The Ghoul Next Door (30 page)

“Well, it worked for about a year. Every time I found myself in my parents’ living room, I was joined by the medicine man and we fought Sy to the ground each time. But then one day, when I was back in the hospital with another kidney infection, I woke up to find myself alone with Sy—there was no sign of the medicine man. My brother and I fought one-on-one, but I was so tired from the infection, and Sy won. He laughed when he’d beaten me and said that from now on the odds were even. I learned a few days later that the medicine man who’d helped me was killed in a car accident.

“Over the years I’ve had many fights with my brother. I’ve won most of them, but there’re times when I’ve been sick with a kidney infection or something else and I’ve lost the battle and it’s those times that I feel him get away from me.”

“Did you or Ray know he was haunting the men who rented the house on Stoughton Street?” I asked next.

Lester’s face fell and he stared again at the blanket. “Ray doesn’t know a thing about it, and I didn’t at first either,” he said. “I just thought that house might be attracting bad men. It didn’t dawn on me that Sy was behind it until Dan Foster’s trial. And then Ray told me a few days ago that the last tenant had been arrested for murder, and I started to think that maybe we should just let that house stand vacant. He’s over there, M.J. My brother has found a way to get loose from me and he’s over there now.”

“He’s been very active lately,” I said, and then I stepped away from Lester and opened up my sixth sense to really look at him. What I saw astonished me.

The ether all around Lester vibrated in a way that I was used to seeing in haunted houses, but usually that type of vibration was visible to my eye only in a central location like a wall, or a stairwell, or a small patch of ground.

What I realized was that Lester Akers was the portal his brother was using to come and go from one realm to another. What that medicine man had intended to do, I couldn’t say, but what he had actually done was turn Lester into the portal for his brother. I had never in all my years of ghostbusting even heard of such a thing, but it explained how Sy the Slayer was able to move about so freely. If his portal was tied not to a house but to a living being, then he could draw energy from his brother and go where he pleased.

I then let my eyes travel to Lester’s crippled form, and I realized that the infections and the cancer that had spread unchecked to the man’s bones were probably a result of all that energy being slowly drained away from him by his brother.

“You’re the key,” I said to Lester. “Or rather, you’re the doorway.”

“I’m the what?” he asked, and there was a hint of fear in his voice.

“Your brother has gone from being imprisoned by you to using you as his portal, Mr. Akers. As long as you’re alive and in a weakened condition, he can use you to come and go as he pleases.” I went on to explain what a portal was, and what I thought the medicine man had done in creating a portal for Sy that was bound by Lester’s body. “I can’t tell you how unusual that is, Mr. Akers. I’ve not only never heard of a person acting as a portal before today—I never even thought it was possible.”

Lester’s shoulders sagged. “I’m so tired,” he said. “I’ve been trying to keep him contained for thirty years, and I’m so very tired.”

I reached out and squeezed his hand. “I can’t imagine.” The truth was, though, that I had no idea how to shut down a human portal. The only thing I could think of was to take off my vest and hand it over to him. “Lester, until I figure this whole thing out, do me one favor. Keep this near you at all times. Wear it if you can, okay?”

He took the vest and his arm dipped with the weight of it. “What’s in here?” he asked, feeling the bubbles.

“Magnets. They should help keep that portal under control until I figure out what to do.”

“What do you usually do with portals?” Lester asked curiously.

I grinned sideways and reached into my messenger bag, pulling out several magnetic stakes that I had taken out of my car just in case there was trouble with Lester. I put them in a line on the bed so he could see. “Usually we drive a few of these babies right into them. But in your case, how about we find another, less invasive way to handle this?”

Lester chuckled and picked up one of the stakes to examine it. He then tapped it against the base of his lamp and it stuck tight. He took it off the lamp and hovered it over his chest. “I’m a little like a vampire, huh? You need to drive a stake through my heart to keep the bad stuff from hurting people.”

I shook my head and touched the vest now resting on his legs. “The vest will work just fine for now until I can try to come up with something else. Like I said, it’s important for you to keep that close.”

Lester handed me back the stake and saluted. “Yes ma’am. I’ll keep it close, but come up with something soon, okay?”

My phone rang at that moment and I glanced at the ID, hoping it was Heath. It was. “I will, Mr. Akers, but would you please excuse me for one second, I have to take this call.”

Lester waved at me to go ahead and I moved to the hallway to answer the phone. Hello?” I said. “Heath?”

“It’s all clear,” he told me. “I had to hold Gilley down for the past half hour. He fought me tooth and nail and I couldn’t even let go long enough to get a vest on him, but about three minutes ago Sy gave up or just left. I’m not sure which.”

I glanced behind me toward Lester’s door. I wondered if putting the vest on Lester had been enough to yank Sy away from Gilley. I hoped so. “I’m on my way back,” I told him.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Uh . . . ,” I said, thinking there was no way I was going to let him know I’d gone back to the senior center on my own. At least not until I got home. “I’m at the coffee shop. Can I bring you back something?”

“Sure,” Heath said. “But stop off on your way home and get something stronger to put in it. I could use a drink after my wrestling match with Gil.”

I laughed, so relieved that he sounded like himself again. “I’ll be home in a little bit. Stay safe until then, okay?”

“I’ve got my vest on,” Heath said, which reminded me about Mr. Akers back in the room. “But get home soon. I’m gonna worry about you until we catch this guy.”

“I’m on my way,” I promised. After hanging up with Heath, I went back into Lester’s room and said, “I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll come back a little later and check on you, okay?”

“Can you come back around eight?” he asked as I began to gather up the spikes still lined up on his bed. “No one comes by between eight and ten, and a man gets lonely.”

I tucked the spikes into my messenger bag and gave him a thumbs-up. “I’ll be here,” I promised. Lester smiled but it wasn’t the carefree smile he’d graced me with that morning. It was forced and I could tell he was still anxious about what I’d told him, about being a portal for his brother.

“Try not to worry, Mr. Akers,” I told him, squeezing his hand. “I swear to you that my associates and I won’t rest until we come up with a plan to deal with your brother’s ghost.”

“Thank you, M.J.,” he said, squeezing my hand in return. “You’re very kind.”

I left Akers and headed out into the hallway, my mind a whirl of thoughts. I had no idea how to deal with a human portal, and I was worried that there might be no good long-term solution. What’s more, I still didn’t know who might’ve killed Brook and attacked Kendra.

As I was trying to navigate the hallways to the exit, my phone went off again. “Hello?”

“M.J.?” said a high squeaky voice. “This is Chandler Wilcox. Kendra’s assistant?”

“Oh, Chandler, thank you so much for returning my call,” I said. “And I’m so sorry about Kendra.”

Chandler’s voice cracked a little as she thanked me, but she pulled herself together and got to the heart of the matter. “I went through all of Kendra’s notes, and the last thing she had me research was Brook Astor’s legal name.”

My brow furrowed. “Her legal name?” I said.

“Yes. She wanted to know if Astor was Brook’s married last name, or her maiden name.”

“That’s weird,” I said, at last coming out of the maze to the automatic doors of the front entrance. “Which one was it?”

“It was her maiden name. She changed it from Lucas back to Astor right after her divorce.”

“Huh,” I said. “I wonder why that was important.”

“There’s nothing else in the notes,” Chandler said. “But I know she had me pull up all the research I could find on Brook yesterday afternoon. She wanted me to try and get a copy of the divorce decree too, but I got pulled in another direction by one of the other reporters, so I didn’t have time to get to it, and Kendra said she’d handle it. The last time we talked, she was headed down to the public records department to hunt that down.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. I’d been listening to Chandler, but something else had been tickling my thoughts. Something that was tugging on my mind so much that I felt I needed to pay attention to it. And then, I realized what it was, and I nearly dropped the phone as all the rest of the pieces hovered above their respective slots, ready to be cemented into place. “Chandler!” I said sharply, shaking with excitement.

“What?” she asked, alarmed.

“You said that Brook’s married name was Lucas? Was that by any chance Mickey or Mike Lucas?”

“Yes. Dr. Mike Lucas.”

“Oh, my God!” I said, leaning against my car. “I need you to do me one more favor, Chandler. I need you to see if you can locate a previous address for Dr. Lucas, see if he once lived on Stoughton Street—”

“He did,” Chandler said. “Kendra asked for me to verify that for her yesterday.”

I was trembling so much now that I almost couldn’t manage to swing my messenger bag around to get into it and dig for Kendra’s phone. At last I had my hand on it and pulled it up; clicking it on, I swiped to unlock it and there was the photo she’d been trying to show me. I searched the faces and spotted Dr. Mike Lucas in the back row, wearing a forced smile and glancing sideways at his ex-wife and Luke Decker, their arms around each other’s waists.

I had one more call to make to completely cement my theory and I ended the call with Chandler and dialed Courtney’s number. “Pick up!” I whispered as it rang. “Come on, Courtney, pick up!”

She did on what must’ve been the final ring. “I was just about to call you,” she said. “I was on the other line with Luke, asking him where he’d learned about the rental house on Stoughton Street.”

“What’d he say?” I asked.

“He said that someone wrote down the address and left it for him on his desk one day. He told me the note simply said that the anonymous person heard that he was trying to find a place to rent, and that the house was cheap and close to campus. He said he didn’t even think about it until I asked.”

I knew all too well who’d left that note. And I could clearly picture Dr. Lucas standing in front of Lester, holding out his right hand, which held those pills that made Lester so tired and weak and vulnerable to his brother’s comings and goings.

And then I was grabbed from behind and yanked roughly backward into a choke hold. “Hello, you little bitch,” Dr. Lucas whispered at the same moment I felt the tip of something sharp go into the side of my neck.

I made the only sound I could—a squeak of terror. I clutched the arm holding me and clawed at it, but the choke hold only intensified and I couldn’t breathe. Little dots of light began to color my vision and I was lifted off the ground and carried several feet away from my car. With mounting panic I realized Lucas was carrying me toward the large fence that enclosed the Dumpster. Once we were around the other side of it, no one would see us.

I kicked and clawed for all I was worth, but the edges of my vision began to go dark. I was losing consciousness and nothing I did even slowed Lucas down. But then I remembered something I’d seen on TV a few years earlier. An expert in self-defense had suggested that if you were put into a choke hold, the best thing to do was to let your body go completely limp. This would force the attacker to bend forward, and put him off his center of gravity. From there, you could pivot and kick back against the extended leg of the attacker.

How all that made its way into my brain, I’ll never know, but I did exactly as the instructor had suggested. Allowing my body to go completely limp went against every instinct I had, but I forced myself to do it, and it actually worked. Lucas bent forward, and the second he was bent almost double, I shifted my weight to one leg and kicked back as hard as I could with the other. I heard a loud snap and Lucas screamed in my ear. He let go of me quick and I tumbled out of his arms to the ground.

In turn, he fell too, and reached for his knee, holding it and howling with pain. I didn’t wait around for him to get up again. Instead I scrambled to my feet, darted forward, and kicked him right in the face, also as hard as I could. I was mad enough to kill him in fact.

There was another sound that is best not described, but let’s just say I was pretty sure I either broke or dislocated his jaw, and probably broke his nose to boot. The blow knocked the sense right out of him. He didn’t pass out, but he looked close to fainting, so I staggered away from him to run for the door of the senior center, screaming bloody murder the whole way.

•   •   •

A considerable amount of chaos followed. Lucas was in no shape to do much but try to crawl away from the scene. He didn’t get very far, and a large knife was found lying near where I’d drop-kicked his ass. A knife that had dried blood on it. When Souter showed up, she pulled me into a vacant room at the senior center and eyed me critically as I sat in the chair, trembling from head to toe. After eyeing me up and down, she said, “You look pretty shook-up, Holliday. You okay?”

I actually let out a small laugh. It was so absurd. This woman had been such a hard-ass and on my case for over a week, and I was shivering so much that my teeth were rattling while I pressed a small piece of gauze to my neck where the knife had nicked me. Souter’s sudden concern was ridiculous. “I’ll live, Detective.”

She seemed to get it and her next move was unexpected. She got up, told me to sit tight, and ducked out the door. A few moments later she was back with two steaming coffees. Handing one to me, she said, “How ’bout those Bruins?”