Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (7 page)

The church was gorgeous, if you were into that sort of thing. Intricately carved wooden statues, gilded trimmings, a gold-flecked railing surrounding the altar; the parish certainly had money to burn, it seemed. Flashlights were flipped on. Like a bloodhound on the scent, Max led us past the altar to a section of the rear wall that looked like one large wooden panel to me. He stared at it for a moment and then reached out and pressed a section of the decorative trim.

Nothing happened.

Perkins frowned, cocked his head to one side, and let his eyes glaze over.

The rest of us waited as patiently as we could.

A moment passed.

Then two.

Grady cleared his throat just as Perkins came back to himself.

“Of course,” he said softly, then reached out and pushed the trim directly opposite where he’d tried before.

A six-foot section of the wall popped open to our left.

Behind it was a passage leading downward, beneath the altar.

Perkins smiled.

“After you,” he said.

9

The stairs were narrow, so we went down them in single file. Max led the way and Ilyana brought up the rear, with the rest of us scattered haphazardly between them. I had Rivera in front of me, where I could keep an eye on him, and Grady at my back.

“What are we doing here, anyway?” I asked in a whisper just loud enough for either of them to hear me.

Neither of them said anything in response.

Apparently it was “Keep Hunt in the Dark” day.

Fine. So be it.

We continued downward and I counted thirty-nine steps before we reached the bottom. That put us about fifty feet below ground, and we all felt the cooler temperatures as soon as we stepped off the stairs.

The room spread out ahead of us and it was immediately obvious that we were in the church crypt; grottos had been carved into the walls and ossuaries of different shapes, sizes, and colors could be seen in many of them. There were dozens of sarcophagus-like tombs littering the floor as well.

Max headed out into the cavern, searching for what it was we had come there to find.

I tried again. “It might be helpful for me to know what we’re supposed to be looking for.”

Grady glanced in my direction and shrugged, as if to say it was out of his hands. The others simply ignored me, moving off in different directions as Perkins had, trying to cover as much ground as possible.

Okay, guess I’ll have to figure it out on my own
, I thought.

With this many tombs in here, I knew there’d be more than a soul or two hanging about, so I triggered my ghostsight, thinking maybe I could learn something that way.

For a moment I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The crypt was littered with ghosts.

I lost count after the first few dozen and simply stood there and stared for a moment. There were a lot of them, yes, but that wasn’t what had me standing there in dumbfounded amazement; it was the fact that every single one of them was staring at one particular corner of the room. I turned in place, looking about, and it didn’t matter which direction I faced, the end result was always the same; the dead were all looking in that direction.

Almost like statues, frozen in place.

What the hell?

I began to thread my way through the tombs, headed for the one on the far side of the room that had captured the attention of all of the ghosts. I’d never seen them act this way, and I have to admit I was growing more curious by the minute.

As I drew closer, I began to see that this particular sarcophagus was different from the others. Most had flat- or rounded-top stones, but this one had a full-sized figure of a man carved into its face. Most were of dark gray or brown stone; this one was fashioned of white marble with veins of rose running through it. Perhaps most significantly, all of the others were crammed into small plots, causing some of the large ones to overlap the smaller, yet this particular tomb was set aside from all the rest in a double-sized plot all its own.

I slipped between the other tombs and the ghosts themselves until I stood right next to the object of their obsession and looked down at what had captured their attention.

The figure on the lid of the sarcophagus was that of a knight, complete with chain armor, sword, and shield!

I stared at it for a long moment, nonplussed.

What the hell was a knight doing on the lid of a stone coffin built in the mid-1990s?

It was something I would expect to see on the tomb of a wealthy merchant or lord from the middle ages. Certainly not anything from the modern era.

Feeling a bit uncomfortable, I looked up and discovered that all of the ghosts had stopped staring at the coffin and were now staring at me.

The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention.

This was getting weirder by the minute.

I reached down and touched the sarcophagus.

Maybe in the back of my mind I was trying to prove it was real, I don’t know. But the minute I laid my hand on that tomb all hell broke loose.

Literally.

The ground beneath my feet suddenly shook and the space next to the sarcophagus split open, vomiting forth a massive spectre.

Spirits come in a variety of types and sizes. At the bottom of the food chain are the haunts, spectral presences that are little more than whispers in the dark. You can sense their presence, but they don’t have any kind of physical form. Next are your standard apparitions, ghostly presences that repeat the same motions over and over again, like memories caught in an endlessly repeating loop. A step above them are your actual ghosts, spiritual presences that are bound to our plane for one reason or another, unable or perhaps unwilling to move on. They’re about as aware of us as we are of them and delight in showing themselves to us whenever they can.

Spectres, on the other hand, are ghosts that have gone insane and seek only to annoy, and sometimes to harm, the living. They are one of the few types of haunts, like their cousins the poltergeists, that can impact the physical world, and more than one ghost hunter has wound up on the other side of the Veil when they’ve tangled with a spectre that was more powerful than they expected.

This one had molded its body to resemble the knight lying atop the sarcophagus cover, and in its hands it held a sword and shield, both of which would most likely be as effective as their physical counterparts. It soared into the air above its tomb and hung there for a moment, eyeing those in the room with crazed hunger and a thirst for the living.

For a moment I thought about not doing anything.

The spectre was a hungry one and it would no doubt attack the strongest member of the party first. That would put Rivera squarely in the spectre’s crosshairs, and even I had to admit there was something altogether fitting about that.

But as much as I might like to see that happen, I couldn’t let it. I’d learned through hard-won experience that a spectre absorbed the energy and power of its victims. If it defeated a sorcerer like Rivera, it would only get that much stronger and have more power to attack the rest of us. It had to be taken out cleanly or things were going to get worse.

The others were looking in my direction now as the spectre above me roared out a challenge. Rivera yelled something in reply, but I couldn’t understand what he said, lost as it was in the echo of the spectre’s cry.

I frantically dug out my harmonica and prepared to do battle.

There is a theory in certain circles that ghosts feed off the emotions of the living, that by doing so they can regain, at least for a little while, some of what they have left behind. I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that they react to my music like it’s a drug of some kind, a balm to the soul that helps them ease the pain they’re feeling at being stranded between this world and the next. It’s commonly recognized that music can tame even the most wild of beasts, but it is less widely known that it also has the same power over ghosts. Find the right tune and, like the Pied Piper with the children of Hamlin, you can lead a ghost anywhere. Like a junkie that refuses to give up his fix, some ghosts will sit there for hours listening to me play, until they have exhausted all of the energy it takes for them to manifest and they fade away into nothingness.

I didn’t think I could do that with a spectre as powerful as this one, but at least I might be able to hold it still long enough for the others to take some action against it.

I would normally spend a few moments listening to the sounds of the world around me, trying to get a feel for the place, to sink into the moment in such a way that the music just seemed to flow from it all. That was one of the tricks Denise Clearwater had taught me, and when I used it I always found it much easier to do what needed to be done.

This time around, I didn’t have time for any of that. As the spectre swooped down toward me, I jammed my harp into my mouth and blew.

10

The spectre let out a bloodthirsty shriek of outrage and dove toward me, its body morphing as it came. Its hands grew larger and more elongated, its fingers turning into nasty-looking claws designed to rend and tear, eager for my flesh, while its mouth filled with multiple rows of teeth that looked razor sharp. The front half of its body began to grow more solid as it concentrated its energy there, leaving the rear half to trail off into thin wisps of ectoplasmic material that flickered behind it like a roaring flame.

I cut loose with an old blues riff on my harp—an odd, syncopated little bit designed to disrupt and distract the spectre, to snare it in a web of unexpected notes and rhythms—but I might as well have been whistling Dixie for all the good it did me.

The spectre closed a third of the distance between us in an eye blink, flickering and reappearing like images from a stop-motion film flashed upon a screen, moving closer with each new appearance.

It looked at me, its eyes burning with unholy rage, and shrieked in fury before vanishing again.

I slid from the blues to a folk tune I’d heard in my youth, a gay little affair that skipped along with its own unique beat, but that had no effect on the creature either. By now it had closed two thirds of the distance between us and I had one last shot to get it right …

I closed my eyes, reached for the song in my heart … and wailed out something that sounded to me like a cat being strangled inside a set of bagpipes.

The spectre flashed into view, right on top of me, and opened its mouth wide, displaying all those rows of glistening sharp teeth.

But this time I’d hit the mark and the spectre was a split second too late. My music had it and wouldn’t let go.

The spectre hung there, its face inches from my own, its body flaring out behind it as if blown by a great wind. It shrieked repeatedly at me, trying to break my concentration, for doing so would leave it free to gnaw my face off.

I, understandably, was doing my best not to let that happen.

The music flowed out of me, the notes binding the spectre in midair as effectively as leg irons and chains once bound prisoners. As long as I continued to play, the spectre was forced to listen and, in listening, was trapped by the flow of the music around it.

I could hear the others moving about, but I couldn’t see what they were doing and didn’t dare turn around to find out. I could feel the spectre pushing back against the hold my music had upon it and I knew that it wouldn’t take much for it to tear itself free should I falter on even the slightest note. This close, there was no way I’d be able to regain the proper melody before it would be upon me, and once that happened it was all over but the dying.

Someone stepped in close behind me. The way my skin pimpled in gooseflesh at the other’s proximity made me think it was Ilyana.

I kept playing, trying not to think about how I was now sandwiched between two creatures that would just as soon devour me as give me the time of day, and was shifting into a new refrain when a set of long-nailed fingers began playing with the hair at the nape of my neck.

What the hell?

I tried to shake her off by hunching my shoulders and moving my head slightly, but without success. I wouldn’t have minded freeing the spectre to dine on the others, but the fact that I’d be the first snack on the menu kept me from indulging my more ruthless daydreams.

The spectre seemed to inch forward slightly—or was that my imagination? I wasn’t certain. I tried to banish Ilyana from my mind and concentrate.

Why weren’t the rest of them doing something?

Ilyana dragged a single fingernail down the back of my neck and then took her hand away.

Finally! Maybe now I’ll …

A hand reached out and grabbed my ass.

That did it. The harp came away from my lips in startled surprise, the song faltered, and the spectre surged forward past the invisible bonds of my rapidly fading music with a triumphant shriek.

I was done for; I knew it as surely as I knew my own name.

But at the last second I was shoved aside, clearing the way for Ilyana to step into the space I’d been standing in a microsecond before.

I hit the ground hard, the wind knocked briefly out of me, but my instincts for self-preservation were so finely honed that I was turning to look back where I’d been standing in an effort to keep my eyes on the spectre. I was just in time to watch Ilyana’s jaw come unhinged somehow and her face stretch impossibly wide as she sucked that spectre right into her mouth and down her throat.

Her neck bulged and her eyes flared red as the spectre seemed to get stuck about halfway down her throat, but she gulped a couple of times, working her throat muscles in conjunction with some help from her fingers, and the last little bits of spectral energy disappeared in a flash.

For a moment she stood there, her head tipped back, an expression on her face so close to sexual satisfaction that I would have sworn that’s what it was if I hadn’t just seen her swallow a spectre whole, and then she looked over at me with heavily lidded eyes and licked her lips.