelled, fighting against the team of nurses and two doctors that piled on him in an effort to keep him in the bed. "He's dead! Do you hear me? He's standing there with half his head missing! God, it was an accident! It was an accident!"

Kyle walked backward, bumping into Quinlann, who took charge of his injured arm and applied one of the antiseptic compresses the nurses had given him to slow the bleeding.

"What's going on?" Quinlann asked.

Kyle watched the old man struggling against the doctors and nurses. The old guy had surprising strength.

"He thinks he sees a ghost," Kyle said.

"Where?" Quinlann asked.

"In here," Kyle whispered, gazing around the darkened room, looking for the dead man he'd seen earlier. "Somewhere in here with us."