Unholy Ghosts

“I ain’t a helpful guy.”

She rolled her eyes. At least he’d stopped whistling.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing. As the sound of their feet grew muffled by moss and slime covering the ground, Chess became aware of another noise. A low humming sound, burbling like distant laughter.

“What’s that noise?”

He stopped. “You want to chat, or you want to get you home?”

“I want to go home. But…hold on.” Her fingers closed around the hard muscle of his left arm as he started to turn away. “Is that a normal sound down here?”

“I don’t hear nothing.”

“That gurgling noise, like somebody talking.”

It was louder now, as though whoever was making it was getting closer. Her skin prickled.

“Sorry. Not hearing it.” He turned again, took a couple of steps. The next bulb they would pass under was burned out, casting that section into blackness.

“Damn it, will you stop a minute? Just listen. How do you not hear that?”

He shifted on his feet, his gaze in the dim light shifting up and down the tunnel.

“Well?”

“You said be quiet, so I’m being quiet.”

“But do you hear anything?”

“I hear you.”

“No, that’s not—”

The rattle broke into her speech, the spine-crackling sound of dead vocal chords trying to live again.

Chess turned, her heart pounding an alarm in her chest, and saw the ghost staring right at her.

Chapter Nine (#ulink_5b7054f8-47d8-5b08-b0a1-5614f6ac5423)

“And the sun set so nothing but darkness existed, and the dead rose with a violent hunger.”

—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 2

At first all she could see were his eyes, burning black holes in the pallor of his hard face. More details slid into view as she stood, frozen, unable to think of anything but the fact that her workbag was still in her apartment. She had no salt or bones, no herbs, no Ectoplasmarker, no way to protect herself or summon a psychopomp.

And the farther underground one went, the more powerful the ghosts became.

On top of his head sat a peaked cap of some kind, sepia tinged as though it had been brown in life. It matched his jacket and the suggestion of baggy trousers below his belt before his feet faded into nothing.

Lex, to his credit, stood rock still next to her. He barely seemed to be breathing.

“I thought you said the walls here were banded with iron,” she muttered.

“I lied.”

Great. Chess turned to the ghost, holding her hands palm up, hoping he would read innocence and helplessness from the gesture.

“We’re just passing through,” she said carefully. “We’re not trying to disturb you.”

It didn’t work. The ghost shrunk, his features twisting into a furious grimace, like a lion preparing to pounce. Chess spun away, grabbing Lex’s arm.

“Get us out of here! Get us out of here now!”

The filth on the floor sucked at her feet as they ran into the darkness. Behind them she felt the ghost, felt the freezing cold of its spectral body almost touching her back. They couldn’t get away, there was no way to escape it. Ghosts didn’t get tired. They didn’t give up.

The bulb ahead of them flashed, blinding her, before exploding in a shower of powdery glass. Chess ducked her head and yanked up the bottom of her T-shirt to cover her face.

Her left foot slipped sideways. She kept running, taking long, awkward steps in an attempt to keep her balance. Lex’s fingers bit into her skin as he grabbed her, dragging her along like a reluctant toddler.

She didn’t know what made her fall, if it was simply that she could not regain her stride or if the ghost somehow managed to hit her with something. Aboveground they couldn’t attack humans without using a weapon. Below, all the rules changed.

Filthy water filled her nose and stung her eyes. It tasted like sewage and iron. She gagged, trying to raise herself back up, but something forced her head back down.

Her fingers curled into sludge as she tried to grab hold of something, anything, to help her. Filth oozed through the bandage on her palm and soaked her wound. In the chaos of the tunnel her heartbeat seemed unnaturally loud, only drowned out when the roar of a gunshot made the floor beneath her vibrate.

She thought her ear drums were going to explode. The sound didn’t stop, reverberating through the confined steel-and-concrete space for what felt like hours, while she struggled beneath the weight on her back.

Gathering all of her remaining strength, she managed to shift her body sideways, lifting her face out of the foul wet slime. Air rasped into her throat to fill her lungs. A very dim light still shone, enough for her to see Lex backed against the wall, aiming for another shot.

“No! Put it away!” It was meant to be a scream. It came out more as a gurgle.

Metal glinted above her head as the ghost raised his hands. In them he clutched the end of a piece of pipe from the ceiling. If he touched her with it, she was dead. Even from her position on the floor she could see the wires sparking inside it.

Time froze. Chess watched the pipe start its descent, watched a single glint of light erupt from the end of it and die. Her fingers found a seam in the wall and gripped it, so hard she felt each individual piece of grit in the cement as she struggled to pull herself out from beneath the ghost’s legs.

Lex stepped forward, his heavy industrial boot catching the pipe and trapping it between the wall and the rubber sole. The ghost turned to him, its face contorted in fury.

Chess scrambled out of the way as Lex fell backward. The ghost lifted the pipe again, aiming for him. He ducked. Metal rang against cement.

“Break the pipe!” she shouted, hoping Lex would understand as the ghost turned on her.

Lex did. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him leap up and hook the length still attached to the ceiling with his bent arm, using his leather jacket as insulation. For a moment he hung in the air, his legs spread like a professional basketball player making a slam dunk, before the brackets holding the pipe creaked and snapped and they were plunged into blackness.

“Get out the water,” he gasped. Something scraped behind her as she braced her feet against the very edges of the floor.

It only took a second, but it felt like forever that she stayed there, shivering and covered in filth, listening to Lex’s heavy breathing in the dark.

Then light exploded through the tunnel as the live wires hit the sludgy mess covering the walkway.