Poltergeist (28 page)

The sickening pitch of sudden movement through the Grey made me retch. I hadn't experienced that sensation in quite a while and I didn't like the reminder. With an abrupt jerk, I staggered to a stop— though I hadn't moved in space. Swallowing back a rush of bile, I looked around. The soft orange of my office building's terra-cotta walls was gone and a building of wood and shingle stood in its place. Across the brick street another wooden building bustled with business where my parking garage normally stood. I stepped to the door that led to the nearest building and tried to open it. It resisted my efforts and I had to concentrate very hard on moving it. At last, it swung aside and I went through.

It was difficult to do anything in this shadow of the past. Everything resisted my attempts to move it—Carlos had said the past resisted bending. I found it easier to wait for someone else to open a door and slide through behind the oblivious memory of the person than to try and wrestle the doors myself. The shades demonstrated a wide range of consciousness. Some saw me and treated me as if I were like them; others didn't see me at all. A very small handful saw me, but seemed aloof or upset by my presence, and some of those tried to talk to me or touch me. I shook them off and looked for a way out of this plane of time—this temporacline?

It was much harder to spot the layers and shards of time from inside one but I caught the cold eddy of one's edge and tilted it, sliding again toward something. I felt several forces tugging at me, like currents, and headed for the strongest, jolting back to the alley behind my building and out of the Grey. That wasn't quite what I’d wanted, so I tried again, sinking into the Grey, searching for the corrugated ripples of time planes. Again I found them, but I studied them more this time, looking for something specific.

I finally found one with no building in front of me and pushed it aside, then slid with the same sickening sensation of vertigo. This time, mudflats dropped away beneath me and for a moment I hung in the air at the street level of my own time. A sense of panic rescued me and I scrambled back to a more built-up time. I didn't want to risk falling to the original mudflats and then trying to reemerge in a building that sat twelve feet higher. But I stayed in the Grey this time. No sudden dump back into the normal.

At last I pushed it back and leaned against the alley wall, catching my breath. I felt as if I'd just completed a heavy workout. Glancing at my watch, I cursed. I had twenty minutes to get to LakeViewCemetery.

The cloud cover was solid and lowering but still not a drop of rain had fallen. The expectant chill was perfect for a funeral. When I arrived, the service had already started. The crowd was large and I spotted a lot of familiar faces: Phoebe and the staff from Old Possums; most of the poltergeist crew; Amanda; and a cluster of people so blank and worn with grief and shock that they had to be Mark's family. I also saw a large hot spot of yellow energy hovering over the crowd like a poisonous storm waiting to break.

Following the threads of yellow from the mass, I spotted each of the séance members: Ken and Ana; Ian several feet behind them, bleak-faced; Wayne with his arm around Frankie's shoulders as she sniffled; Tuckman near Marks parents; Terry alone. No sign of the Stahlqvists or Patricia Railsback. As I picked them all out, I noted one more face: Detective Solis. He was staying to the back where the rolling ground rose a little. I worked my way around toward him, thinking that the presence of Celia at the funeral further ruled out either of the Stahlqvists as the killer—I expected to find the entity cleaving to its master.

I stopped next to Solis. He didn't look directly at me, but cut me a glance from the corner of his eye and inclined his head a little. "Still working?”

"I knew Mark," I replied in a quiet voice.

"Yes. Not, I assume, so well as Cara Stahlqvist knew him.”

"No. And I noticed she's not here, so you don't think she's the murderer.”

"She's an interesting piece of the puzzle.”

"In what way?”

"This case turns on a woman and her lovers—those she accepted and those she rejected. We confirmed Mrs. Stahlqvist's affair with Lupoldi and the information you gave us about the brooch—very dramatic. She preferred to make the advances—to choose rather than be chosen—she rebuffed others even though her relationship with Lupoldi was stormy.”

"Others?" I asked.

He jerked his head toward the cluster of Tuckman's youngest subjects. "The usual sexual stupidity.”

I wondered which of them he meant—if not all three. Cara's interests didn't seem to lie with women, so that let Ana out. But I recalled Ian's attention to her bustline and Ken's sudden bitter tone at her name. All three had been hurt in the séance, but Ana least. Was the woman at the center the killer or the cause?

I wasn't convinced of the Stahlqvist-Lupoldi scenario, though it might look good to Solis. If Cara had grown tired of Mark, their stormy relationship might have gotten lethal—or been cut short by her husband.

Maybe Ana had lied to me when she denied close contact with Mark. I stared at the members of the rotten triangle and wondered which of them might have taken "no" as a mortal insult. The yellow strands of Celia gleamed against the leaden sky above them.

I looked at Solis, trying to catch his eye, but he avoided me. "You suspect one of them.”

"I've already told you that suspicion is nothing without proof.”

"What about those keys? Would that be enough evidence?”

"To make an arrest, perhaps, but not to convict. I don't want this case to fail by insufficient evidence.”

"Then you're no longer looking for motive?”

"I have the motive.”

The clergyman at the graveside finished his final prayer and a couple old before their time stepped forward to the edge of the pit as the rest of the crowd began to loosen. Solis shot me a warning look and turned away.

I stared out over the crowd, watching Celia. The yellow haze grew thick and agitated as the crowd moved, three ropelike strands extending down. I followed them with my eyes to Ken, Ana, and Ian. Ken's Grey shield of blankness flickered as if under stress from something.

Ian had stepped next to Ana and was speaking in a low, furious voice, close to her face. She stepped back and he followed her. The knot of energy above them roiled and brightened with a flaring strand of red. I moved closer through the crowd. I could see all three of them again pulling on Celia, but they stood so close together I couldn't make out which of them the angry red line touched.

Ana swung a hand and Celia flexed and expanded, sending a sharp shaft down into the center of the three. Ian stumbled back a step or two. I couldn't see if Ana had hit him or if Celia had.

As I got close I heard Ian spitting insults, of which the nicest was "slut." He lurched closer to Ana, his right hand raised. Ken's shutters vanished and he pushed between them, exposed in a red wash, also with a hand poised to strike, and put his face close to Ian's, growling something low and venomous. Ian's seething gaze moved to Ken. The cloud of Grey around them throbbed red shot with black, boiling and distorting the air nearby. Then Ian's glare flicked over Ken's shoulder and Ian dropped back a step. Ken stepped back, putting a hand out to Ana without taking his eyes off his rival. The men's faces were studies in leashed rage. Ana's was blank and cold.

Ian straightened and looked daggers at them both. He cut his eyes away from Ana and gave Ken a cool, dismissive glance. "I'm done with the little tramp," Ian said. "Have fun, buddy.”

He turned and stalked off. Ken took half a step after him, then drew up short as Ana kept his hand without yielding an inch. He looked at her.

Something bright shot down from above Ian, caroming off his shoulder and arcing toward Ana. She flinched and Ian turned his head and spat on the ground without letting his gaze touch either of them. Ana snatched the shiny object, clutching it in an unsteady fist.

The thick red storm unknotted and drifted into a thin yellow haze over the lovers' heads. Ken tried to put his arms around Ana, but she wrenched away, pulling the object against her chest.

"No," she choked. She turned and ran. Ken's Grey wall slammed up and he pursued her, but every time she glanced back and saw him, she ran faster. I saw Solis break into a run parallel to them, falling in a bit behind to follow. Over it all, the shape of Celia re-gathered and began to move.

I ducked into the Grey and followed the entity. It was a hard yellow gleam in the cold mist, its thread to me spun out like spiderweb between us. I lost direct sight of it, my thread seeming to cut off without warning in the wall of a building. I eased back, glancing around, and saw I was now in Volunteer Park, the Asian Art Museum building intruding its bulk between me and Celia's course. I ran around the building to the driveway and threw myself back into the Grey.

Jolting into the slippery world, I found the thread spun ahead of me, out of the ghostly shapes of the park and down the nearest street. I followed it past the impressions of the mansions of Millionaire's Row, then lost it again in the side of a large house thronged with the ghosts of some long-ago party. I paused and stared at my own strand of Celia, thinking that it would point directly—like a compass needle—toward the poltergeist. Moving around a bit, I figured out the direction and set off through the flickering ghost-world, dodging the more solid things that rose up and trying to stay out of the way of anything too interested in me. The harsh jaws of things I didn't like to think about snapped at me several times and a swarm of hungry, mindless presences dragged on my limbs, gaping mouths and cries of want tearing at me as I ran after Celia, my living brightness like a beacon—a flame to vampire moths.

I was stumbling a little, panting, when I came out again at another wall. The silken strand of Celia pointed ahead and upward. I wrenched myself back to normal, pounding to a halt in front of the Harvard Exit Theatre.

Ian worked there, but Ana or Ken might have followed him. I saw no sign of Solis, but everyone was ahead of me. Even if Solis was inside ready to arrest one of them, my capturing the poltergeist could only help. I turned back toward the cemetery, hoping I had enough time to retrieve the ghost-bottle before Celia moved.

I got lucky and caught a bus up to the cemetery to pick up my truck and retrieve the trap for Celia. I left the Rover questionably parked near the theater and bought myself inside. The lobby was busy with a moving crowd of filmgoers—a few faces seemed almost familiar, but none of them was part of Tuckman's group. I peered through the Grey for Celia, my eyes skipping over mist-shrouded faces.

Flashes of jagged time and paranormal streamers of yellow and red tangled over the crowd, vanishing through the ceiling. Whoever I wanted was upstairs. I shoved my way through the crowd and up the steps. I bolted around several normal people on the landing and pelted on to the top floor and through the staff only door to the attic, following the thickening thread of energy and feeling it pulling on my bones.

There were voices above me and I slowed down, quieting my steps along the edges of the treads. So long as they were talking, no one was killing anyone—I hoped. I swapped the silvered glass jar into my left hand and let my right drift to my back. Pistol still snug in its holster under my jacket, I continued up the stair.

At the top lay a low corridor with two doors—one an inch or so ajar. I didn't have to duck, but I could feel the rough ceiling catching my hair as I sidled along the wall toward that door. I drew close and squinted through the opening.

The room was a storage area full of old equipment. Small, half-height doors on each end probably led to smaller attic spaces full of wiring and pipes. Dust-choked slices of light fell through a louvered ventilator just above Ian's head, leaving pale stripes on the floor in front of Ana's feet. Celia's threads were festooned like thick ropes around the room, clothing Ian in spectral illumination, but I couldn't see the entity itself from my position.

"—stupid little slant-eyed bitch," Ian hissed.

"Shut up! Just shut up, Ian!" Ana yelled. "You tell me where you got these!”

She flung a shiny object at him. It jangled to the floor in a sprawl of bright brass, steel, and black plastic.

"Those are Mark's keys. Where did you get them?" Ana demanded, her voice rising in hysteria.

In the mote of light I could just pick out the tubular shape of the bike lock key.

"You want to know?" Ian asked, his face going feral and calculating. "Then come real, real close and I'll whisper in your ear. We'll cuddle up like we used to and I'll tell you everything you want to hear.”

Ana clamped her jaw tight, starting to lean forward.

I could feel the pressure of Celia's presence crush against me and the room flickered red to my eyes.

I shoved through the door.

Airless, sweltering, the room blazed in hot colors and thick coils of Grey energy. Ian and Ana both jerked their heads toward me. I could see a red line, flaring and thick as an ancient python, pulsing from Ian's body. Ana's own yellow thread was spindling away, drawing her, helpless, toward him.

I rushed to her and shoved her out of the room. "Run," I ordered, slamming the door. Then I turned back to Ian. It would be useless, but I drew the gun anyway, hoping Ian would choose to concentrate on the apparent and immediate threat, rather than on his ex-girlfriend. The press of Celia's power pulled back as if the entity were surprised. I knew it was Ian's surprise, but the feeling was eerie nonetheless.

"How 'bout you tell
me
where you got those keys," I invited. "But I think I'll stay right here—you don't look so cuddly to me.”

His eyes locked on the gun for a moment, then shifted back up to me. There was a quiver of tense uncertainty in the air between us. "You…you stupid, stupid bitch.”

"You're awfully fond of that phrase. Tell me about the keys.”

"Fuck you.”

I laughed. "Heck of a vocabulary you have, Ian. With that sort of charm, I guess you figured Ana'd come crawling back to you.”

"She did!”

"Didn't look that way to me.”

"I'd have gotten her back. Her and that half-breed bastard.”

"Wrong kind of Indian," I needled.

"Shut up! You don't know what you're messing with. I can hurt you without even touching you! I can take them out the same way." I could almost see him calculating his chance of launching Celia against me versus the risk of a bullet.

"Like you took out Mark?" I asked, drawing on his vanity—hoping his desire to brag would hold him back a moment.

Viciousness dripped from his voice. "He deserved it! I didn't even know I could do it, but it was easy. How could Cara want him when he was faking things I could do for real? He didn't deserve her!”

"And you killed him because Mark had what you couldn't get. What, did you see him with Cara? Or did you follow her to his place?" I heard something moving with stealth toward the door. I had to draw Celia away from whoever gathered their strength there.

Ian ranted on. "She acted like a whore," he spat. "She told me off, but I followed her. When I saw her come out, I was angry and it was so easy! He was a liar and a cheat and it was easy to crush him. And it felt so good—like breaking something you've always hated. I just wanted him dead and he was dead. And it'll be the same with that slut and her fuck toy!”

Ragged instants of memory flared as he screamed at me: wrenching impressions of creatures suffering; the green snap of bone; the powdery smash of plaster and a wash of blood; unholy thrill reflected in a dying eye.

My hand tensed around the pistol grips and I felt the HK's cocking lever compress the spring to the limit. A desire to squeeze the trigger and wipe out the source of those images fought with my urge to puke. But I only looked at Ian and raised a cynical eyebrow.

He glared at me, his stare blazing, his whole form seeming engulfed in flames and fury. The presence of the entity bloomed and expanded at my back, grinding against my spine, teetering on the brink of eruption. I felt flayed and sick with the sudden stink of it—dead things vomited up by the sea to rot on the shore in the reek of half-burned gunpowder.

I laughed at him again. I decocked the pistol and tucked it back into the holster.

"You sad, ridiculous boy. You think you can hurt them with that?" I demanded, jerking my head toward the mass of Celia gathering behind me. "You'll have to come through me first, freak.”

Celia exploded against me as I dove into the Grey I scrambled through the history of the building, finding an open door and dodging through it as heavy boots pounded into the room. Shouts, shots, noise faded into the mist of the Grey as I ran from the unnatural thing behind me.

It howled like Nemesis descending. I stumbled, tumbled, plummeted into void space…and landed with a jarring thump in something that stank of sewer and boiled with eldritch things. I was somewhere deep in the underlay of Seattle's history. Keeping a hand tight around the ghost-bottle, I clambered back to my feet and ran as fast as the clutching, ravenous mist would let me. I hurtled down a long tunnel of reek and screams.

Celia caught me and buffeted me into an incorporeal wall. My head rang against stone and I slid down into cold. I wondered for an instant what would happen if I died here, but I didn't want to find out and scrabbled away as the entity re-gathered its force.

Its action was sporadic as it stabbed and grabbed at me. I assumed other things distracted Ian's attention or the poltergeist's assault would have been relentless, but Celia was stupid enough to be single-minded even without his direction. It drew back after each attack, then pressed in again. I searched for exits and grabbed the first upward route I spotted, pulling myself without looking through a hole that felt like a mouth lined with raking teeth.

Icy fluid rushed over me and I found myself standing in a culvert of filthy water. An old storm drain. I'd come back up into a more recent time shard. I jumped for the rungs of an access ladder as Celia smashed against my flailing legs, tossing me back down into the water. I rolled to cushion the glass and came up panting and dizzy.

The bloodshot yellow whirlwind of energy and knife-blade time pulled back, a little dimmer and smaller than before. I realized it was losing energy with each sally. But it was still powerful enough to kill me if it got a good chance and until then, it would drain my energy with every assault. I held the flask out and ran at it, hoping to catch it, but it slewed up and vanished into a fold of history.

I took the opportunity to climb to the surface and out a manhole.

I tumbled into the path of a beer wagon. I dodged out of its way, skidding onto the sidewalk to be cut through by the heedless ghosts of long-dead pedestrians. I shuddered as they passed through me and my legs went weak. Celia hadn't reappeared yet and I was grateful for that.

I kept my feet and caught my breath, staring around, looking for a sign of the time or the place. I couldn't recognize the location. A massive building rose to my right and below me was a steep hill cut with streets of narrow, Victorian row houses, more like something from San Francisco than Seattle. I stared at the large building beside me on the crown of the hill. It was a massive structure, five or six stories with gabled roofs and corner turrets. There was a bell tower sort of thing in the middle of the main wall and a sign—

Celia smashed into me from behind, but with nothing to crush me against, I flew forward, curling myself into a ball around the precious ghost-bottle and somersaulting into the base of the building—which felt as solid and hard as anything I'd ever fallen against in the normal world. I peeled my eyes open, feeling the container still whole against my chest and belly.

Now I could read the sign. Washington Hotel. I'd never heard of a Washington Hotel, and this corner, towering over the Sound, wasn't familiar at all. The cornerstone near my head had a list of names, among them Arthur Denny.

I shook myself and got to my feet, rubber-legged. This was the old Denny Hotel. On Denny Hill. The hill washed away by R. H. Thomson during the Denny Regrade.

Now I knew where I was, the Pacific Place Mall somewhere deep in the historyless soil beneath me, and knew how I might trap the entity and force it into the flask. I began staggering down the ghost hill, feeling for a slot in the sediment of time. I could hear Celia shrieking and buzzing as it came on.

The edge of history fluttered under my groping right hand. I riffled through the knife-sharp edges of memory, pushing and scrambling for the harsh light of my own time. When it canted up like a whale broaching, I heaved myself onto it, careening through the Grey to be spit out into the normal.

I fell a few feet onto hard cement steps, keeping the bottle intact at the expense of my own limbs. Something wrenched in my left knee and shoulder as I landed on the upper steps of the Convention Center transit station. A scruffy kid with a long skateboard and two days' worth of unshaven barbed-wire beard grabbed my right elbow and helped me back to my feet.

"Oh, man, that was a real header! You OK, lady?”

"Yeah, yeah," I panted.

I took off before he could say more, feeling a hot stab in my left knee with every jolting, pounding step. I made for the corner of Seventh and Pine, just a couple of blocks west.

Four on a Saturday afternoon. Traffic was heavy, but slow enough for me to barge through. I could feel Celia's pressure against my back the whole time, but the entity was growing as tired as I, and I managed to stay ahead—I had more to lose.

A clerk in the upper lobby of the Barnes & Noble yelled at me to slow down as I rocketed through the doors and down the escalator. I didn't have the breath to tell him I'd only be a minute or I'd be dead. I slalomed through the crowd and back to the deep cell-signal death zone where science fiction shared space with romance novels.

A whey-faced teenager with long, lank hair squatted on the floor reading English-translation manga when I skittered to a halt at the end of the freestanding shelves that faced the book-lined basement walls. I backed myself up against the romance novels, facing the hard corner of SF. The shelf shuddered and rocked against my spine. My chest heaved and my throat felt raw and lined with corroded brass. There was no history to cut through here. Celia would have to play on my turf and come down the aisle just like a human.

The hot yellow knot of energy whipped around the corner and slammed down hard enough to shake the stacks. I didn't have the energy to taunt it. I pointed the open neck of the silvered vessel at it and braced.

It rushed. I tipped the bottle. One edge of the mass caught on the silvered glass and the thing smacked me hard on the side as it was whipped around like a leaf caught in a vortex and sucked into the trap. I snatched the stopper from my pocket and slammed it home.

I slumped to the floor against the corner of the shelf, a small cascade of novels pattering to the floor around me. The kid with the manga stared at me, gaping.

"What?" I asked. She shook her head.

From my other side a voice said, "Miss. I'm going to have to ask you to leave now.”

I looked up into the clean-shaven face of a security guard.

"OK," I replied. "I'm ready to go now. Can you give me a hand?”

He seemed a little confused, but put out a hand and helped me back to my feet. He appraised me, his eyebrows in a quizzical W. "What… what happened to you?" he asked, leading me toward the downstairs doors.

I limped forward, my knee and shoulder throbbing. "I was hit by a car," I lied. I wasn't going to say I'd been smacked with a fake poltergeist.