Ghostland
Date: 2019-11-01 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Thriller; Ghosts; Fiction; Paranormal; Adult; Supernatural; Mystery; Horror; Young Adult; Fantasy
Description: People are dying to get in. The exhibits will kill to get out. Be first in line for the most haunted theme park in the park in the world - GHOSTLAND! Discover and explore hundreds of haunted buildings and cursed objects! Witness spectral beings of all kinds with our patented Augmented Reality glasses! Experience all the terror and thrills the afterlife has to offer, safely protected by our Recurrence Field technology! Visit Ghostland today - it's the hauntedest place on earth!________After a near-death experience caused by the park's star haunted attraction, Ben has come to Ghostland seeking t
Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing

Ghostland: Infinite

Duncan Ralston

Contents

Also by Duncan Ralston

The Dark Rift Awaits…

Prologue

Part 1

The Calm & The Storm

Seeing Ghosts

Helter Shelter

Lockdown

Discarnate

Dead & Buried

Bleeding Hz

Out Of Body, Out Of Mind

Part 2

Ghosts & The Machine

The New Abnormal

Recurrence

Astralogy

Sweet Oblivion

Revolt(ing)

Sound Minds

Death Trips

Interlude:

Part 3

The Beginning Of The End

Nobody's Home

Rules Of The Rift

One For The Reaper

Subtle Bodies

The Temple Falls

Walk Through Walls

Psychic Geography

Lost & Found

The Taken

Part 4

The Way Station

The Other Side

Chasing Ghosts Pt. 3

What Comes Next

Giving Up The Ghost

Garrote House Revisited

Kismet

Esprit De Corpse

The House Changes

The House Feeds

The House Wins

The End

Epilogue

A Note from the Author

A Sample from THE MIDWIVES

Also by Duncan Ralston

More from SWP

Copyright © 2021 by Duncan Ralston. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SHADOW WORK PUBLISHING

Cover and interior art by

Ascending Storm www.ascendingstorm.com

Sanitarium BB font by Blambot,
used by permission.

ISBN 978-1988819303

Also by Duncan Ralston

Gristle & Bone (collection)

Salvage (novella)

Wildfire (novella)

Woom (novella)

Where the Monsters Live (novella)

The Method (novel)

Video Nasties (collection)

Ebenezer (novella)

Ghostland (novel)

The Midwives (novel)

In Every Dark Corner (collection)

Afterlife: Ghostland 2.0 (novel)

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Want to dive deeper into the world
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"If an Evil Entity were to exist throughout dimensional space and time," the writer said, "would it manifest as something so clearly extraterrestrial, do you suppose? Or would it be more likely to disguise itself as something mundane… a House, for example?"

— Rex Garrote, The House Feeds Again (unpublished manuscript)

Prologue

The First Haunted House

Seattle—1887-1901

THE GROUND WAS unhallowed long before Oliver Hedgewood stood ankle-deep in muck on the plot of land upon which he intended to build his home. According to local lore, the Duwamish tribe had done battle with a shapeshifting spirit somewhere within these two-and-a-half hectares of scrub and Oregon pine. Oliver had never been one to take tall tales and myth as gospel, no matter how tantalizing, but he did enjoy a good ghost story now and then.

He supposed he had folklore to thank for this small parcel of overgrown land having remained unclaimed, despite practically any request being approved by the Homestead and Timber Culture Acts. Much of the land once solely occupied by Chief Seattle and his people had already been gobbled up by the likes of Doc Maynard, Henry Yesler, the Denny Party, and many others. Oliver counted himself lucky to have acquired even this much.

From where he stood in the juniper brambles and boot-tracked mud, he could see nothing but forest primeval. But just beyond the rain-heavy pine boughs lay the dark waters of Elliott Bay, and it was there he intended to make his fortune. In his mind's eye he envisioned a house springing forth in this clearing from the riches he would amass on the waters below. A home, rather—larger and more opulent than any this area had yet seen.

He would christen it "the Hedgewood Estate," and one day it would be famous. People from all across the great land of America would come to visit, from his former hometown of Frisco all the way to New York, perhaps long after Oliver himself had perished. It would be a magnificent legacy to his genius, his cunning and diligence.

Just twenty-three years old and eager to make his mark upon the world, Oliver Hedgewood wiped a cool sheen of rain from his brow and plunged the blade of his shovel into the stony earth.

June 8, 1887

I write this entry by firelight, sitting in the dark clearing atop the hill where I will raise my House. Dreadful noises have awakened me, urging me to stoke the coals. My mind assures me these ungodly screeches and howls, which persist long after I've waked, are the din of machinery and squall of metal from the nearby coal bunkers or railway tracks, yet superstition insists it is the shrieking of banshees or perhaps the howl of shapeshifting Indian ghouls, possibly even the wail of their dead.

I am not ashamed to admit I am afraid for my life as well as my sanity. I worry I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this deeded land, though I am far more fearful of how father would perceive me should I slink back home with tail betwixt my legs!

I must tuck away this journal now and try to fetch some sleep, or I'll be of no use to myself in the morning.

O.H.

The Hedgewood Maritime Corporation began with a single vessel: a yacht built by hand from trees felled on Oliver's own land. He started small, ferrying workers and supplies all throughout Puget Sound, as far north as Everett and as far south as Olympia. He soon became infamous among his competitors for being willing to travel into treacherous waters and conditions others wouldn't brave in order to get his passengers and supplies to their destinations on time.

From these humble beginnings an empire grew. By 1890, while many businessmen were still reeling from the losses from the fire that tore through the business district in June of 1889, Oliver owned a fleet of five passenger yachts, two tugs for pulling log booms, and a steam-powered ferry built to rival his only competition, a boat called the City of Seattle run by the Land and Improvement Company.

By then the construction of his estate was already well underway. He'd built himself a simple log cabin nestled at the edge of the clearing, and had lived there until the first wing of his home became habitable. As his fortune grew, so too did the House. By 1895, it had seven rooms. By 1900, twelve.

As with any difficult undertaking in the days before modern medicine and prevention, injuries happened. Even deaths weren't uncommon. While in Seattle proper the first electric streetcars crisscrossed the city among motorcars and horse-drawn carriages, the Hedgewood Estate remained outside of time. Grover Cleveland might have felt comfortable having a wireman string up Christmas lights in the White House but Oliver still held a deep, almost primal distrust of electricity, as did many of his contemporaries. For this reason these accidents often occurred under the soft, flickering glow of gas lamps and lanterns, as plastering and plumbing, carpentry and bricklaying continued well into the night.

The first such incident occurred when a bricklayer fell from a scaffold, though he claimed to have been pushed by an "unseen hand." A stack of his own bricks broke his fall and his back. Oliver begrudgingly paid the man's doctor's fees, in addition to a pittance to keep quiet about the "unseen hand," a story which had already started to make some of the other men—a superstitious lot, the Irish—uneasy.

Several weeks later, a carpenter's apprentice dropped a heavy plank of wood which startled the horses behind him into a gallop. A rope left carelessly in the dirt, tied to the back of the horse cart, snagged tightly around his ankle as the animals bolted. He was dragged into the woods, jouncing over bedrock and bounding against tree trunks, until one of his fellow workers managed to leap onto the cart and reign in the wild beasts. The boy was so badly mangled he could no longer continue with his apprenticeship. Oliver paid his doctor's bill, and as he had the gentleman before him, provided a small fee to keep him quiet.

Even so, word spread throughout the area about the house built upon the malignant plot of land overlooking Smith's Cove. Despite the elegance of his new home, which grew more extravagant with each passing day, Oliver himself began to wonder about the legends. The sky above was stained permanently black with soot from the local coal bunkers, the bay below crammed with logjams and steamships. The ash crept into everything, coating his possessions with a layer of filth as black as pitch. Even freshly prepared food wasn't spared from the affliction. It was as though he'd built the house directly atop an endlessly burning coal fire, or the mouth of Hell itself.

January 19, 1897

As the erection of my House nears completion, I must ask myself if my needs will ever be satisfied. The rooms are undeniably stately, as opulent as any I've yet seen, though a voice persistently bellows within me for 'more.' I have instructed the builders to adjust the size and shape and even intent of each room more times than I can count on one hand. Surely, they must think me an escapee of Bedlam!

As for the men themselves, I have worked them beyond exhaustion with my constant vacillation. This, compounded by the spate of accidents over the years, has pushed several of them to leave the crew, or worse. Just this morning, a plasterer thought missing for the past several days was found dead beneath the staircase. Somehow, he had managed to wall himself in!

The stench emanating from the spandrel was atrocious. The plasterer's corpse and garments appeared to be thoroughly begrimed with soot, as if he had perished by asphyxiation, trapped perhaps within a chimney's flue. I cannot comprehend how the rest of the spandrel was spared from this scorching. It was as though his body had been set aflame, yet the flesh itself remained curiously unblemished.

Still more perplexing was that this cadaver smelled not of smoke but of the foulest stench of rot and putrescence I have ever borne witness to, as if his remains had been excreted from the very bowels of Hell.

O.H.

"Fetch the light," Oliver muttered, still half asleep. "I heard a sound."

Desa reached for the night table and lit the gas lantern. Her shadow flickered over the far wall as she raised it to see. In his own bed, Oliver had sat bolt upright, the heavy down covers draped over his legs.

"What was it you heard?" she asked.

He hesitated a moment before responding. She heard an audible gulp as his bristly Adam's apple rose and fell. "It resembled a scream," he said.

"A scream? Was it the children?"

"It was a man," he grunted, staring into the darkened corridor through the opened door. "A man, howling like a banshee."

His young wife gave him a patient smile. If there truly had been a man screaming, she surely wouldn't have needed her husband to wake her. "The workers have all been sent home, dear husband. The servants shan't return until sunrise. You and I and the children are all who remain."

Oliver glowered at her. They'd been married a year and already the age gap between them had widened drastically: his pale face had grown pudgy and slack, where on their wedding day he'd been peart. "Hence my reticence, dear wife, to spring from my bedding and look."

She eyed the darkness in the hall where he'd been looking, sensing movement. "Shall I have a look then?"

Oliver set his jaw, cognizant of the challenge in her words. "I will go." He snatched the lamp and threw off the covers, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stepped into his slippers. His shadow fell long and grotesque over the wall as he stood and approached the door, footfalls creaking.

Desa shuddered, despite the warmth of her own bedding around her waist. "Be careful."

He scowled back at her but said nothing. The House had been a bone of contention between them since their first night of conjugal bliss. Even she was loathe to admit it was pleasant in the light of day, despite its odd angles and peculiar arrangement. Exquisite, even. In the dead of night, however, she found it positively monstrous. With two suckling infants she was often called to leave the comfort of her bed, though the mere thought of it detested her. When unable to time her nocturnal calls to nature with these excursions, she would use the chamber pot beside her bed. The peculiar sounds, the tricks of light, her sudden disorientation—even if Oliver pretended not to, Desa understood why the servants refused to stay long beyond candle-light.

He stepped out into the hall, leaving her alone in the room, lit only by the retreating gaslight. His shadow flickered on the paintings and flocked wallpaper as the lamp swung. The wood groaned under his feet several more steps until silence swallowed them up.

The room fell pitch dark and uncannily quiet. Eventually, her vision adjusted to the moonlight, filtering in through gauzy white curtains.

Then she saw them.

Two small, white ellipses in the doorway, about the height of a man. She stared at them for a long moment, hoping to reconcile them with what she knew of the hallway directly outside the bedroom door. Glints of moonlight flashing off a sconce? Her own reflection looking back at her within a mirror?

It was neither. Only one of several oil paintings, a commission of one of Oliver's own fleet, would be visible in the light from where she slept. The longer she stared at the orbs the more she began to notice the slight outline of a shape surrounding them. It was as if the man in the doorway was dark as the bitumen the workmen slathered on the roof from head to toe.

"Husband," she hissed.

The orbs disappeared for a moment, long enough for Desa to wonder if she'd imagined them, the dark shape merely a trick of the light—until they returned, as bright as before.

Blinking.

"Husband!" she called, dreadfully afraid.

A sudden gale rattled the window panes. She startled, pulling the bedclothes up to her chin. When at last her gaze fell upon the doorway, the eyes were gone.

She had barely a moment's respite before a scream pierced the silence. It was her husband, wailing loud enough to wake the dead.

Howling like a banshee, Desa thought, recalling his own words. It was the scream of a man in a great deal of emotional pain, and it had come from the west, from the nursery.

"No," she gasped. She turned to rise as a blackened hand shot out from the darkness, closing over her mouth and nose. A second grasped the back of her head, cold as the grave, smothering her cry before she could loose it. She tasted char on her tongue. The smell of burned coal filled her nostrils.

The last thing she saw as she looked at her attacker was the mad terror in the lamplights of his eyes.

June 8, 1901

I am alone. I mourn for the children, naturally, but the lack of Desa's presence makes the house seem all the more sinister.

Was it always so? Yes, I believe it was.

Perhaps I should have heeded the warnings. Perhaps I should have listened to my personal misgivings. Perhaps I should have capitulated when Desa expressed her own fears. It has been exactly fourteen years since I first arrived on this land. How many lives could have been spared if I'd given in to temptation and simply walked away in the night?

'Accidental mechanical suffocation,' the doctor called it. Both Henry and Thomas, tangled up in their bedclothes and smothered. What made it more peculiar was that the boys sleep—slept, I should say, for they now rock in the Lord's everlasting arms—in separate bassinets dressed with white silk. Both cribs were streaked with what appeared to be coal. My dearest Desa suffered a similar fate; Doc Pleasance and I both noted the black smudges on her lips and nostrils. As he proffered the diagnosis, he eyed me studiously over the lenses of his pince-nez glasses, as though he suspected I might have been to blame! I promptly ejected him from the premises, promising never to call upon the man again, no matter the issue. For all the trouble my crew provides me down the docks and here, at my House, it should put him out at least sixty dollars a week!

After he left, I imbibed a smile of bourbon to soothe the sting of melancholy, and have raised several more glasses since. The domestics have all retreated to their various domiciles and my House is once again alive with the sound of its splintered bones groaning and crackling as it wakes, settling deeper into the accursed earth.

In spite of my intoxication, I still see the monster's visage just beyond the lamplight, black as soot, same as I'd seen it stood over my children's cribs that night. I could not relate this detail to Doc Pleasance. He would think me insane. For the man who'd stood over the limp bodies of our boys was the very same who'd been found in the spandrel four years hence. And when the whites of his eyes turned to gaze upon me, I swear he had disappeared like smoke!

O.H.

Spiritualism was hogwash, in Oliver's opinion, its practitioners glorified circus performers. But in the weeks following the departure of his wife and children from the mortal plane, he'd begun to hear the mournful cries of his boys carrying through the house after dark. He would hurry to the nursery in his nightgown and slippers as he had that night, only to discover it empty, as it should be—though the certainty someone was still there, perhaps watching, perhaps waiting, would vex him until the first light of day.

A month of this repetition was enough to change his mind. He called for Mrs. Nancy Speer, the preeminent medium, and the following day after lunch his butler led her into his study. She was older than Oliver by at least two decades and dressed like a Dickensian widow, from her veiled hat to her black stuff dress and gloves. She held out her right hand as Oliver rose from his chair by the fire, and he kissed it, her rings cold on his lips, the talcum prickling his nostrils.

"This house is possessed of many spirits," she said, gazing around the room briefly before stepping briskly toward the doorway.

"Er, yes," Oliver said, following her into the foyer. She started up the imperial staircase, two at a time, and he hurried to catch up. "Tell me… are my wife and children among them?"

Mrs. Speer paused on the first riser, lifting her veil. "My dear sir," she said, and her lips turned down at the corners, crinkling her wizened flesh. "It is much too soon for me to profess this way or that. I shouldn't wish you to raise your hopes unduly. Nor shall I dash them without proper investigation."

She turned on her heels and resumed her trek to the second floor, her long silk skirts swishing up the steps like a shadow.

By the time Oliver reached the second floor, considerably winded, the old woman passed by the water closet without even a glance. She did the same at the guest suite, where Oliver had been sleeping—when he could manage sleep—and the master bedroom, as well. She stopped at the nursery door, turning her nose to the air. Pressing the index and forefinger of her right hand against the door, it inched inward with a groan. She stepped into the room, her skirts swishing.

"This is where I found them," Oliver said. His voice seemed to startle her. "They'd suffocated in their own bedclothes."

She didn't turn, her gaze holding on the empty space between their bassinets. "I see."

"Do you…" He swallowed his grief. "Do you see them, Mrs. Speer?"

The old woman turned, her gaze cold and direct. "I see nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that, my dear sir, is what troubles me."

Oliver's hopes sank. He'd known it was futile. That despite her alleged credentials, she would prove to be a charlatan like the rest of them. Perhaps it was the garments of deep mourning that had encouraged him to trust her. Or perhaps it was her air of confidence, the brisk, unfettered way in which she moved about his House. Whichever, he felt cheated now.

Mrs. Speer retreated from the room, briskly passing him and returning to the stairs without awaiting her host. "I shall call again this evening, after candle-light," she said as she descended to the foyer below. "I shall bring along my colleague, Gordon. We'll need a fourth for the séance. We must always commune in even numbers."

"Séance?"

"You would like to speak with your wife and children again, wouldn't you?"

"Of course."

"Good. Is there someone you trust as our fourth? Someone, perhaps, who knew the children?"

"That might be difficult…" he began. Their nurse had left him in a state of extreme duress. She'd loved the boys as if they'd been her own. They had spent most of their short lives in the nursery, and the other servants had rare occasion to see them. Only one person knew them quite as well as their mother and nurse, and that was the man who'd delivered them: Doc Pleasance.

"If you're sincere in your desire to contact your loved ones," Mrs. Speer said, turning on her heels at the front door, "I am quite certain you'll find a way. Good day, Mr. Hedgewood."

"Good day, Mrs. Speer."

* * *

Convincing Doc Pleasance proved to be a far less arduous task than Oliver had expected. No sooner had Mrs. Speer's name left his lips than the doctor agreed to participate. He arrived at the house shortly after supper in his private coach. Contrary to custom, Oliver met him at the front steps. He'd let his staff go immediately after they had cleared his evening meal from the table. It was bad enough they'd seen Mrs. Speer coming and going earlier in the day. Rumors of a séance at the Hedgewood Estate would travel far and wide, particularly coming so quickly on the heels of his family's untimely deaths.

"Thank you for coming, Doctor," Oliver said, as the man stepped down from the cab.

Doc Pleasance nodded, removing his bowler to dust off his top coat with it, raising a black cloud. "Wouldn't miss it," he said. "I've long been meaning to spy upon one of these spiritualist gatherings. Haven't found an occasion 'til now."

The doctor's suspicion was as oppressive as the stench of coal smoke in the air, and the two men stood looking at one another for a tense moment. The horse whinnied in the drive, flicking its tail, and both men chuckled awkwardly. The coachman shifted in his seat, staring into the pines in the direction of the bay.

"Well… shall we go in?"

"I was rather hoping you'd ask."

Doc Pleasance followed him inside. Peering outside as he closed the door, Oliver saw the coachman was still scowling into the woods, as if he saw something within the trees warranting his full attention.

"Your driver," Oliver said, taking the doctor's coat and hat and placing them on the rack.

"Yes?"

He shook his head. "Never mind. Could I interest you in a bourbon?"

"I never drink, Oliver. It dulls the mind."

"Yes, perhaps you're right." He retreated to the study. The doctor followed.

"This is quite the room," Doc Pleasance said as he crossed the threshold. "Is there a reason, perhaps some architectural significance, for its shape?"

"The shape?" Pouring himself a glass, Oliver looked around the room as if for the first time, taking in the books, the curiosities from every corner of the globe, the objets d'art. "Yes, of course, you've never been in here, have you? No particular significance, per se. It began as a solarium. I appreciate symmetry."

The doctor frowned. "Yet the walls extend well into the foyer."

"Yes, well…" Oliver stammered. The query had tied his tongue. He'd never quite been able to explain the whims upon which he'd built this house. They'd come to him as if from the ether. This room had simply felt like a solarium until it suddenly began to feel more like a study, and he'd had his builders brick up the windows, which were still visible from the outside.

All at once there came a rapping at the front door, sparing him from communicating this peculiar history to the doctor. Surely it would have sounded like the ramblings of a madman.

"Please, have a seat," he said, gesturing toward one of the velvet-backed chairs. He stepped out of the room and hurried back, in time to find the doctor reaching out to touch the glass case housing a small collection of talismans and amulets, from ancient-Roman fascinus to evil eyes from various cultures.

"I'll thank you to please not touch anything."

Another rap came at the door. He hurried across the foyer and opened the doors with a flourish. Mrs. Speer, still in her mourning attire, stood looking off in the same direction the coachman had earlier. Her companion, the man she'd called Gordon, greeted him with a smile beneath his mustache, coiled like two silver serpents poised to strike. A large steamer trunk stood at his side, resting on small wagon wheels.

"How do you do, sir?" the man said, extending his free hand. "My name is Gordon Galloway. I'm Mrs. Speer's associate."

Oliver surveyed the driveway. "Did you walk?"

"We drove," Mrs. Speer said, lifting her veil as she turned. "Mr. Galloway's motorcar. The drive looked quite treacherous, with puddles and the like, so he parked at the gates."

Galloway gave him an apologetic look. "I hope that won't be a problem."

"Not at all," Oliver said. Horseless carriages made so much damn sputtering and rumbling, he preferred it stay in the street. There was far enough pollution on the property without an automobile adding to it. "May I ask…" He indicated the trunk with a downward gaze.

"Excuse me?"

"He'd like to know what's in the trunk, Gordon."

"Ah, yes, of course. All will be revealed, in due time, sir, I assure you." Galloway scowled. "Is it always this dark?"

"At night. Shall we join Doc Pleasance in the study?"

"Indeed," Mrs. Speer said.

He led them inside. Galloway's trunk rumbled as he rolled it over the threshold. He shivered as Oliver closed the door behind them. "Dreadfully chilly in here."

"Yes, well, the wind from the bay seems to travel through the walls."

"The smell, too." Galloway, who was crouched to wipe off the wheels of his trunk with a rag, caught his error too late. "No offense, my good man."

"None taken. I've grown accustomed to it, I suppose."

"Yes, I suppose you would have. Mrs. Speer tells me you're the Hedgewood. Of the Hedgewood Maritime Corporation."

"Indeed. My study is right this way."

They followed him across the grand foyer, the trunk wheels rumbling and squealing over the floor, and into the study. The doctor uncrossed his legs and rose to greet them.

Once the pleasantries were behind them, Mrs. Speer instructed Oliver and Galloway to procure a card table from the games room. They placed it in the center of the study at her behest. As they settled it in place, Oliver noticed it was the same octagonal shape as the study itself. He rotated it until its sides were parallel with the walls.

The other men began carrying chairs over, while Mrs. Speer oversaw the business. Oliver brought in a fourth chair from the dining room.

"Turn down the lights, if you please," Mrs. Speer instructed.

Oliver crossed the room, turning down the lamps, while the others seated themselves, Galloway to Mrs. Speer's right, Doc Pleasance to her left. The room sufficiently gloomy, Oliver turned to discover the only unoccupied chair was directly across from Mrs. Speer. He supposed it was intentional.

Galloway, meanwhile, had removed several doodads and whatsits from his steamer trunk and fastened them together to make a larger contraption. He ducked beneath the table to open the case at his feet, removed something, closed the case, and sat up with the object held in both hands.

Mrs. Speer gestured toward the empty chair. "Sit, please, my dear sir."

Oliver sat. "What is that… thing?"

"It's a modified spirit trumpet," Galloway said, twisting it this way and that for inspection.

"But what is its purpose?" Oliver didn't like the look of it. It resembled the dunce caps he'd often been forced to wear in school, only it was fashioned from steel or tin, and shaped much longer and thinner with an opening on both ends. The smaller end attached to the contraption with small metal clips and a length of vulcanized-rubber cable. The contraption itself, standing upright beside Galloway, reminded Oliver of his mother's treadle sewing machine. The man's right foot rested on its pedal as he fastened the trumpet horizontally to a standing clamp at the center of the table.

"Are you quite all right, Oliver?" Doc Pleasance asked, a smirk on his thin lips.

"I'm fine."

Galloway twisted the trumpet on its clamp so the wider opening faced Oliver like a yawning mouth. "No need to worry, my good man. I don't intend to serenade you. It is merely a tool to amplify the voices of soft-spoken spirits."

"And the mechanism?"

"An electrical sewing machine, to generate the small amount of current required to power my trumpet. I managed to purchase one of the very first models after the Philadelphia electrical fair some years back, and modified it to suit my—our," he corrected himself, nodding at Mrs. Speer, "—needs."

"Electricity?" Oliver said. A prickle of anxiety had made the hairs on his nape stand up.

"As I said, a small amount. Just enough to amplify the ethereal voices."

The clarification didn't soothe Oliver's nerves. He'd purposefully kept electricity out of his house, and would have liked for it to stay that way. He'd been in the White City during the Columbian Exposition, and had seen Westinghouse light up the night sky in an instant. What had been a marvel to most sent unholy shivers down Oliver's spine. He'd had many years since to get used to the idea of electricity in every home, a future he'd been assured wasn't far off, and many of his contemporaries had come around on the subject. They told him he was squandering a gift, one that could stand to make him many more millions if he chose to employ it in his business. But Oliver would not be swayed. Prometheus's "gift" was cursed. No good would come from accepting it.

"Now, we must all join hands," Mrs. Speer said with a docile smile.

Doc Pleasance winked as he took Oliver's left hand. Galloway took the other, and pumped the pedal with his right foot. The wheel began to spin, whirring with an unpleasant syncopation, the trumpet itself amplifying tiny crackles, flashing with white sparks from within. Their hands all entwined, Mrs. Speer closed her eyes and bid the others to join her.

Oliver waited until the other men had shut their eyes before narrowing his own. He didn't dare close them fully, not with the sparks emanating from Galloway's trumpet mere inches from his face. His hair was liable to catch fire, with all the pomade he used to tame it.

Behind the trumpet, Mrs. Speer began to moan and sway. Doc Pleasance grinned from ear to ear. Oliver narrowed his eyes again. The moaning ceased, but the whir and crackle of Galloway's contraption carried on.

"Spirits!" Mrs. Speer bellowed, making him jump, his knees bumping the underside of the table. Doc Pleasance jolted as well, gripping his hand much tighter for an instant.

"We wish to open a passage to the astral plane," Mrs. Speer said, her voice deeper and more booming than Oliver could have imagined coming from such a frail body. "We wish to commune with the ethereal spirits inhabiting the home of Oliver Hedgewood. The door opens both ways. I will allow entry to the mortal world. I invite you do likewise on your side, in the astral plane."

Oliver watched her, swaying gently behind the crackling trumpet. The pedal thrummed. The wheel whirred. Sparks fizzled. Otherwise, nothing happened.

"Spirits, what causes your hesitation? I have opened the door. All we require is for you to pass through it."

A low, guttural moan arose in the dim lamplight. At first Oliver thought it was coming from Mrs. Speer, but as he listened closer it seemed to originate from within the trumpet. The sound made his stomach turn. It rose in intensity until it was louder than the machine itself:

"wwwwaaaaaaaaahhhhhHHHHHHH!"

"Good," Mrs. Speer shouted over the noise. "Thank you for joining us. Only, would you please do us the courtesy of using your words? We wish to speak, not to join you in song."

Doc Pleasance chuckled. The moaning ceased. Mrs. Speer opened one eye, as if sensing the communication had ended. Galloway kept diligently pedaling his infernal machine.

Oliver caught sight of movement in his peripherals. "Look out!" he cried, as a book from the shelves hurtled across the room at Mrs. Speer's head.

She ducked, and the book—he thought it was from his Dickens first editions—struck the wall behind her.

"Quite irritable tonight, aren't they?" she said to Galloway. He looked excited, his leg still pumping.

"Spirits, we do not wish you any harm. We merely wish to speak. Is the good Mrs. Hedgewood among you?" She snapped her fingers at Oliver.

"Desa," he said.

"Desa, are you with us? And the boys?"

"Henry and Thomas," he said, and swallowed a bitter taste.

"Your dear, sweet boys," Mrs. Speer said. "They're fortunate to have their mother to comfort them, Desa. But your husband tells me they've been restless. That he's heard them crying out in the night. Would you like to speak with him? Perhaps he could share in your burden?"

Sparks leaped from the mouth of the trumpet, arcing over their heads and fizzling out on the tiles. Oliver and the other men ducked. Only Mrs. Speer stood her ground.

"Desa, your husband only wishes to help you. He's very fond of you and the children. He misses you."

"I do," Oliver said, choking back tears, holding out his hands to protect himself from the fireworks. "I do miss them. I miss them terribly!"

"I sense their love being returned… but also…" Her face crinkled in a frown. "No!" She shook Galloway's hand vigorously. "Gordon, stop at once!"

Galloway took his foot off the pedal, but the whirring and sparks continued.

"Please, you must stop the machine!"

He let go of their hands and planted both feet on the pedal, but it kept moving despite him, jerking his legs roughly up and down. "It won't stop!"

Oliver reached out reluctantly and swatted the clamp with the back of his hand. It fell, and the trumpet came detached from the clips. The rubber cable landed like a dead snake on the table. It spat sparks, propelling it into the air, where it danced wildly, sparks firing from its live end, leaving trails of vaporous light in its wake.

Oliver shut his eyes against the brilliance, and for a disturbing moment an afterimage lingered behind his eyelids. Bursts of color flashed before him, dark shapes lurking and shuffling within them. When he opened his eyes, a soft-edged pillar of purest dark had risen from the table to the ceiling. It was as though he stood in front of a cauldron of boiling, liquid darkness, and the teeming, grotesque shapes he saw within were made of the same material. These creatures rolled and slithered over each other, their anatomy on full display in an orgiastic fervor, even as their forms mutated: an eye became a hideous, tooth-filled maw, a breast became an elbow, ribs fanned out to create gore-streaked wings.

His eyes teared and he blinked them away. When he looked again, the darkness had cleared. Three strangers sat in place of Mrs. Speer, Galloway and the doctor, their peculiar attire seemingly from a different age or place. Even the room itself looked different, though its proportions and layout were the same. It appeared to be a library. Shelves filled with tomes inlaid each and every wall. Directly across from Oliver, in the same chair as the medium had sat in his study, sat a man with dark, unkempt hair and a thin mustache, dressed in a green cardigan sweater with the sleeves rolled up. His eyes shot wide as Oliver stood bolt upright from his chair.

"My God—it worked," the man said, though his ghostly voice arose not from his lips but from the trumpet lying on the table between them.

"Who are you?" Oliver demanded. "How did you get inside my house?"

"Did you see it?" the man said, ignoring the query. His eyes narrowed and his lips turned up in a smile. He didn't appear to be looking at Oliver, rather looking to his left. "You did see it, didn't you?"

"See what?"

"You saw into the dark—"

Before the man could finish his statement, the curious vision faded away and the four of them were alone in his study once more.

"You saw something?" Mrs. Speer said, taking him gently by the hands and ushering him back to the table. "Was it them? Your wife and children?"

"No, I—" Oliver sat down heavily. "It was another room. This room, but… different. I believe it was another séance. I don't…"

He shook his head. Doc Pleasance was looking at him queerly. The medium and her companion wore expectant looks. But he couldn't explain to them what he thought he'd experienced.

"Frankly, I'm not quite sure what I saw," he muttered. "It was an hallucination. A trick of the light, nothing more."

He hoped the response would satisfy them. Because what he believed he'd just witnessed was a vision of the future, another man living in his House perhaps as distant as a hundred years from today—and that, surely, wasn't within the realm of possibility.

* * *

Standing in the library doorway, watching the scene from his memories play out, Oliver Hedgewood turned to Harrison Greely.

The séance they'd just witnessed was one of hundreds of memories Harrison had digitally recreated from Hedgewood's dead energy within the Garrote House construct, where Harrison had found himself captive after Rex Garrote separated his head from his body. The man beside him, nearly a hundred years in his grave, was as close to a perfect facsimile as possible to the man seated at the octagonal table with Mrs. Speer and her associate, the scene frozen in time.

"Now you see what it is we're up against," Oliver Hedgewood said gravely.

"That was Mr. Garrote." Harrison wasn't sure he understood what he'd just been shown. "How did he see you? How did you see him? You lived almost a hundred years apart!"

"My dear boy," Hedgewood said. "If I knew that, I would have no need for you. Now, please, come along. There are several more tales I wish to impart before we begin."

"Begin?" Harrison balked. He'd only just died and Hedgewood expected him to keep working? "What the heck are we beginning?"

"To build," Hedgewood said with a calculated smile. "Everything depends on it, I'm afraid: the past, the present and the future. We must continue to build my House."

Part 1

Here, Before

Motion to rezone 108 acres of park and privately-owned farmland to create proposed $1.2-billion indoor/outdoor theme park. Moved by Mayor Anders. Seconded by Councilor Chaudhary. Vote passed 12 – 1.

— excerpt from the Duck Falls, Maryland
Zoning Committee meeting, August 9, 2010

My friends, our once sleepy town is now wide awake, in the throes of an endless waking nightmare. While the trauma is still very much fresh in many of our lives, the world comes not to grieve but to revel in our tragedy, to poke their fingers in our wound, like a mass pilgrimage of Doubting Thomases.

— letter to the editor,
Ducks Falls Squawker,
July 14, 2019

The Calm & The Storm

Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

Outskirts of Duck Falls, Maryland

WE CAN'T LIVE like this much longer, Nevaeh Jacobian thought, looking over the sprawling camp at her fellow Gurpies. Not before the cold's got most of us looking for shelter elsewhere. Only a matter of time before we'll have to push on. It's high time acknowledge that truth.

The old farm adjacent to Ghostland had been a fine place to set up their campers and tents in the spring, and throughout the summer it had almost reminded Nevaeh of Burning Man, aside from the moderate temperature and conspicuous lack of drugs. But now, as autumn edged toward winter and bitter winds whipped through long-dead straw, she wondered if the camp would last another week. In Black Rock City they had a policy of radical inclusion, meaning anyone and everyone was welcomed and respected. Even so, Nevaeh figured her fellow Burners would happily turn away Old Man Winter at the Gate if they were able.

She finished up the last of the lunch dishes, glancing out the round window of her camper every so often. Cody and Jody, Stacy Maitland's little boy and girl, were playing skip-rope in the flattened straw while Johnny Plain Feather used a jack on their trailer. Johnny was a survivor of the Ghostland Tragedy, with a profound limp to show for it. Stacy and Johnny were only two of the many good people out there, working hard day after day for no pay and no accolades, just the pleasure of giving their all to a righteous cause. And soon, all of that would come to a premature end.

In a way it was like religion, she supposed. Or what religion used to be before it got muddled up with all the bullshit. Onward, Christian soldier, marching as to war and all that. GRP2's war was one of ideologies. You either believed ethereals had as much of a right to exist as the living, or you didn't. Moral gray areas might work for the law—and even there it was iffy—but there was no room for yes-buts and well-actually in Gurpieville.

"Go play devil's advocate somewhere else, sugar," Nevaeh muttered to herself. "Nobody here's buying."

She hung the dishrag on a drawer handle and crossed to the kitchenette table, where she'd been laying out the next GRP2 pamphlet. It contained an all-new "Guide for Peaceful Coexistence Among Ethereals," which Thea Petralia had co-authored with a very famous psychic who'd tragically committed suicide barely a week ago. Holding a degree from the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts—which she'd received post-children and post-divorce—Nevaeh had been a natural choice to do their graphic design. She hoped to get the pamphlets approved and printed by the end of the week, for distribution over the weekend in major cities and small towns all over the world.

The job was pretty simple, and the new MacBook Air Thea had gotten her made short work of it. Simply a matter of moving items around and tweaking fonts for the most aesthetically pleasing presentation. Stuff she could do in her sleep. The real work was the canvassing. The door-to-door campaigns. Getting out there in the streets and acting as voices for the literal voiceless. Folks like Stacy Maitland and Johnny Plain Feather were superstars in that regard. In the past two days alone they'd collected over a hundred signatures apiece for the White House petition, while Nevaeh or one of the other older mothers watched Stacy's twins.

It was still daylight by the time she got all the clean dishes left on the rack to dry, so she decided to do a bit of work outside. She drew open a folding chair and sat with the computer in her lap out front of her camper. At the tent site across from her, Delilah was strumming her cherrywood acoustic guitar and Drift sat down beside her with his bongos and began to tap on them. A small crowd of young adults sat around Delilah's dead campfire, listening to them play that old Ben Harper jam, "Waiting On An Angel." It sounded fine, with the fading sun casting a golden glow over the swaying field of straw on the horizon, and the cool autumn air kissing her skin. In her mid-sixties, Nevaeh thought herself a little too old to join them, but she didn't begrudge them their fun.

Enjoy it while it lasts, children, she thought.

She had no idea where most of these people would go once winter hit. Back to their old lives, their old jobs, the families and friends they left behind to be a part of something bigger than themselves, she supposed. Some of them might discover lodging here in town, if they were lucky. Sleeping on a friend's pullout sofa or above some kind stranger's garage. All she knew was there was no more room at the Temple. GRP2's mission was bigger than all of them, and its gospel had reached far across the globe. Duck Falls was their Mecca. Even the holiest of Muslims only performed the Hajj once a year.

Nevaeh worked until the sun was low, Delilah's sweet voice and strumming pleasant in the background, Drift a less-skilled yet tolerable addition on the bongos. The two had struck up a romance about a month before Delilah had fallen in with Thea Petralia and brought the two of them here. In a strange twist of fate, they'd met each other on Kismet, the dating app Thea's own parents had developed.

Nevaeh saved the document and closed the laptop. Another hour or two would do it, but her brain felt like a wrung-out dishrag.

She had her wicker deck chair folded under an arm and was just about to climb the aluminum steps to her camper when a boom as loud as anything she'd ever heard shook the hardpacked ground beneath her feet. The camper stairs rattled and the screen door swung open on its own.

Delilah's fingers strummed one last discordant chord that hummed within the body of the guitar as she stood and looked toward the sound.

Toward Ghostland.

"Oh, shit!" Drift gasped.

The others rose with them, mouths and eyes wide in awe and terror. Drift had dropped his bongos into the dead coals and didn't even notice, his gaze intent on whatever had happened. From where she stood behind her camper Nevaeh couldn't see anything, but from the sound she had a pretty good idea what it had been. When she finally laid eyes on it, the expression on her tired face mirrored theirs.

"Oh, my Goddess," she said.

A great wall of fire, taller than any Black Rock City Burn she'd ever seen, rose into the darkening sky above Ghostland's flat, gray wall. They were close enough she could feel the warmth of it on the wind. For a brief moment, the air was almost as hot as the desert playa.

Flaming debris launched into the air and hurtled to the ground like fiery comets. A chunk of something she couldn't identify landed directly on Stacy Maitland's trailer. Fire and sparks shot up from the crash. Stacy herself came running out a moment later, her eyes as wide as saucers, and ran into Johnny Plain Feather's strong arms.

"Everybody take cover!" Drift shouted. Poor Drift, Nevaeh thought briefly. This would have been doubly traumatizing for him. He'd come home shellshocked from Afghanistan two years back. Johnny was a vet, too, but no emotion rose to his bronze-hued face. He merely squinted toward the fire, then got into motion.

Nobody waited for a second opinion. They all got to running, even Nevaeh herself, who was too old to run, as smaller bits of flaming debris rained down around them, setting the dry straw ablaze. She dropped her chair and hurried up the stairs, jerked open the door and dashed into her camper.

Safe… for the moment.

Stacy's roof. She pushed the thought away and ducked under the kitchenette table, gripping her laptop. What were the odds another large fragment of whatever that was—You know what it was, don't be dense—would land on the camper right next to Stacy's? Not likely.

The screams from outside frightened her. She heard a handful of heavier thuds, a crash like something big landing on one of the other vehicles. A girl screamed and a man—she didn't recognize the voice—started shouting, "Put her out! Put her out!"

Some poor girl caught on fire. Nevaeh shuddered at the thought.

After who knew how long the cacophony finally died down. The screaming stopped and the rain of debris petered out. She heard a few voices shouting for help, several others calling out orders, but that was all.

When she figured it was probably safe again, she got out from under the table with a painful creak of arthritic joints, set her laptop down, and went back outside to survey the damage.

"Sheesh!" she said. It was like one of those videos she'd seen of burned-out towns in the Middle East. Just a miracle her own camper hadn't gotten hit. Folks were pouring buckets of water on smoldering tents that had gone up like kindling. Tony Dubois stood scratching his head over the crushed hull of his station wagon. Lana Small's trailer looked like it had barely survived a drive-by shooting. Patches of straw all over the field, both trampled and loose, were on fire. One of them was in Nevaeh's own front yard.

She ran back into the camper, filled a jug in the sink, and hurried back outside to dump it on the small blaze before it got worse. It took two more jugs to put it out.

"You okay over there?" Johnny Plain Feather called over. He was consoling Stacy and the kids, who seemed to be shook up but uninjured, despite what had happened to the trailer.

All over camp, she saw similar scenes of destruction to her own area. Wet burn scars and craters. Smashed vehicles. Burned tents. The Recurrence Field had blown sky-high and at least half of the building seemed to have landed in the surrounding fields.

Of course, it did, she thought. Where else would it go?

As she crossed the camp, a shadow fell over the area. She looked back to find the sunset had been blotted out by a giant cloud of black smoke spreading across the sky.

Still, the emergency seemed to be over. There looked to be a few minor injuries. No sign of any deaths, as far as she could tell. She saw herself as a sort of den mother to her close circle, and fortunately those people had all escaped harm.

Dust swept across a bald patch of hardpacked earth. The wind picked up bits of trash the explosion had rustled up and started circling. The detritus rose in a miniature tornado. A few people nearby watched it with her, fascinated.

Ancestors, she thought. It was what they called "dust devils" in Black Rock City, since the other term was supposed to be offensive to the Paiute people who'd lived on the land.

"Look! Another one," a little boy said.

She looked in the direction he was pointing. Two more had joined the first.

Ancestors… she thought again, and turned toward Ghostland, where the black smoke had obliterated the sky. Dear Goddess, could it be…?

Cautiously, she approached the closest whirlwind. As she neared, it swirled up and spun, as if reacting to her presence. She giggled excitedly, despite her fear. Jason, the little boy on the trailer steps, laughed with her.

"Is it one of them?"

"I think so," she replied. She reached out to touch the ethereal. Dirt and debris pattered her fingers, reminding her of dust storms on the playa. But there was a charge of… something… like electricity within the whirlwind. It made the hair on her arm stand on end.

"I feel them," she said, and giggled again.

"Can I touch one?"

"Ask your mother."

His mother, Millie, a young, very pregnant woman wearing a too-big flannel shirt, leggings and faux fur-lined duck boots, watched Nevaeh for a moment, then shrugged.

Jason ran down the trailer steps, wearing a smile as wide as any she'd seen.

The other two ethereals moved in his direction, swirling with soda tabs and beer labels and cigarette butts amid the dust.

Jason reached out. The two ethereals moved in, becoming one. Nevaeh still had her hand embraced by the first when the boy's eyes went wide and the sleeve of his shirt tore off, sucked into the whirlwind.

His voice rose in a high-pitched single note as the flesh just as suddenly tore off his arm like a dinner glove.

"Jason!" his mother cried.

Nevaeh reacted instantly. She pulled her own arm away and dove for the boy. She grabbed him in mid-leap and landed with him in her arms, rolling in the dirt. His blood had covered the both of them.

"Jason! My Jason!"

Millie ran toward them. The dust devils—they were surely devils, Nevaeh thought, for what they'd done to this boy—collided with one another and darted toward the woman. She was barely across her front yard when they surrounded her and lifted her off her feet. She kicked madly, hugging her round belly.

"Mommy!"

"Jasonnnnnnn!"

The devils carried her into the air, higher and higher, until the black, smoke-filled sky swallowed her whole.

Nevaeh stared at the spot where Millie had vanished, utterly baffled and horrified. The little boy in her arms cried, pulling her from her reverie. She unwound the keffiyeh from her neck and wrapped it around the boy's skinless hand and arm—my Goddess, you can see the muscle!—creating a makeshift bandage, and held him as he wept for his mother.

Screams arose from elsewhere.

The sun might have prematurely set on the Gurpies camp, but it seemed this day was far from over.

Nevaeh looked toward town—where Thea and the rest of their group were—and prayed to all of her gods and goddesses they would survive.

Seeing Ghosts

THE TEMPLE WAS the safest place to be right now, as far as Thea Petralia was concerned. Mere moments after the Recurrence Field explosion her people were already battening down the windows and barricading the doors.

Trouble had been brewing in town since the tragedy. She'd tried her best to calm the people of Duck Falls, to keep their minds on the lawsuit and on moving forward, but many were still scared. People feared what they didn't understand, and frightened people often made irrational decisions, especially among large groups. Thea had seen protests turn to riots as quickly as a flint striking steel. Hence, all the precautions her people were taking now, making the Temple into a fortress.

Outside, the old air-raid siren wailed. Car horns and screams punctuated the sound like musical stings. This was not the outcome she'd hoped for, but she realized it had been inevitable. Radical change could be difficult to accept. Some growing pains were to be expected. In time, Thea believed the living would learn to coexist with ethereals in peace and harmony.

She picked up the burner phone from her desk blotter and thumbed it on. The message she'd typed and sent to the detonator phone was still on the screen, a quote from Abraham Lincoln:

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it.

She considered the truthfulness of the statement for a moment, before deleting the text and tucking the phone into a back pocket to dispose of later. While her people fortified the church, she made her way to the storage room, where the boxes from Hedgewood had been unloaded. Coop Dawley was in there, among the cleaning and office supplies, holding what looked like a pair of clear plastic safety glasses fitted with earbuds from one of the boxes.

"Fifty per box, four boxes total," he said when she entered. "If these things really work—"

"I thought I told you to meet Bram at the park?"

"Yeah, you did," he said, giving her a hangdog look. "Then I got to thinking I'd be stupid not to get a couple of pairs of these before I left, one for me and one for Bram, then I started counting them all and—well, you know, with my ADHD I guess I kinda lost track of what I was doing."

"Coop, if you refuse to take your meds you can't keep leaning on your disability every time you screw up."

"Yeah, I'm sorry. It's my bad."

"That's okay. What about the other thing?" Thea couldn't bring herself to speak its name. Just knowing it was here, after all she and Bram had gone through to destroy the one at Ghostland, made her upset. It hadn't been part of the deal, and the fact that Hedgewood had seemed all too pleased to force it upon them, after what she'd given him, made it worse.

"It's in the conference room. Big metal crate."

Thea nodded. "I guess we'd better test these." She took the pair from his hand, making note of the power button on the right arm.

"Are you worried at all?"

She scowled at him. "About what?"

He shrugged. "You know."

"You were ready to walk through the gate tomorrow morning with no qualms. Now you're worried?"

He shrugged again. "Theory versus practice."

"We'll be fine, Coop," she said, though she wasn't sure she still believed it. She handed him another box, and put on her glasses. "Try them with me?"

He opened the box, removed the glasses from their bubble wrap, and put them on.

She found the power button and pressed it. An odd humming came from the earbuds, though it seemed to originate from the center of her brain, making the fillings in her teeth reverberate. Her vision went blurry for a moment, the room and everything within it appearing to vibrate slightly until her eyes adjusted. Coop fumbled with finding the button on his pair, placed over his prescription glasses, so she did it for him.

"Weird, dude," he said after a moment. The hum had dissipated and she could hear him well. "Feels like my fillings are tuned to an alien radio station."

"Well," she said. "Let's go see if they work."

She stepped out into the hall, heading straight for the sanctuary.

"Oh, whoa," Coop said behind her. "Dude, are you gonna be okay?"

He'd stopped in the doorway to her office. She returned to his side and saw what he had: a black man in his mid- to late-fifties, with a small patch of facial hair under his lower lip, sat on the floor with his back against the wall. Thea had never seen his face before but still she recognized him right away.

"Le Mon," she said with alarm, crossing the room quickly. Though he was semi-transparent she could see his face was ashen and gaunt, as if he were wasting away. An open sore on his forearm throbbed and suppurated.

She knelt at his side. "Are you sick? Is it the bite? The imago wound?"

He nodded as he spoke. It took her a moment to decipher what he'd said, his voice slightly muffled through the headphones.

"Where's Bram? The O'Neals are sick too. We gonna need that ritual he promised, before it's too late."

"Bram is…" She realized as she spoke that she had no clue where her second-in-command was. He was supposed to call her directly after he got to the park. It had only been ten, maybe fifteen minutes, but she had to admit she was starting to worry. If he got caught up in the pandemonium, if something had happened to him…

"He should be here soon," she said, pushing her fear aside. She reached out to touch Le Mon's shoulder, realized he wouldn't feel it and retracted her hand. He gave her a look of sympathy, as if she was the one in pain.

"I'll be okay," he said, pushing up to his feet. Trickles of black smoke flittered from the wound, as if his essence was turning to decay and evaporating. "You got bigger things to worry 'bout right now."

"What do you mean?"

"They got out. All of them." He nodded toward the window, already covered with plywood from the outside. "The smoke things and somethin real big, maybe worse. They been tormenting all them poor folk trapped in that Hell since the meltdown."

"But the rest of them… they're free too, right? The others. Survivors."

He nodded. "They free. But pretty soon none of that's gonna matter, not if Rex Garrote gets his way." He cocked his head, studying her face. "Those glasses, they from him?"

Thea bristled. "Him who?"

"Don't play coy. What'd you promise him in return, I wonder?"

"We don't have time for this," Thea snapped. "We have to prepare to take in displaced ethereals."

"Fine then. Send Bram for me when he gets here. We got a lot to talk about, the three of us." With a serious look, he added, "I know all about the shed."

Thea sensed the implications of this as keenly as Le Mon appeared to sense the fleeing ethereals, but she pushed the thought from her mind. The only thing that mattered now was making the Temple a safe haven for survivors. That meant calling them here.

"Can you… communicate with them?"

"You mean telepathically?" He sighed heavily. "Not me alone, not in the shape I'm in. Few of us together could maybe send out a signal, I s'pose. Like a homing beacon. Only it won't just call the folks you want. The bad ones'll hear the call, too. So will Garrote."

"I suppose we'll have to take that chance."

"All right then. Send some of the more telepathically inclined folks back here to me, we'll whip somethin up."

She nodded. "Thank you, Le Mon."

He grimaced, gripping his arm as more smoke rose from the wound. "Don't thank me yet."

She left the office, Coop in tow.

"What's this about a shed?"

"Coop, do you trust me?"

He looked at her warily. "Of course, dude."

"Then you won't ask that question."

She ignored Coop's probing look and stepped out into the sanctuary. What she saw nearly stopped her heart.

"Oh, no way!" Coop said, putting it better than she could have in the moment.

The entire sanctuary was brimming with people, from the pews to the balcony, over half of them faces she'd never seen before. With the various periods of dress, from the Victorian era to '60s flower children, from the fashion tragedies of the 1980s to modern times, it looked like the backstage of a theater presenting a dozen shows at once. Some helped corporeals board up the windows and stack pews in front of the door. Others were practicing their telekinetic skills. She'd seen many of these tricks before, but with the practitioners now visible they were no less astounding. The entire sanctuary was filled with voices and sounds she'd never heard before, from the floor literally to the rafters, where several ethereals hovered, chasing each other, "winking" in and out of sight.

"I don't ever want to take these off," Coop said.

She nodded. "This is what it's all about. This is why we do what we do."

There were so many people she almost didn't see the two who'd most recently joined them, until the man walked right through an ethereal woman in a hoop skirt minding her own business, and the woman sidestepped to miss another. Two ethereals trailed behind the man—Andy, she thought his name was—a man and a woman hovering a few feet behind him, one at each shoulder.

"Why are they boarding up the windows and doors?" Andy asked. "Should we be worried?"

"Absolutely not. Everything's under control."

"Under control, huh?" Lamb said. "If that was what's keepin ethereals from leaving Ghostland, puttin up a few boards isn't gonna protect anyone. Might as well be stickin your thumb in a dike."

"Time will tell, I suppose." Thea made a point of turning her body away from the Curtis woman as she faced Andy. "It's Andy, isn't it? How long have you had ethereals attached to you?"

"Ever since—" He frowned. "Wait, can you see them?"

"With these, yes." She tapped the right lens of the ReOss glasses Hedgewood had provided. "Would you like to see for yourself?"

"Oh, hell yeah."

Thea called for Coop, who was goggling around, amazed by all the sights around them. He snapped to attention at the sound of his name.

"Let him try yours on," she said.

His shoulders slumped, but he reluctantly handed his pair to Andy. Andy wiped off the earbuds on his shirt and carefully put them on. "Oh, wow." He blinked rapidly, adjusting to the sight. "That sound is kind of annoying, huh?"

"It goes away after a bit." Thea smiled, excited to share her gift. "Take a look around."

He did, turning his head to look up at his two ethereal companions. They smiled down at him. He smiled back.

"Hi," he said, and gave them each a small wave. They bowed at the waist in return. "Gomawoyo," he said. "Thank you." They replied in a language Thea didn't recognize, vaguely similar to the small amount of Cantonese she'd learned to get by during her time in Hong Kong, but not enough that she understood them.

"I'm sorry," Andy said. "That's pretty much the only Korean I know."

"What about hadyooken?" Lamb asked.

Andy blinked at her before breaking out in laughter.

"What? I heard you say it when that guy was playin catch with the blue orb."

"It's from Street Fighter, hon."

"Huh?"

"It's a video game," he explained, but this comment made her even more confused. "Hon, you gotta check these out. I wonder if this is what your mom saw all the time?"

Lamb studied him as he looked around the room in amazement. She seemed suspicious or upset, though Thea couldn't imagine why.

"Would you like to try mine?" she asked, holding out her pair.

"I'm all right, thanks," Lamb said. "If we were meant to see 'em, we wouldn't need those."

Thea shrugged and put them back on. "Suit yourself. Coop and I have business to take care of, but as I said before, you're welcome to stay here with us. This is a safe haven, for corporeals and ethereals."

"Thanks," Andy said, distracted by the sights.

"Can I get my glasses back, dude?" Coop said.

"Oh, just let him have them. Get another pair. No distractions this time. Get the glasses and go find Bram."

Coop nodded and headed off to the back room.

"I'd still like to speak with the both of you, but not here. In my office, once things get settled."

"If things get settled," Lamb said.

"Right." Thea forced a smile and headed off in search of a few telepaths to help Le Mon. She knew of at least three ethereals and one corporeal, but with the crowd she saw now it was hard to find anyone among them.

A commotion rose near the front of the church, by the doors to the knave. Voices were raised in greeting. Thea thought she heard someone say Bram's name. As she neared, she heard his voice.

The crowd parted for her, and she saw Bram had brought Lamb and Andy's detective friend with him. Someone must have taken down the barricade to let them in. "Detective Beadle. It's good to see you again."

Bram and the detective shared a confused look. "How can you see us?" he asked.

"What do you—?" Thea stopped mid-sentence and lowered the glasses. Bram and the detective, along with many of the people standing around them, disappeared. Nobody had removed the barricade. Bram and the detective had merely walked through it. She put the glasses back on. "You're astral projecting. Both of you?"

The detective shook her head grimly.

"Sam had an accident," Bram said for her. "This is the only place I could think of that would be safe for her."

"Thank you for that," Thea said. "Where are you right now?"

"At the accident site. All hell's broken loose out there. Everyone's either trying to get back into town or escape." He looked around. "Where's Lilian? Is she safe?"

"I haven't seen her or her boyfriend in a few hours. I assume they went back to her parents."

Bram nodded, seemingly distracted. "Okay. I should probably make sure they're safe."

"Do what you need to do. Go check in with Coop first, though. He's in the office. And Le Mon… he's not doing well. If you could get started on that ritual…"

He nodded. "Will do. Are you good?"

"Me? I'm a bit rattled, but I'll pull through." She turned to the detective. "Sam, is it?"

"That's right."

"You're welcome to stay with us for as long as you like. This is my home, and a home for many people like yourself. You're in good company here."

"Thanks. I guess I could stick around until I get my sea legs."

"We'd like that. Go. Mingle."

A young ethereal woman offered her hand, and Sam shook it. The woman introduced her to another ethereal, whose hand Sam shook. Thea smiled, feeling good about their decision again.

"Thea, I need a word," Bram said.

The smile died on her lips. She followed him into the knave and let the door close behind them.

"It's bad out there," he said. "Something's got these ethereals riled up. Whatever hit Sam's car… it was big. You need to be careful."

"Let's hope it stays out there. I was going to have Le Mon and a few telepaths send out a signal—"

"I don't think that's a good idea right now." He squinted at the boarded-up front door. "I'm not sure if it'll attract or repel whatever it was that killed Sam—either way, we're likely to see a lot of imago activity soon. I didn't see any on the way here, but they may have been stalking us."

"I'll post scouts."

"Do that." He squinted at her. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

She didn't know if she should tell Bram, wasn't sure how he'd react, and she worried he might reinforce what she'd already been thinking. But they couldn't do that. No matter what he might know, Le Mon was one of them.

"Le Mon knows about the shed," she said finally.

"What does he know?"

"I'm not sure. He wants to talk with me. Perform the ritual and see what you can get out of him. Then get back to your body and go find Lilian and Blake."

He studied her with his impenetrable face. "You'll be okay?"

"We'll be fine. Plenty to keep us busy. Coop and I will distribute these glasses to all the corporeals. We need to make the Temple as safe and inclusive for everyone here. No surprises."

"Good. What about our people on the hill?"

"Right." In all the commotion, she'd forgotten about the camp at Ghostland. "I'll call Nevaeh right away."

He nodded, his hard face grimmer than ever.

"This isn't quite what we'd hoped for, is it?" she said.

He turned to her. It seemed like he wanted to say something, then thought better of it. "You know what they say about omelets," he said. "I'll go see about Le Mon—"

Bram vanished mid-sentence. Thea called out his name, but he didn't respond. She could only assume he'd gotten pulled back to his body, which might mean he was in trouble. But Le Mon was getting worse by the minute. The O'Neals, too. How long would they survive if no one performed this "ritual" Bram had spoken about?

Then again, if Le Mon really did know about the shed, letting him flitter away into the ether might just be the best thing that could happen right now.

You can't think like that, she told herself. He's one of us and he's in pain.

She thought back to her devil's bargain. She still had no clue why Hedgewood had needed Ben, but she'd given him up in order to get what she needed. What they needed. Did the end justify the means? If the glasses and keeper suits could protect hundreds, the answer was yes.

How much pain is he putting Ben through right now? She wondered, despite herself. He's one of us, too—no matter what he might have done.

But there wasn't time to think about that now. She had to protect those who were still with them. Ben had chosen to betray her, to recruit for his imaginary war behind her back. She could only hope what Hedgewood had in store for him was painless and responsible. Lab rats weren't always abused. There were, in rare cases, ethical uses for them, and noble purposes.

Stop kidding yourself. Hedgewood is terrified of ethereals. Whatever he's doing to Ben, it's not ethical and it's sure as hell not noble. That speech of his about lions. He's the Great White Hunter. He already learned how to capture and tame ethereals with his Recurrence Field and the Ghostland program. The next logical step…

Thea didn't want to put the thought into words but it came anyhow, chilling her to her bones: The next step is genocide.

Helter Shelter

LILIAN'S EYES WERE red and raw from crying, as were her mother's. The others had comforted them as much as they were able, but the Laramies were starting to look uneasy. They'd known Lilian's father. Their families had once been close, living only a few doors down the road from one another, with children the same age who'd bonded over their love of video games and horsing around. Lilian remembered the six of them used to hang out in Ben's backyard after supper some nights until long after the stars came out, the adults drinking on the patio while the two of them chased each other around the yard or played whatever game they'd decided on that evening. But the two families had fallen out of contact ever since the Roths moved to the apartment downtown after the 2008 crash. These days, they were little more than passing acquaintances, saying hello to each other if they happened to bump into one another at the grocery store or in the street.

"You were probably too young to remember this, Lilian, but your mother might," Mr. Laramie said, breaking a long silence. "Maddie, you remember the time we drove the kids out to Six Flags?"

Her mom chuckled, wiping her nose. "I know this story," she said, and cleared her throat.

"Ben wanted to ride Skull Mountain so bad," said Mr. Laramie. Lilian still couldn't bring herself to think of him as Michael. "He was watching the boats drop through the mouth of that giant skull and we could tell right away he wouldn't give in. Right, Wen?"

Mrs. Laramie nodded with a wistful smile.

"They were, what? Five years old?"

"Six or seven," Lilian's mom said, nodding.

"Of course, Lilian wanted to go because Ben wanted to go, this was back when they were inseparable. So we waited in line forever for this thing, all six of us, and it was hot, by the time we reached the entrance I was dripping with sweat, so we were raring to get on this thing because we knew we'd get splashed." Everyone but Blake and Ben's grandmother were nodding along now, remembering as they followed the story. "We finally get in the boat and the second this thing gets running Lilian is terrified."

"I'd never been in a boat before," she said.

"Right. And there's that pirate sitting up top, I don't remember if he was animatronic or just a dummy, singing that pirate song, and Lilian started screaming—"

She frowned. "I don't remember that."

Blake squeezed her shoulder lightly.

"—and then the rapids hit, it's almost like a mine shaft. And Hi, he's trying to calm Lilian down. He's got his arm around her like Blake does right now and he's singing to her, that 'pirate's life' song, 'Yo ho, yo ho.' He's really getting into it, and of course he knows all the lyrics because it's Hiram, right? High school theater. Danny Zuko."

Lilian and her mother chuckled.

"Finally we're all singing along, even Ben and Lilian, all the way up that first ramp, and by the time we splashed down on the other side, Lilian was laughing and having a great time. The smile wouldn't leave her face through the whole rest of the ride."

"Hi could always get her smiling," her mother said.

Lilian smiled now, remembering how her father could always get at least a grin out of her. The pain of seeing him torn apart was still fresh, but she knew—she knew—that she would see him again. She would see Ben again. Le Mon and the others, too. They would all be reunited soon, whether in this world or the astral plane. It had only been an hour or so since they'd locked themselves inside Mr. Laramie's bomb shelter, and already she missed her father and friends terribly.

Grandma Laramie had been sitting silently since her son had locked the door, and when she spoke it startled everyone in the bunker. "Must be getting close to suppertime." She smiled cheerily. None of this seemed to affect her. Lilian supposed it might be Alzheimer's. Or maybe she'd already seen everything in her long life and all that had happened in the past hour was nothing to her.

"I'm starving," her son said, patting his mother's folded hands.

With an arm still draped over Lilian's shoulders, Blake looked to her for approval. She nodded. "I could eat," he said.

"Me too," she agreed.

Mr. Laramie stood and went to the kitchenette. Mrs. Laramie followed him. "Are we stocked up?"

"It's mostly dry goods." He opened a cupboard, filled with cans and boxes in various sizes and colors. "There was a deal on vacuum-sealed rations, so I've got a bunch of those, too." He opened another cupboard, stacked with plastic packages lying flat. Lilian thought there must be at least a hundred of them, but Mr. Laramie had said there was enough food for two weeks.

"I have to admit, when I saw you'd spent Ben's college fund on this I was…" Mrs. Laramie chuckled anxiously. "Let's face it, I was pretty pissed off. But you were right. This thing saved our lives." She put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I've been such a jerk to you."

"I'm sorry, Wen. I've been so out of it ever since Ben passed away, I…" He stopped, letting the thought hang.

"I have, too. We've just dealt with it differently."

Mr. Laramie nodded. After the phone call Lilian had been privy to a few hours ago, she was glad to see them patch things up, at least for now. Staying down here would be hell caught in the middle of their bickering and bitterness.

"How many beds do you have in here?" her mother asked.

"We've got two double beds and a blow-up mattress," Mr. Laramie said. "The sofa here pulls out, too. There's plenty of comforters and bedding in the closet. So long as we don't lose power, we should be all set. Even then, there's a generator in the garage and the stove and fridge run on propane."

"That's awesome, Mr. Laramie," Blake said.

"Call me Michael."

"Right. Michael."

Michael held up two packages. The contents of either didn't look appetizing. "Okay, do we want cheesy beef stroganoff or creamy chicken and rice?"

Everyone put in their votes. Maddie jokingly demanded a recount, and the Laramies boiled water on the stove and pouring it into the six separate bags, three of each kind. Lilian's stroganoff tasted fine but the noodles were harder than she liked and the texture of the sauce and beef was hard to stomach. She ended up swapping with Blake for his chicken and rice, which was only somewhat less unappetizing.

After dinner, they sat around the kitchen table while Michael turned on the six-o'clock news. There was helicopter footage of the burning hulk of metal and cinderblock just outside the park wall, a mechanical building that housed the Recurrence Field, as fire hoses doused the charred wreckage. This was followed by a clip, again from above, of the traffic jam on the main road leading out of town, and another on the township road, where several green-camo vehicles were parked, troops with heavy weaponry climbing out and hustling into formation.

"What the hell is going on here?" Maddie said.

"It appears that several army units from Fort Meade and a Maryland Army National Guard detachment have been deployed to the neighboring town of Ducks Falls," the network anchor said over the footage, "and are currently in the process of locking down the area. Still no word on why a quarantine might be necessary, though Colonel Martin from Fort Meade had this to say—"

It cut to a severe-looking military commander with a glistening bald head, squinting at the camera light. "Unfortunately, at this time we cannot divulge to the public the reason for the quarantine. Needless to say, this order comes direct from the highest position in the chain-of-command and we will do our utmost to enforce it."

"What does that mean, you think?" Blake looked around at everyone. "You think they'll arrest people?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "But they have a lot of very big guns and I sure wouldn't want to argue with them."

"Putting us under quarantine will kill more people than letting us out," Lilian said. "If anything, they need to set up a new Recurrence Field."

"Shh, what's this?" Michael said, holding up a hand.

The news had cut to a group of personnel clad in black uniforms. They carried no weapons from what Lilian could see as they climbed out of vans and trucks carrying large, telescoping black poles. They set these down on the ground, in the road and elsewhere, and unfolded the tripod legs. Other personnel secured heavy-looking black boxes with mesh fronts to the tops of the poles. They looked a bit like high-tech speakers.

"We're being told these are Hedgewood employees," the news anchor reported. "They appear to be setting up some sort of scientific equipment around the area."

The helicopter camera hovered above another crew at the county road exit, setting up more of the same black boxes on tripods.

"What are those things?" Blake wondered aloud.

"Whatever it is, I don't like it," Michael grunted. "Especially if it's coming from Hedgewood."

Screams arose directly outside. It had been some time since they'd last heard someone other than each other. Until the television had shown them otherwise, Lilian had begun to wonder if they were the last people alive.

"That was close," Maddie said.

"What happens if someone finds the shelter?" Lilian asked. She turned to the Laramies. She and Blake and her mother were their guests, after all. "Do we let them in?"

Michael and Wendy shared a thoughtful look. He exhaled through his nostrils. "Let's cross that bridge if we come to it," he said finally.

Lilian turned to Wendy, who nodded in agreement. Her mother shrugged. Blake laid a hand on hers and squeezed.

It didn't comfort her. If it was up to her, she would let them in. She suspected she'd be outvoted.

What would they say when she suggested what they needed to do next, before nature began to take its course?

Because one of them needed to go back outside very soon. Someone would have to bury her father.

Lockdown

OLIVER HEDGEWOOD III sat in the back of his armor-plated Mercedes S600 limousine, parked out front of Ghostland with the engine running. General Zaydan and his men were on their way from D.C., and a convoy from Fort Meade was scheduled to arrive before the general. Ollie's private military were already setting up a perimeter around Duck Falls. The general's troops would enforce the quarantine, but it was imperative Hedgewood's work be completed quickly. If it worked as well as he hoped—and judging by the tests they'd performed at the facility it would—the infrasonic array would wipe out every single ethereal within its radius in a matter of hours.

A knock came on his window. He looked up.

Danica Jackson leaned in toward him, trying to peer through the tinted glass. She was dressed from head to toe in her black tactical uniform and gear, HEDGEWOOD emblazoned in gold on her left lapel. He zipped down the window.

"Tell me some good news, Danica."

She leaned into the window, glancing up front as if to make sure Manny wasn't listening. The partition was closed, but it wouldn't have mattered. As Ollie's driver and personal bodyguard, Manuel Taveras had been privy to many intimate discussions well above someone of his stature's pay grade.

"We've got men stationed at all the exits from town," Danica said. "The array's going up right now. I also just spoke to Colonel Martin. His men are half an hour away."

"Excellent."

"More good news: your package arrived safely at the facility."

"Wonderful!" This truly was news worthy of the interruption. He'd been thinking of home—his familial home, currently a pile of rubble beneath Garrote's infernal park—when Danica knocked on the window. "Is the package secured?"

"Secured and ready for interrogation, sir."

"Join me?"

She grinned. "Thought you'd never ask."

He opened the door and shifted over to let her in. She sat beside him as he opened a cabinet, removed two sets of Harrison Greely's neural mesh, and plugged them into the onboard computer console. They leaned back against the leather seat. Ollie watched Danica pull her sleek black ponytail up from her long neck and place the mesh on her head before he put on his own. When they were both ready, he clicked the icon on the console to begin the program.

His pupils constricted against the brightness of the construct lobby, a stark contrast to limousine interior, parked under the smoke from the destroyed Recurrence Field. Danica entered the simulated hospital room first, pushing the rolling cart housing a digital avatar of the TANDY, which would be operated by his team at the facility.

The ethereal they'd been performing tests on for the past several days, a man named Jeremy Cruickshank, became agitated the moment Ollie stepped into the room. Cruickshank never quite seemed to remember him proceeding their tests, only enough to make him upset. "Do something about him, please," Ollie said to the construct operators in the Nevada facility.

They swiftly silenced the man.

Ollie smiled at the boy in the other bed, a smile that never quite reached his eyes no matter how many times he'd practiced it in the mirror as a child.

"Hello, Ben," he said, trying to sound as comforting as he was able. "I understand you're feeling quite a bit of confusion at the moment…."

* * *

Johnny Plain Feather started the truck and leaped out to help Stacy with the kids. After the explosion and the collapse of Stacy's trailer roof—the large chunk of rebar and concrete still lay in the crater, like space junk—he was eager to get moving. When the screaming began and people started launching into the sky, sucked up into the black cloud that seemed now to cover the entire world, his instincts told him to stay and help. He felt for his friends, but Stacy and her kids, Jody and Cody, were his priority. It was time to leave.

Johnny grabbed Jody up in his arms and set her in the small backseats. He picked up Cody and did the same, telling his sister to "Shove a cheek, missy." Both children were skinny as a rail but healthy enough, he thought. They sure ate like horses.

He took the two small bags Stacy had packed with the kids' things, stuffed a bit of cash from the cookie jar they kept for emergencies into his pockets, and tossed the bags into the truck bed. Stacy was already buckled up in the passenger seat by the time he got behind the wheel.

"Buckle up," she said, twisting around to smile at the children.

"We've got to go," Johnny said. He threw the trannie into reverse and floored it. Dirt peeled up under the chassis as the truck roared back.

The camp was in full-on panic mode, everybody running back and forth like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming, diving for cover. Dust devils weaved in and out between tents and campers. Johnny hadn't seen them pull anyone off the ground but he suspected these were the cause of it. He'd seen it happen enough at Ghostland that day, and had seen the ethereals themselves with the special glasses they'd provided. He wouldn't let those awful things get ahold of Stacy and the kids.

"Hold on to your hats," he said. He popped the clutch, skipped first gear directly for second, and slammed his steeltoe down on the accelerator.

The truck wailed forward, kicking up a cloud of dust, pebbles and shredded straw at the busted trailer as they tore away from camp.

Johnny looked in the rearview. "You kids okay back there?"

The kids looked nervous but they both managed a nod. Even though they were Stacy's children from a previous beau, he loved them as if they were his own. He and Stacy were two of the first to make camp here, when Nevaeh and the other early members who hadn't been fortunate enough to get a room at the Temple had staked this place for their own. They'd both felt compelled to join Thea's cause for different reasons, and had fallen in together quickly.

Stacy gripped his thigh, her red-lacquered fingernails digging into his faded blue jeans. "Where we goin to, babe?" she asked, her brown eyes wide and fearful.

"We'll get a little way up the road, find a motel. Maybe this'll blow over." He smiled at her, hoping to calm her down. She was still agitated. Johnny knew they weren't quite out of the woods but the further they got away from camp the more his own nerves calmed.

"Look out!" Stacy cried, gripping the dashboard.

Two dust devils were swishing back and forth across the road ahead in a scissor formation. Johnny eased his foot off the accelerator as the devils swung together. They moved apart again and he stamped down on the gas with both feet. The truck roared ahead, and the dust devils came together again, missing the rear bumper by less than a foot.

Johnny laughed nervously. "That was too close."

"Why are they tryin to hurt us, Johnny? After all we done to protect em."

"They're just squirrelly, that's all," he said, not sure he believed it. "Like your brother when they let him outta jail."

She regarded the kids with a fearful look. Johnny caught their wide-eyed stares in the rearview. It made him think of what his father, a Vietnam vet, had called the "Thousand-Yard Stare."

"What about all the people pulled up into the sky?"

Johnny bent at the waist to peer through the windshield, hoping to give Stacy and the kids a ray of hope. He laughed. They'd passed from underneath the black cloud. The sky above and ahead of them was as clear as a summer day.

"You know, I think we mighta made it clear—"

He slammed both feet on the brakes. They'd come over a small rise, and an Army transport truck blocked both lanes directly ahead of them. Six grunts stood around it, holding M4 Carbines. They'd already set down a coil of concertina razor wire across the road. As the tires of Johnny's truck peeled rubber on the asphalt to avoid hitting it, the troops raised their weapons in his direction.

"What the heck, Johnny?"

"I dunno, Stace."

Two troops approached the truck, one on either side. Johnny rolled down his window. "What's the trouble?"

"Road's closed, sir," the soldier said. He wore a black mask over his mouth and nose, and his small, dark eyes held undisguised malice. "Can't come through this way."

"I'm just trying to get my old lady and her kids outta town—"

"That's not gonna be possible," the soldier at Stacy's window said. He also wore a mask over his face.

"What d'you mean?" Stacy said. "We can't leave?"

"Town's under quarantine," the soldier at her side said. "Orders from top brass."

"Cornteen?" Stacy's voice had gone up an octave. "For what? We're not sick!"

"Look, I know you got orders," Johnny said, trying to deescalate. "I'm a veteran. Desert Storm. Looks like you just got this roadblock set up, for all your commanding officer knows we slipped through a few minutes before you got here. I'll burn rubber, I swear to Jesus." He gave the guy a pleading look. "Can't you turn your back just this once?"

The soldier frowned and stepped back from Johnny's window. "Please back up your vehicle and return to town, sir."

Johnny looked over his shoulder. Beyond Cody and Jody's terrified faces, the black cloud had smothered the sky. "You can't send us back there…."

"Sir, we're authorized to use force if you don't turn around right now—"

"Fine! Detain us! Put the kids in a cage! Just get us the hell out of here!"

Both soldiers raised their weapons. The others, who'd been keeping a keen eye on the situation at the truck, did the same.

"Turn the fuck around right now!"

Johnny turned to Stacy. He wasn't about to let her and the children get gunned down by these boys, who were just kids themselves. But he couldn't bring them back, not after what they'd seen. It was a death sentence.

"Fine," he said. He threw the truck into reverse. He drove back ten feet and braked. The soldiers lowered their weapons but not all the way. They were ready should he attempt to drive through anyhow.

"Johnny…"

He squeezed her thigh. "Kids," he said. "Duck your heads."

Stacy and the kids ducked.

Johnny stomped on the gas. He jerked the wheel hard to the right and bounded into the ditch. The soldiers began firing. A bullet struck the windshield just above the rearview mirror, spiderwebbing the glass.

He ducked as they neared the roadblock, passing on the right. Even ducked down he knew he wasn't safe. A single round could punch through the door and hit him, hit the kids. He'd fired rounds into trucks in Kuwait City on a few occasions. The occupants rarely made it out alive.

The driver's window smashed, raining glass in his hair, on his denim jacket and shearling collar and the crotch of his acid-washed jeans.

Screams from outside caught his attention. The soldiers continued firing but the impact of the bullets in the chassis stopped. He risked a look through the window. Half a dozen dust devils had descended on the troops. They were firing blind, no longer shooting at the truck. Friendly fire tore through one of the soldiers and another got grabbed up by the churning dust and thrown into the side of the transport truck.

Johnny kept on driving over the bumpy terrain. After a while he could no longer see what was happening to the soldiers in the rearview. They were hidden by the truck, further and further in the distance. When he looked in the mirror again, two soldiers shot into the air liked popped corn.

"We made it! We goddamn made it!"

He slapped the dashboard in his excitement. His foot was still pressed to the mat when the back of the truck rose into the air, wheels spinning, and the front end hit the asphalt with a shower of sparks.

Johnny's face struck the horn and his nose burst open, fireworks crossing his vision. The truck flipped onto its roof and spun, skidding along the road. He gripped his seat and the door, holding himself in place until the movement stopped.

Stacy groaned. One of the twins was crying. Johnny blinked blood from his eyes and craned his neck. The kids were hanging upside-down by their seatbelts, their hair and arms hanging loose. Cody was crying. Jody's eyes were shut.

Stacy had streaks of blood in her blonde hair. He heard it pat-pat-pat onto the ceiling. She moaned.

Johnny unlatched his seatbelt and dropped. If he was Stacy's age the fall might've been nothing, but at twenty years her senior he had to admit his body ached. He rolled over and took Stacy's free hand.

"Can you move?"

"My head hurts," she moaned.

"I know, babe. I'm gonna get you and the kids outta here but you gotta help me, okay?"

She nodded. The movement made her wince. He put her hand on the seatbelt latch. Then he held her under her shoulders and back.

"Click the belt, Stace."

She fumbled with it, her fingers jittery. Through the shattered back windows, he saw the dust devils cut back and forth across the road. He remembered what they looked like: inhuman things as black and wispy as the smoke above Ghostland. Could they see him? Were they sentient, or did instinct cause them to kill?

"It's right there, Stace. You can do it."

The latch clicked. The belt retracted and Stacy fell into his arms, crying out in pain. Johnny saw the problem once he got her upright. Her right arm was broken, a shard of bone poking through her freckled skin, along with a gash on the top of her head that was bleeding badly.

He looked out the back. There was no sign of the dust devils or any of the soldiers anymore. They were all alone. That scared the hell out of him, knowing those smoke things—which couldn't possibly be ethereals—might be hovering around them, completely unseen.

"We gotta get the kids out. Can you open your door?"

She tried the door with her good arm but it wouldn't budge. He tried on his side. The roof had bent. He had to give the door a good shove with his shoulder and when it finally gave, he staggered out on his haunches.

"I'm gonna come around." He crept around the front of the truck. The bumper lay a ways back on the road. The grill was obliterated. The license plate was missing, probably somewhere in the ditch.

"Get the kids," she groaned.

Johnny came around to the passenger side. Stacy was sitting now, cradling her arm. Cody's door came open easily. He snapped the belt and Cody fell into his arms.

"Stay here," Johnny said, setting him down on the asphalt. The boy sat beside his mother's window, sucking his thumb.

He crawled into the backseat. Jody was still sleeping or unconscious. He spoke her name, thinking she might be faking it. She liked to pretend she was dead sometimes to scare her brother, who was younger by ten minutes. She didn't blink or crack a smile, her usual tells.

He unlatched her belt and caught her. Jody's eyes sprang open the second she was in his arms and she started wailing, her arms draped loosely over his shoulders.

"Shhh. It's okay, honey. It's okay." He patted her back and pushed with his feet to get the two of them out of the truck on his butt. Then he set her down beside her brother. She hugged the boy fiercely.

"There, you're okay, aren't you?"

Johnny pulled on Stacy's door. It wouldn't move. The frame was crumpled where the roof had hit the ground.

"Looks like you've found yourself in a bit of a pickle, chum!"

The cheery voice behind Johnny startled him. He turned and saw a soldier standing before the descending sun, a mere silhouette in a bulky uniform and cap. Johnny shaded his eyes to get a better look at the man.

Friend or foe?

"Ah, I see," the soldier said. "You're Red Indian. Do you speakum English?" The slurs came wrapped in a theatrically loud not-quite British accent, like a narrator on a nature program.

"I speak American," Johnny spat back.

"Well then, I'd very much like to get a look at that brain of yours, if it's all right with you."

The kid raised the M4. Johnny barely had a moment to raise his hands, but in a surprise twist of fate, he saw the shot wasn't meant for him. The movement was swift, the pull awkward but effective. The single round under the soldier's own chin was deadly accurate. The young man was dead before he hit the ground.

Cody and Jody began crying. Blood had spattered their shocked faces.

Johnny had a moment to puzzle those cryptic words—get a look at that brain of yours—before his consciousness was swept away.

Swooning, he staggered to his feet. With a robotic movement, he reached for the weapon clutched in the dead soldier's hands. He hefted it, ejected a shell, then peered down the sight. Both the soldier and this man—Johnny—held an extensive knowledge of firearms. This one perhaps more so.

The toddlers regarded the man wearing their step-father's skin, sniffling and whining. Their names would come to him shortly. The longer he wore this body, the more he would learn from it.

"Tut-tut, children." He took a knee between them, leaning over the rifle. "The good Dr. Hammersmith has come to save you from this savage."

"Johnny!" a woman cried, leaping out from the battered passenger door, a whirlwind of straw-colored curls, denim and blood.

"I'm afraid Johnny's no longer with us," said Dr. Death, trying on an awkward smile. He raised the rifle in Johnny's hands and shot her twice. Her suede jacket billowed open as the rounds exited through her back, and she fell to her knees with an astonished look on her face, a position this Johnny fellow had no doubt enjoyed her in many times, then face-down on the asphalt.

The children—Cody and Jody, names and memories were coming to him much faster now—wept fat, useless tears for their mother.

Dr. Hammersmith, meanwhile, got busy with the combat knife on the soldier's skull. It wasn't the perfect tool for the job, but he'd done more complicated surgeries with far less in the past.

* * *

Once General Zaydan arrived at Duck Falls and took command over the quarantine, the process went far smoother. Colonel Martin was a fine commander, but an entire section had already gone tits-up and a young private named Treach had been found with the top half of his skull removed and his brain missing. The general was adamant there would be no more of such mistakes on his watch.

Colonel Martin resented Zaydan taking over, but he hadn't appreciated being handed this operation to begin with. Quarantining American citizens, even under noble conditions, was not what he'd signed up for. Murdering civilians who'd apparently skipped a roadblock, only to frag each other… there was no call for that sort of behavior in enemy territory, let alone on American soil. Treach was lucky to be dead. He'd spared himself murder charges and a personal ass-kicking from the colonel himself.

The general stationed two men with each one of Hedgewood's tech crews: twelve crews, twenty-four soldiers. The rest were placed at the exits and on patrol duty. Eventually, he would have them on sweeps of the park and town. He suspected the perimeter fence, this infrasonic weapon Ollie had apparently named after a woman, would be up and running within a day or two, depending on how quickly Hedgewood's people worked. It would need to be protected. From citizens as much as these entities Ollie called "ethereals."

Ghosts. General Zaydan chuckled bitterly, rubbing the hard surface of the scar on the back of his head, ruffling the short, coarse hairs surrounding it. A battle scar he often forgot about but his subconscious apparently couldn't let go.

He'd seen these ethereals with his own eyes at the facility, but the thought of them still made his mind reel. When he'd first heard about the incident at Ghostland, he'd assumed some superpower, China or the Russians, had finally done what Uncle Sam couldn't: that they'd made invisible soldiers and used the park as a proving ground for some kind of sophisticated psychic weaponry.

Ollie's "neural mesh"—what one of his underlings had apparently called the "Pandora" after that ridiculous Commie propaganda film from the early 2000s, and not the mythological woman as Zaydan had thought—had apparently achieved something similar. Marines under Zaydan's own command were currently training in astral combat using this technology in Afghanistan and Syria. It was the warfare of the future, in the general's opinion. Hedgewood agreed.

Once he'd actually seen these ethereals he knew Ollie was right. They were an aberration—freaks of nature which had no business existing beyond death. They had to be exterminated with extreme prejudice. No living soul would be safe until these ungodly entities were wiped from the face of the planet.

Ollie, for his part, had promised his infrasound device would do just that. It had already been tested on several of these "ethereals." The general had witnessed once such test personally. The sonic pulse, administered within one of Hedgewood's virtual reality simulations, had rendered the ethereal inert. It had simply vanished, from the construct and the Recurrence Field. Its energy had dissipated, and was no more.

On a fair playing field, three-hundred soldiers at the peak of their abilities would be defenseless against even a small group of ethereals. Without the ordnance from Hedgewood, his ReOss glasses and directed-pulse weaponry, the Ethereal Menace would cut through Zaydan's battalion like a combat knife through flesh.

The evidence was Colonel Martin's F-section and what had been done to the woman in the pickup that had passed through their roadblock. There had been small children with her, indicated by the two bags packed with clothes, toys and books scattered on the road. Now that entire section was dead from friendly fire, two children were missing, and the entity which had practically beheaded Private Treach had vanished in the wind.

Weapons raised with a clatter around the general as a black limo approached the Jersey barriers and razor wire from the town side of the barricade.

"At ease, gentlemen," Zaydan said calmly. His men followed orders, lowering their rifles, as Zaydan leaped over the barrier. He was still in fine shape but he wasn't a kid any longer, jumping turnstiles on the L Train. He straightened the desert camo jacket with his name stenciled over the right pocket and U.S. ARMY over the left, and approached the vehicle.

The tinted windows reflected the last of the setting sun's golden light, still unsullied by smoke. In a moment, one of the back windows zipped down, revealing Ollie Hedgewood's smiling-yet-not-smiling face.

"Good evening, General," the wealthy man in the pale blue suit said, squinting against the sunset. "Looks like you've got everything under control here finally."

"There was an incident at one of the posts," Zaydan admitted, peering into the limo. A woman shared the backseat with Hedgewood, her dark hair pulled back from her pale face so severely any wrinkle would have had a hard time surviving. "But it's being handled."

"Wonderful." The smile stretched further, but Ollie's eyes remained emotionless. Like a shark, General Zaydan thought. "I saw Colonel Martin beat you to the media."

"I'll brief them shortly, exactly as we discussed. Viral outbreak. Avian influenza variant. Highly contagious."

"That should buy us some time, at least until the CDC chimes in."

Zaydan nodded. "Have you located your bogey yet? This… what's his name? Garrote?"

Ollie's half-smile evaporated. "Danica and I are still in the process of interrogating our subject. The moment we locate him, I'll need your best men on the job."

The general made a sweeping gesture toward his battalion. "With respect, every one of these men are my best."

"Good. This is no tinpot dictator tucked away in a spider-hole. Rex Garrote is highly intelligent, extremely meticulous and extraordinarily dangerous. He'll need to be treated with the utmost caution."

"That goes without saying."

Ollie squinted at the general, then nodded, satisfied with the briefing. "Shall we reconvene at…" He looked at his watch. "…say, zero-six-hundred hours?"

The general stifled a grin. Civilians, he thought in amusement. "Zero-six-hundred. Affirmative."

"With any luck, I'll have new intelligence by then."

"My men will be ready."

Ollie looked out at the troops, busying themselves in the dying light. "I rather hope so, General," he said. "For all of our sakes."

Discarnate

BRAM SUCKED IN a deep breath as he returned to his body, blinking harshly at the change of light. Red-tinted sunlight filtered through the windows as dark, clotted chunks of something slid down the glass. Loops of thick, knotted rope hung down from the roof. The stench was unbearable, like a gas station toilet. He looked up and saw the ceiling was dented in severely, the fabric almost touching his head. The sound of whatever had hit the roof must have been what had pulled him back from the Temple.

He popped his neck and shoulder joints, his body stiff and unwelcome. When he finally turned, he found Rex Garrote himself sitting in the passenger seat, legs crossed at the knee, studying him. He wore a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches over his trademark cardigan, like an English professor in the 1980s.

"You're back," Bram said.

Rex looked down at himself. "It would appear so."

"How come I can see you?"

The writer smiled his joyless smile. "My Psychic Friends Network and I have been working on my image. Looking sharp, n'est ce pas?"

"Yeah. Looking real sharp, Mr. G. Only I didn't expect to see you for a while."

"Unfortunately, our timeline had to be speeded up a tad due to… let's say, unforeseen circumstances."

"Unforeseen circumstances," Bram repeated.

Again, that smile. "That's right. There are some things I can't see, Bram, though you may not believe it. I'm going to need you to bring someone to me, and I don't want you sharing this information with your partner in crime."

"Thea?"

"No. Sophia Petrillo."

Bram gave Garrote a quizzical look. "Listen, can we do this outside? It stinks like shit in here."

Garrote's nostrils flared. "You know, some of us don't have the privilege of an olfactory system. You might want to be a little more considerate of our feelings."

Bram stammered an apology.

"For God's sake, Bram, just open the door."

Bram did as he was told and stepped out of the van. Despite being mindful of the steady drip from the roof, a spot of red landed on the toe of his right shoe. He looked up and caught another terrible whiff off the offending object before he saw it.

There was a corpse on his van.

"Jesus!" he muttered, wafting away the smell of the dead man's insides as he staggered back from the van.

"You and that partner of yours made quite a mess here, didn't you?" Garrote said, surveying the traffic jam. "Do you think she's experiencing buyer's remorse yet? Or has her self-righteous crusade blinded her to the damage she's caused?"

Paramedics had managed to wedge an ambulance between two vehicles since Bram had last been here and were loading Sam's body onto a gurney. It looked like most of the drivers and occupants had just left their vehicles behind. Who knew where they were or if they ever planned on coming back, but his van was still closed in. It meant he'd have to walk wherever Garrote needed him to go. The thought of all that walking after having spent the past half an hour in his astral form was excruciating, but it would have to be done.

"Who do I have to get?"

Garrote turned with a garish smile. "Her name is Lilian Roth. I believe you and Sophia gave her a ride into town this morning."

"What do you want with her?"

"That's my business. Yours is bringing her to me."

Bram nodded. He'd never needed details before, not since Rex had gotten him discharged from the facility. He knew which building was hers from when Thea's limo had dropped off her and her boyfriend that morning, just not the apartment number. He'd have to knock on a few doors but he suspected he'd have her in his custody by nightfall.

"Where should I meet you?"

Garrote's smile widened, displaying his straight white teeth. "At my House, of course."

"Your House," Bram repeated. He happened to know Garrote House was a pile of rubble in a hole.

"Yes," Garrote said. "You know, I think I just might do a little renovating before you and our guest arrive. Gussy the place up a little."

"Gussy it up."

Garrote smacked Bram's forehead with an open palm. "What's the matter? All that astral traveling made your brain go soft?"

Ordinarily Bram wouldn't have accepted the abuse. He'd spent far too many years dealing with bullies and vowed, once he'd left the Institute, never to tolerate them again. Garrote was an exception. He'd seen what Mr. G could do to someone who decided they were being treated unfairly.

"I'm good, Mr. G. I'm just… it's been a long day."

Garrote seemed to delight at this. "Hasn't it?" he said. "It's felt like a year since I was here with you last. But it's only been…" He looked at his bare wrist. "Would you look at that? It's a freckle past a mole already."

Bram forced a chuckle. It was best to at least attempt to laugh at Mr. G's jokes, no matter how unfunny they might be.

"You'd better get running, little rabbit. You're late, you're late, for a very important date."

"I'll bring her to you, Mr. G."

Garrote's expression darkened again. "You'd better. I dropped my house on the last person who disappointed me." The writer began to laugh at this, and Bram joined him, even though he didn't feel much like laughing at all. He wasn't even sure it was a joke.

Still laughing, Rex Garrote vanished from sight.

Bram paused a moment, getting his bearings, then started downhill, scurrying along the side of the road, ducking behind parked vehicles every time he sensed an ethereal nearby. As he passed by a small art gallery, an A-frame style building, all dark-brown wood and green shingles nestled among bushy shrubs, a small group led by the sheriff's deputy crossed his path, heading toward it. They didn't notice him hiding behind a delivery van. He waited until the group had closed themselves into the gallery, then hurried down the road to where it began to straighten out as it reached the downtown core.

He was getting close to the Temple now. He ducked between two buildings on the other side of the road, not wanting to be seen by any of the Gurpies. The alley smelled like urine and French fries and trash. He moved along the backs of the buildings, small two-car parking lots, fire escapes, dog turds and dumpsters. Once he was a safe distance from the church, he returned to the street. As he stepped out of the alley, he felt the presence of another ethereal, maybe several, moving swiftly toward him. There were less cars in the street here but the buildings were closer to the sidewalk. He ducked into a doorway and let the ethereals pass. He couldn't tell whether or not they meant him harm but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Bram had been "gifted" for as long as he could remember. His first out-of-body experience had come as he was sitting in the backseat of his mother's car on their way to church when he was seven. He'd been holding up a toy police car to his window with one eye closed, making it follow the terrain. Before he knew it, he was out there himself, flying alongside the car. He'd looked back at himself in the window, holding the tiny police car up to the glass, and his mother in the front seat, oblivious to her son's double, running faster than anyone had ever thought possible.

He'd whooped with joy, running over the hilly terrain, leaping over rocks and an old, broken fence and skirting around trees, until the car disappeared under a bridge and he'd suddenly found himself in the dark. He remembered feeling terribly afraid, worried he'd never be able to find his mother again, never get home again, that he'd be stranded outside of his body forever. He'd awakened minutes later in the backseat, cradled in his mother's lap. She told him he'd had a seizure. It was the first time he'd had one and she hadn't known what to do, so she'd pulled over to the side of the road and put her belt in his mouth. No wonder his tongue had tasted like leather.

As she'd stroked his head, Bram remembered feeling suddenly alien to his own body. It hadn't felt real to him any longer, as though he was meant for that other world he'd only just gotten a small taste of: a world where he could run as fast as a car and didn't have seizures. A world where his mother's once gentle touch didn't feel like sandpaper rubbing against his scalp.

The doctors had run him through all of the usual tests. The MRI, the EEG. He was found to have temporal lobe epilepsy, likely stemming from a pathological lesion in the entorhinal cortex or the hippocampus.

The neurologist had put him on Clonazepam, but it had made him dizzy and tired, irritable and clumsy. Worse, it didn't seem to control the seizures. They were still linked with his out-of-body experiences, but Bram never told the doctors or his mother about them, nor did he tell them that the more he left his body, the less his body felt like the Real Bram. He didn't know if his seizures caused the out-of-body experiences or vice versa. He supposed the experiences could be an "aura" the doctor had spoken about, but since he'd never told them he couldn't be sure if they were real or imagined.

When he was thirteen, they'd drilled holes in his skull and put electrodes into the meat of his brain to see if he was a candidate for surgery. By then he'd been having "lucid" dreams associated with his epileptic episodes, his soul—he hadn't known what to call it then—wandering out into the night world while his body slept. He'd never met other "dreamers," as he'd called himself, but he'd often felt the presence of them, always just out of sight, as if they were deliberately hiding from him. He'd wake to a seizure, his mother would worry, and the cycle would begin again.

The neurologist decided Bram's chances of remission from a temporal lobectomy were high enough that it was worth any risks and potential side effects. The surgeon was eager to perform a relatively new procedure called the "trans-Sylvian approach." He'd eagerly explained that he would "split" the Sylvian fissure rather than perform a riskier dissection. The method would be less likely to cause unintended damage to the surrounding brain tissue.

Bram had thought it sounded like Transylvanian, and since his name was the same as the author who'd first written about Vlad Dracula the Impaler, he'd seen it as a good omen. But his mother had been wary of the surgeon. She'd called him a "ghoul," who "just couldn't wait to cut open his head." Worse, Grandpa Merritt—who'd shared Bram's first name—had suffered from Alzheimer's, and she worried about what might happen if her only son lost his ability to form new memories or to speak like his grandfather had. Both the doctor and surgeon told her the risk was minimal but she'd made up her mind. She'd cut ties with the hospital and started Bram on holistic treatments at home. Yoga and ketogenic diets, vitamins, acupuncture and meditation.

With meditation Bram finally began to get a grip on both his epilepsy and his out-of-body experiences. Once he'd stopped snickering at the concept and opened his mind to it, he'd discovered meditating would allow him to leave his body at will, while still awake. When he'd returned to his body, he would feel the seizure coming on and remind himself he owned this body—he was not its prisoner. After some time, the seizures had stopped altogether, and while his body had felt even more alien to him, like old clothes from childhood, two sizes too small, he'd learned to live within it, to cope as necessary.

As he grew older, other "dreamers" began to show themselves to him, though during this period of his life he'd most often astral projected while meditating, not sleeping. He'd first recognized these people as different from the corporeals they walked amongst by the way their forms shimmered slightly, and the gossamer threads trailing from each of their heads. He'd begun to see others during his meditation experiments as well, people he knew were not like himself and other dreamers. These people shimmered but lacked the umbilicus. He came to realize this was because they were no longer tied to corporeal bodies.

They were dead people. Ethereals.

Eventually Bram's excursions led him to meet others like him in the physical world. A group of Dreamers met at a nearby college campus, sometimes just once a week, often twice or more. They'd shared a bond not many could comprehend or even imagine, and it had brought Bram closer to them than his closest blood relatives. Over time he'd discovered they had all suffered from seizures when they were young, like him, and that during puberty or their late teens the seizures had simply stopped. Like Bram, the remission had coincided with honing and developing their out-of-body experiences during some form of meditation or recreational drug use.

They'd called themselves Discarnates: a small group of self-styled "psychonauts," blessed with the ability to leave their mortal bodies at will and interact within the astral world. He'd spent several years with the group, but things had eventually gone wrong and he'd ended up committed in a Hedgewood-owned mental hospital, where he'd remained until Rex Garrote freed him. Until Garrote chose him.

All of this had eventually led him here, to Duck Falls and Thea Petralia. He'd believed in her cause but she'd always thought too small. She'd never seen the Big Picture like Mr. G did, because as silly as it sounded, Rex Garrote could literally see into the future. He'd proven as much at Ghostland. Garrote knew it was futile to try and change minds with protest and education. Action was necessary: swift, violent action. If you wanted people to learn to live with ethereals, you had to bring the ethereals to them. Sever the Gordian knot. Blow up the Recurrence Field.

But of course, that had never been their goal. It had only been the second step in Garrote's master plan, clearing the path to his precious House. He'd required an incredible amount of psychic energy to open the Dark Rift. Many ethereals would simply be used up in the process, like dead batteries.

Bram turned to look at the store whose awning he'd ducked under. The building was dimly lit, filled with second-hand lamps and furnishings. In the window was a sign reading GREEN'S ANTIQUES - CLOSED. The shopfront display held several knickknacks: cuckoo clock, rocking horse, tricycle, snow globe. The mounted head of a deer stared blankly at him as he stepped out from under the shop's forest-green awning and started across the street. Three vehicles had collided under the flashing red light a few buildings to the west. The occupants had left them to rust.

He squinted against the shopfront windows reflecting the sun's dying light below a black canopy of smoke. He'd almost reached the sidewalk when a car screeched out from the alley between the bulk food store and the 86 Diner. Bram skipped out of the way as it peeled across the street and slammed into a fire hydrant. The hydrant popped like a cork, its spray raining down on the car. The driver remained inside, possibly unconscious, while Bram slipped into the apartment alcove.

The intercom had several buzzers. Bram didn't think it was likely anyone would buzz him up after what had happened. Fortunately, the door was open. He looked up and down the street, then slipped inside. A couple of bikes lay in the vestibule, a kid's and an adult. He'd seen the name ROTH on 3. He ignored the first-floor apartment with the SUPER sign hanging at an angle and rose the creaky steps. The narrow stairwell smelled like boiled cabbage. Lilian had come from a family of little means, like himself. He admired her, and maybe in another life they could have been friends. But Garrote wanted her, and Bram suspected the reason wasn't likely to be virtuous.

He stopped in front of the door with a black plastic 3B stuck to its surface. His plan was simple. Knock. If no one answered, break down the door. If they were home, he'd convince the parents he could protect them if they came with him to the Temple. It should be easy enough. Lilian didn't fully trust him, but his heroics at the cemetery had bought him a lot of good will. While the family packed, he'd incapacitate the boyfriend and draw Lilian's astral form from her body. To an outsider it would simply seem as if she'd fallen into a deep and impenetrable sleep. They would never know their daughter had been kidnapped. He would find a place to lay low while he transversed, and bring Lilian to the ruins of Garrote House to meet with the man himself.

He knocked sharply. Harder the second time. No answer. A cat mewled in another apartment. Somebody shushed it.

The cat reminded Bram of Le Mon, suffering from the imago's bite. The poor bastard wouldn't last much longer. A few hours, if he was lucky. A few days, if he wasn't—the pain would be as intense as anything he may have experienced in life, perhaps more. Bram didn't envy him, and he didn't relish the man's suffering. If he'd had the time, he could have performed a ritual he'd learned during his years with the Discarnates. But time was not on either of their sides.

He took two steps back from the door, two quick breaths, and ran at it, throwing his shoulder at the wood. The door splintered at the latch and swung inward. Rubbing his shoulder, Bram looked over the apartment. Shoes on the doormat, fall jackets on a wall rack. A sofa, a loveseat and a coffee table, magazines and a few books stacked neatly on its shiny surface. In the kitchenette was evidence of a homecooked breakfast. Diluted pancake batter in a bowl and pan in the sink and a wooden spoon on the counter, hardened lumps of it on stove, stacked plates and forks still sticky with syrup. He smelled rich, salty butter but no bacon. He supposed Lilian's parents might have kept Kosher. Not the most nutritious of Last Meals, but hearty with plenty of carbs for energy, which would do her well in the astral world.

He headed down the hall. The first door was a bathroom, neat and white with towels folded on the countertop. The next door was the parents' bedroom. He checked under the queen-sized bed and inside the closet. Behind the last door, Blake's duffel bag and Lilian's red suitcase lay on the twin bed. The hangers in the closet had been pillaged, leaving only a few tops and dresses, but the floor was covered with stuffed animals, photo albums and a box filled with scholastic achievements and trophies.

Two thoughts struck Bram heavily in the same moment. One, the Roths weren't home. And two, Lilian could be just about anywhere in town right now.

Bram knew nothing about her home life, only that she'd been friends with Benjamin Laramie. But he'd died at Ghostland and was currently held captive at the Hedgewood Facility—a necessary evil, according to Garrote, as much as either of them despised the idea of dealing with that devil. Ben was likely being subjected to similarly innovative forms of torture to what Bram himself had suffered in the mental hospital run by the same madman's evil corporation.

He'd found himself at a dead end. Garrote wouldn't accept failure. He'd have to project if he wanted to find her, and the chance that he'd be able to sense her among all of the corporeals and ethereals in town was very slim.

Still, it was his best option.

He rifled through the luggage on the bed, feeling vaguely sinister going through the underthings of a teenage girl, but left without much of a choice.

Where did she get a keeper suit? he wondered, pushing the thing aside. He found what he was looking for at the bottom of the bag: a small, well-worn teddy bear with a bow and bell around its neck. He brought it to his nose and breathed in deeply. It smelled faintly of age and perfume. This would do.

Bram returned to the kitchen with the bear in his hand. He opened the fridge, found a covered dish of brown rice and ate it with a spoon standing at the counter. He picked the ripest banana from a bowl on the table, peeled it, and ate it on his way to the parents' bedroom.

Their queen-sized mattress was firm yet springy. He tore off the duvet and pillows and sat, finished the banana and left the peel on the bedside table. He removed his shoes one at a time and lay back on the bed. It was as good a place as any to transverse. With the plush bear held tightly against his chest, he shut his eyes and breathed deeply and evenly. In through the nostrils, out through pursed lips.

A moment later, he'd left his body behind.

Dead & Buried

AFTER THE NEWS broadcast, the atmosphere in the bunker fell into a glum silence. While Grandma Laramie did her crochet and the others played Monopoly to lighten the mood, Lilian spent a little while studying Jewish burial customs on the Laramies' laptop. When Bubbe had passed away she'd been too young to follow along well with the proceedings. It had been her parents' duty to call the rabbi and make arrangements for her grandmother's remains. All she'd needed to do was show up to the funeral and cry.

Her mom had converted in the months leading up to the wedding. She knew enough about all of the major traditions, but when Lilian had asked what her dad would want done with his body, she'd shut down again. Lilian knew the body was just a vessel, that her father's ethereal was out there somewhere, possibly even watching over them. Still, she suspected her dad would have wanted to follow tradition. He'd been very adamant about her sitting shiva when Bubbe died, though she'd been too distraught to continue for longer than a few hours. It had seemed important to him, but she supposed it might only have seemed so because it had been important to his mother.

According to this one website, there was a process called shmira, the guarding and guiding of a "discarnate" or bodiless soul, that needed to be done before burial. A shomer or shomeret would sit and quietly reflect upon the life of the deceased, or read Psalms until the body could be laid to rest. In olden times it was to protect the remains from animals, but it was also done to help the discarnate soul to move on. It said spirits often lingered around their bodies—like when Allison had helped the dead man's ethereal leave his body at Ghostland.

Dad might be right outside!

Lilian stood abruptly. The squawk of her chair legs on the tiles startled everyone playing Monopoly around the table.

"What's wrong, honey?" her mother asked.

"I need to help Dad."

"Help? Honey, your father passed away—"

"That's exactly why I need to help him."

Blake stood. She was ready to argue, but he surprised her by taking her hand. "Mrs. Roth, Lilian's been right about everything so far. None of us would probably be alive right now if we didn't listen to her."

Lilian turned to him. He smiled and nodded. She allowed herself to smile in return.

Maddie looked to the Laramies for backup.

"He's right," Michael said. "I would've had time to get in here on my own after the explosion but the rest of you, Wendy and my mother…" He shook his head. "God only knows what might've happened to you all."

Maddie regarded her daughter with a mixture of fear and admiration. "Okay," she said. "How do we help him? You've all seen what can happen if we go out there."

"We don't know if there's anything out there right now," Lilian said. "They could've moved on."

Her mother sputtered. "To Heaven? After what they did to Hi?"

"I mean go somewhere else. They can't get in here, Mr. Laramie—Michael—mixed salt into the soil. So maybe they gave up."

Maddie looked at the others. The Laramies shrugged. "All right," she said with a resigned nod. "What do we have to do?"

"We have to wash him and wrap him in a white sheet. A shroud, it says. Then we have to bury him in a plain pine box—"

"Great. Where are we going to find that?"

Michael barked a laugh. Maddie turned to him with a scowl. "What's so funny?"

"We have a plain pine box," he said. "Ben and I made a coffin, back when we used to do up the house for Hallowe'en. There's a couple of grave markers, too, with stupid little poems for epitaphs. It's probably got some cobwebs on it and it might still have a musty old life-sized Dracula in there, stuffed with old newspapers…" He nodded toward the laptop. "Did it say anything about it having to be new wood or blessed by a rabbi?"

"No," Lilian said. "It just said pine."

"You're sure it's pine?" Wendy asked.

"Definitely. We made it out of leftover planks from the deck, remember?"

She clearly didn't, but shrugged noncommittally.

"The point is, we can do this," Michael said.

Blake smiled at Lilian and squeezed her hand. She smiled back. "I guess we should get started," he said. "The sooner the better. I think it's customary to be buried within twenty-four hours, right?"

She nodded. It sounded right but she hadn't read that.

Michael got up with a look of determination and crossed to the door. Lilian followed. Blake followed her.

"One of us needs to stay and keep an eye on my mother," Michael said.

Wendy raised a hand. "I'll stay. Much as I want to risk my life with you all, your mother at least recognizes my face most of the time."

Michael raised his eyebrows. "Right. Maddie, are you coming?"

Maddie slid out of the booth. "Somebody needs to wash my husband. I guess that should be me."

Lilian offered her a sad smile.

"Okay," Michael said, one hand on the handle wheel. "We'll have to act quick. Maddie, you and Lilian head for the house. There's a bucket and clean dish rags under the sink. Sheets are in the closet at the bottom of the stairs. Blake, you come with me. I'll need your help carrying the casket and shovels. Wendy?"

She perked up at the sound of her name.

"The second we're out this door, turn the wheel until you hear it click. That means it's locked. If someone knocks, tries to get in somehow, and you don't hear one of our voices, you ignore them. Do not let anyone in but us. Okay?"

"We should have a codeword," Lilian added, thinking back to the asylum, when the insane doctor had taken over Leonard's body. She wasn't sure how much of a victim's consciousness a possessor would have access to, but it was at least a failsafe.

Michael pointed at her with a grin, clearly excited by the addition. "Good idea. What's a good codeword?"

"How about 'cuckoo'?" Wendy suggested.

"Very funny."

"Why not 'Hiram'?" Blake said with a shrug. "I mean, we're doing this for him, right?"

Lilian turned to her mother, gauging her reaction. Maddie pooched out her lower lip. "I think he'd like that. Back in high school, he used to tell me someday his name would open doors."

Lilian took her hands. They smiled at each other, fresh tears glistening in the corners of their eyes.

"Okay. Hiram, it is," Michael said. "On the count of three."

Everyone but Wendy and her mother-in-law huddled near the door. As the only one who could actually see ethereals, Lilian squeezed up front, planning to be first out the door. They gave each other anxious smiles.

Mr. Laramie began twisting the wheel. It squeaked as he counted: "One… two…"

On "three" the bomb shelter swung open and Lilian dashed up the steps. The last light of day was an orange-and-peach glow on the horizon, the trees and the house almost completely dark. Overhead, the sky had been smothered by a cloud of the deepest black Lilian had ever seen. But the coast was clear all the way to the house, aside from the fact that she and her mom would have to run right by her dad's bisected remains. They'd both seen him torn in half. Only Lilian had seen the entity that murdered him, the same ethereal that had overturned Ben's mother's car in the driveway: the Behemoth. She'd spared the others that detail. No point in frightening them any more than they already were.

She ran across the freshly sodded lawn, her mother a few paces behind her, while Michael and Blake headed for the garage. She saw no ethereals anywhere as she ran, and it concerned her. The website had said her father's soul would be near his body. The top half of him lay face-down in the grass. The website had also said the body should be kept faceup, even during the washing process. That it should never be facing the ground.

Maybe that was why her dad wasn't here. Then again, Ben told her he'd regained consciousness near the hatch at Ghostland months after his death. He hadn't been watching over his body. He hadn't eavesdropped on his own funeral. Maybe it was different for everyone, and her father's ethereal or discarnate soul or whatever you wanted to call it was elsewhere. Safe but not yet whole. Dispersed, like the ghosts shocked by Niko and Leonard's Tasers at Ghostland, his dead energy a swirling and invisible cloud, waiting to be reborn.

She left her father facedown and bolted up the busted patio steps. The security light above the door came on, bright white light throwing their shadow across the lawn like a prison searchlight. She froze. If not for the smoke they would've been visible from space. She reached out and took her mom's hand, helping her up the steps. They ran inside—fortunately Michael had left the patio door unlocked—and Maddie headed straight for the kitchen sink. The patio light threw enough illumination into the kitchen that everything was visible, even the bloody footprints her mother had apparently tracked inside.

Dad's blood, Lilian thought. It's supposed to stay with his body.

"I'll get the water," Maddie said, snapping Lilian out of her morbid intrusive thoughts, bringing her back to the present moment. "See if you can find the sheets."

She nodded and headed into the dark living room. It had only been a few hours since she and Blake had been here but already the house felt like a different world. She hoped they wouldn't be stuck in the shelter long enough to get used to it. Though she supposed if this was the beginning of the end, if this was the first strike in Rex Garrote's war against the living, there wouldn't be much time left to get used to anything.

No one at the Temple was prepared for war. Even if they were, who would lead them? Ben was missing. Le Mon was sick (unless Bram had already fixed him, which she supposed was possible). Andy and Lamb were in way over their heads and Thea was… well, Thea was Thea. She still thought all ethereals were innocent little panda bears in need of protection. She wouldn't have any clue what to do if the Swarm or the Behemoth or even someone like the serial killer Alex Fischer showed up at the Temple doors.

They had lost before they'd even started.

Bye-bye, Duck Falls, she thought miserably, standing in front of the closet door under the stairs. Bye-bye, human existence.

But maybe it wouldn't be all bad, at least for a while. Ben seemed to be doing well without a physical body. Le Mon and all the others, too. And with everyone dead, there would be plenty of help to free other ethereals from their death loops. No food shortages. No poverty. No disease.

Yeah, except for the Garrote Virus, she said. You seriously think he'll let us all rest in peace, like he'll abdicate the throne 'cause we're all the dead like him? Just get the sheets. You can think about how great it's gonna be living as a ghost after you bury Dad.

She yanked out the whitest sheet she could find from the stack of fresh linen and brought it back to the kitchen. Without the patio light the kitchen was all shades of gray. Her mom was filling up the bucket in the sink. She'd laid several fresh hand towels beside it. One towel was bunched up nearby, soaked with dark stains. Lilian saw her mom had wiped up the bloody footprints she'd tracked into the house.

"Found one," she said, holding up the sheet.

Maddie smiled hurriedly. "Bucket's almost full."

"It said we're supposed to leave…" Lilian swallowed. "We're supposed to leave the blood on him. It's sacred or something."

Maddie nodded. "Okay. We should bury him under the big tree. He'd like that, I think."

Lilian smiled, holding back more tears. If she got crying again, she wouldn't be able to stop, and she needed her vision to be one hundred percent out there while the boys were digging and her mother washed the body. Bad enough that it was almost fully dark, although she supposed ethereals sort of shimmered. Maybe the fact that the sun was down would turn out to be a blessing.

"All done," her mom said. She hoisted the bucket out of the sink, its contents sloshing. "Can you get the tea towels?"

"Got em," Lilian said, picking them up and stacking them on the sheet as her mom returned to the door. "No, wait!" she said.

Maddie turned back with an anxious look.

"The stupid security light. It'll shine on us the whole time."

Her mother's eyes narrowed. "I've got an idea."

She opened the door slowly. The light, a few feet to the right of the door, remained off. Maddie set the bucket down while Lilian held the door. She reached up and jerked both lights downward just as the motion sensor caught the movement of her hand, and the lights glared down on the patio boards.

"Let's go," she said, grabbing the bucket.

The two of them dashed through the spotlight and into the night. As they navigated the broken steps, Blake and Mr. Laramie came waddling out from behind the upturned BMW, each holding one end of the wooden casket. The shovels rattled and rumbled hollowly inside.

They laid the coffin down beside her father's head and torso. Michael looked up at the bright white light illuminating the back door and a small half-circle of patio space. "Sharp thinking," he said, looking at her.

"Mom's idea," Lilian said.

"Good work, Maddie."

"Let's just get this done," Maddie said. "Lilian and I will wash my husband. If the two of you could dig a hole by the big tree—"

Michael nodded toward the tall, black shape. "The oak? The roots'll be tough—"

She gave him a look that could chill Death.

"—but we'll do what we can, won't we, Blake?"

"Yes, sir."

Michael clapped Blake on the back. Then he gazed down at Lilian, curiously. "You'll be okay?"

She nodded. "I'll keep an eye out for you."

"You don't… see any now, do you?"

Maddie gave her a curious look.

"I think we're safe for now."

Michael nodded. He opened the casket, handed a shovel to Blake and kept a flat spade for himself. "We'll work quick. Let me know if you need help…" He nodded at her father's upper half. "…with the casket."

Maddie had already dunked a towel into the bucket and squeezed it out. "We will." She started washing Hiram's left hand, holding it gently in her palm.

The boys hurried across the lawn to the big tree. A moment later, Michael chose a spot and they both started digging, the rhythmic sound of their blades piercing the earth somewhat soporific as Lilian and her mother washed Hiram's skin.

"What did Michael mean just now?" her mother asked. She'd finished washing her father's left arm and moved to the right. Earth from the fresh-laid sod had soiled him, and the muck had dried to a gray second skin. "Are you able to… to see these things?

"Ethereals," Lilian said, drying her father with a second towel. "I can see them, yeah. I can speak to them, too. That's how I know…" She swallowed hard. "That's how I know we'll see Dad again."

Her mother uttered a soft hmm. Somewhere, a car alarm sounded, its echoing honks almost haunting in the otherwise silent night.

"I still talk to Ben. We talk a lot. That's why Blake and I came home early. Ben went missing."

"How does a ghost go missing?"

"It's a long story, Mom. Really long."

Maddie nodded. "Let's get your father rolled over."

They each took a shoulder and rolled him onto his back. His eyes were open and his lips pulled back in a sneer. A blade of grass was stuck to his right eye.

"Dear Lord," her mother said, and gingerly plucked out the grass. Then she shut his eyes. It seemed tougher than when people did it in the movies. Not just a gentle swipe of a palm over the face. Maddie had to close each eye individually. Lilian didn't think there was much she could do about his sneer, though she remembered her dad's Elvis impersonations, twisting his hips, and thought he'd find it sort of poetic.

Maddie washed his face while Lilian scanned the yard in the last glow of sunset. The boys were already up to their shins in the hole they'd dug, their shovels in the dirt the only sound for miles. They were just silhouettes. Soon she wouldn't be able to see them at all.

With Hiram's face and upper body washed as thoroughly as they could manage in the last light, Lilian thought it was time to wrap him in his burial shroud. The two of them spread the sheet out on the lawn as if they were setting up for a midnight picnic, then lifted him under the head and shoulders.

A horrible gassy smell wafted up as his insides spilled out onto the grass. Maddie made a retching noise. Lilian tried to hide her disgust—this was his shmira, after all, meant to a somber occasion, and she was her father's shomeret—but she couldn't help loose a single choked gasp. The smell really was foul.

They already had him lifted. Nothing left to do but finish the job, dragging the intestines and stomach along with him and lowering him onto the sheet.

This was not how she'd imagined burying her father would go. But death was messy. She'd learned that earlier than most people did. "I guess we need to scoop up the rest of him."

Her mother looked ill. "Do we?"

"It said the blood and body are sacred."

Maddie sighed. "I've been up to my elbows in the grease trap at the diner. I suppose it can't be much worse than that."

With that, she scooped up a handful of her husband's sloppy innards and carried it dripping onto the sheet. Drops of blood stood black against the white sheet. She had to go back a second time for the rest of him.

As she did, a chittering sound, far louder and stranger than any night bug Lilian had ever heard, prickled the hairs at the nape of her neck. She scanned the darkness. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

"What's wrong?" her mother asked.

"Nothing," she lied. "Let's get this finished."

They crossed to where his lower body lay, near the steps. When they lifted them, a long spool of innards spilled from his waist. Once they'd laid his legs on the sheet below his torso, her mother stood up to go back for them.

"Forget it," Lilian said. The strange sound had been distant, possibly as far as the next block over, but if it was what she'd thought, she'd seen it move incredibly fast. "Let's just get Dad wrapped up."

Maddie nodded. She looked down at Hiram, who'd been her husband several years longer than she'd been a mother. The tears in her eyes shined in the reflected glow of the porch light. "I miss you, Hi." She kissed her fingers and pressed them against his lips and bared teeth. "I love you."

Lilian rubbed her back in gentle circles. "Baruch dayan ha'emet," she said, hoping she was pronouncing it right. Her mother repeated the phrase—Blessed is the True Judge—and they folded the sheet over him, covering his face.

Lilian hoped she'd see him again someday, if there was a someday in any of their futures. She supposed if nothing else they might all be reunited in the afterlife.

They folded the other side of the sheet over him, and tucked it underneath. Then they lifted his shrouded body, carefully, settled him into the casket and closed the lid.

* * *

Bram hovered up Main Street, back toward the traffic jam, following a spiderweb-thin trace of memory and emotion linked to Lilian's plush bear. When he'd been with the Discarnates they'd called these items "totems," keepsakes or mementos intrinsically linked to the people to whom they belonged. They'd spent months hiding and searching for each other's totems in a citywide scavenger hunt, learning how to follow their gossamer threads and return the items to their rightful owners. It was a game that had eventually become a job for several from their group, who'd opened a private detective agency to find stolen and missing goods, often for ridiculously large sums of money.

Bram had been an exceptionally gifted Finder but had wanted nothing to do with their business. He'd found the idea of exploiting their gifts for personal gain somewhat obscene, though he understood why the others disagreed. They'd wanted to spend the majority of their lives in their astral bodies. Bram could sympathize, but he'd continued to toil away his daylight hours doing menial labor under the sun. It made the time he'd spent out of his work-hardened body all the sweeter.

He followed the teddy bear's thread past the church and up the hill. The streets and buildings he passed were silent and dark. He suspected any survivors would have found a place to hole up for the night, and would be wary of lighting their homes and makeshift shelters. He didn't pass any casualties, at least out in the open, though he supposed the night was still young.

A dog barked nearby: two sharp barks, followed by silence. A car alarm honked in the distance.

Several cars into the traffic jam Sam's accident had caused, a young woman cradled a man with a brutally shattered leg in her lap, the two of them sitting against the curb. The injured man was weeping. The woman consoled him, stroking his beanie-capped head.

Bram stopped as a red-haired dog with a long, bushy tail came clickety-clacking out from between two parked cars, dragging its retractable leash. The dog approached with a whimper and sat at his feet. Bram didn't much like animals, not after his first encounter with an imago. But he did appreciate their connection with the astral world, particularly some of the more intelligent dog breeds.

He said, "Good girl" and "Stay," before carrying on his way. Having an animal trailing along behind him wouldn't be very conducive to a kidnapping, especially not if Lilian put up any kind of struggle. In his limited experience, dogs disliked strife among discarnates and ethereals as much as between corporeals. It would probably end up chasing after them, barking and yelping and drawing all kinds of unwanted attention from any number of homicidal ethereals.

The dog left him for the injured man and woman, who seemed to have more interest in it, calling out softly.

Lilian's totem trailed right down the next street. With a bird's eye view she would've been easier to find. The thread cut diagonally through a tall, gapless wooden fence, a long backyard and two-story house. It wasn't like a GPS. It didn't follow roads. Totem threads were always the straightest line from totem to owner, the shortest distance as the crow flew was often through, and Bram had never been able to hover much more than a few feet off the ground. He could pass through walls, but it took more effort than he wanted to expend. He'd need all the energy he could spare to draw Lilian from her body—not an easy task—and drag her along behind him to the ruins of Garrote House.

Signs of carnage marred what might once have been a peaceful neighborhood. Smashed car windows, doors to homes left wide open, a deflated basketball in the middle of the road, a purse and its contents scattered across a walkway, a stop sign bent sharply toward the sidewalk, like a sunflower too heavy to remain upright. Tire tracks gouged into an otherwise immaculate lawn, the car abandoned halfway up the porch steps.

He sensed ethereals nearby but saw none until he reached a house surrounded by a tall hedge. Human shapes lay against it on the sidewalk, cocooned by green-leafed branches, three in all. As he passed them a woman stepped through the foliage, shimmering in an elegant, white Victorian gown.

The ethereal glanced up at Bram but he didn't seem to interest her. Instead, she flicked a wrist and the dark branches untangled from one of her prey. The man's bare arms and face were slashed with a thousand small, ulcerating wounds. He groaned but didn't move, as if he'd been all but sapped of life.

Bram continued onward. Saving people wasn't his concern. He'd only helped Sam Beadle from her body because she'd spotted him, both of him, one Bram inside the van, one standing nearby, as she'd emerged from her body. All that mattered now was getting Lilian to Garrote House. Even if he'd wanted to spare the man's life, he'd only be prolonging the inevitable. This whole town was destined to dust. The whole world, soon enough. What good would it do, giving this man one or two more days of breath? How many people truly made good use of their time?

He turned onto the next street, leaving the living hedge behind. The gossamer thread shot straight down this street to the end, to a somewhat large three-story home at the end of the cul-de-sac. It led through the house, hopefully to the backyard and not much further.

As he started toward it, a sound like a colony of skittering beetles in a crowd of nattering people signaled the presence of something behind him that he hadn't been able to sense. He turned in time to see the luminescent black shape hurtle across the darkened street toward him, catching him a moment too late to act.

With his final thoughts on Garrote, and his own failure to complete even the simple task he'd been given, his consciousness drained away, lost within the swirling dark cloud.

* * *

Lilian and her mother spoke a few final words as Michael and Blake lowered the casket into the ground. She grabbed a fistful of dirt and tossed it onto the coffin. It plunked hollowly on the wooden box. Her mother and the others did the same. Then Blake and Michael began shoveling loads of it into the hole.

They'd covered the coffin in a small mound of dirt by the time the sound she'd heard earlier came again, only much closer this time.

"Shh!"

The men stopped digging.

The sound came again, closer than a moment ago. As much as she wanted her father properly buried before the final light disappeared from the horizon, she knew it was time to go.

"Back to the shelter," she said in a hoarse whisper. Blake and Michael laid down the shovels. The four of them dashed silently across the lawn and down the stairs.

Michael knocked on the door.

"Michael?"

"Wen, open the door!"

"What's the code word?"

"Hiram!" he said in an angry whisper. "Just open the door, dammit!"

Lilian peered over her shoulder and suddenly there it was, a creature pulled directly from her nightmares. The black mass stretched and contracted as it darted toward them several feet above the lawn, uttering its horrid sound like ghostly voices swirling in a blender full of knives.

The door came open and Michael hurried in. Maddie rushed in on his heels. Blake turned to Lilian, holding out a hand. "Come on," he said.

For a split second she remained where she stood, fixed to the spot in terror. Then she turned her back on the Swarm and pushed Blake and herself inside. Michael slammed the hatch and wrenched the handle shut while Blake held it closed.

The Swarm battered against the outside of the door. BOOM! BOOM!

Everyone in the small shelter shared an anxious look, worried the door wouldn't hold.

It struck again, weaker this time, the hollow metallic boom resounding in the small space.

A long, tense moment passed.

"What was that?" Blake whispered.

"Is it gone?" her mother asked.

Lilian realized she'd been holding her breath and let out a sigh through gritted teeth. She wouldn't hold out hope the Swarm had moved on. Even if it had, she knew they couldn't risk going outside again to lay the last shovelfuls of dirt on her father's grave, at least until morning.

Maybe not ever.

Bleeding Hz

Two days later.

Friday, November 8th, 9:20PM.

BY THE SKIN of their teeth, Nevaeh's tight-knit little enclave on the hill had survived their encounter with the ancestors after the explosion. Only four of about fifty-five campers had died, though many had sustained mild to severe injuries. The Gurpie camp had grown so fast over the past few months Nevaeh was ashamed to admit she didn't know them by face, let alone by name, aside from the young mother she'd seen taken into the sky, whose name was Millie, and whose son, Jason, Nevaeh and a few other childless middle-aged and older women had since unofficially adopted. The wounded were taken care of by Army doctors with allegedly poor bedside manner, and the dead were oh-so magnanimously allowed to be buried in the field just outside of camp.

In the following days, Nevaeh and the other survivors kept their heads down, wary of the men—and a handful of women, she noted—who had invaded the small town she and the others had only recently begun to call home.

Since then, soldiers patrolled the camp day and night, though it seemed as though they were stationed here not to protect the civilians, but as if they thought the Gurpies were the ones causing all trouble in the town below. Whatever their reason for being here, each soldier was heavily armed: their camouflaged attire held a rifle, a sidearm and something which looked slightly more futuristic than the others, like a cross between a bullhorn and a handgun. Even Drift, a veteran, had no clue what its purpose could be. As yet, no one had seen any of them in use.

For the most part the military presence wasn't as intrusive as Nevaeh had expected it to be. Other than patrolling the errant rows of caravans, tents and trailers, they spoke very little with her fellow Gurpies after that first night filled with interrogation, making them repeat the same stories ad infinitum, and interacted only when necessary. She suspected their commanding officer had warned them not to "fraternize."

The minimal presence within their lives and business gave Nevaeh, Drift and Delilah, and a handful of others plenty of time to discuss their situation.

"Looks like they're setting up some kind of defense system around the outside of town," Drift had told them on Thursday morning. He'd gone out in the moonlight, running zig-zag through the tall, golden straw, and had spotted two crews setting up large black boxes on metal stands. Others had been laying cable from the southwestern-most box down the hill toward town. He said it was likely some kind of sonic warfare, like the loud rock music the Army blasted at Noriega when he'd hidden in the Vatican embassy, or the "sonic booms" the Israelis fired on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. None of them could agree on why they would be using this sort of weaponry on their own citizens but it turned out he was right, in a sense. And the strange, futuristic sidearms the soldiers wore were meant for the same purpose.

They discovered this on Friday. The sun had just gone down and Nevaeh's small group were huddled around the campfire by Drift and Delilah's tent. The previous day had been a scorcher for November—what they used to call "Indian summer" when Nevaeh was little, but she now referred to as a "warm spell" or "fool's summer" out of respect—but overnight the temperature had dropped steeply, causing the Gurpies to bundle up on Friday. It was during this chilly evening that an ethereal visited their camp, and Nevaeh and the others confirmed the real intent for the military presence in Duck Falls.

They'd been talking quietly about nonsense, just passing the time, keenly aware of the two National Guard soldiers—according to Drift's assessment—that passed by her caravan, a man and woman of relatively the same build in their bulky uniforms. Suddenly, the male soldier shouted "Bogey!" pointing toward the fire.

Both soldiers drew their futuristic sidearms and aimed. As the group around the fire scattered, Nevaeh included, the soldiers pulled their triggers. Nothing happened at first, and Nevaeh's gaze alternated between the fire and the soldiers, gauging their reactions. They maintained their shooting stances, firing their seemingly impotent weapons at the bonfire.

As she watched, an uneasy feeling began building in Nevaeh's chest, and she found herself overwhelmed by a sudden deep sorrow with no identifiable origin. Her situation was much the same as it had been the day before. But the others seemed to feel it, too. Glistening in the firelight, tears spilled down Delilah's freckled cheeks. Drift's face was contorted, like a little boy caught doing wrong by his mother.

In that same moment Nevaeh saw her first ethereal, not counting the "ancestors" who'd presented themselves as whirling dervishes of pebbles, sand and trash. The teenage girl wore saddle shoes, bobby socks and a poodle skirt, her light-colored hair in pigtails. She could have been plucked straight out of Nevaeh's childhood, except she held her arms up to protect herself, horrible agony twisting her shimmering face. Whatever the weapons were, the soldiers appeared to be harming her.

Nevaeh looked to the others, curious if they were seeing the same thing. They all stared at the ethereal. There was no doubting what she saw.

The girl's form began to flicker like bad reception on an old television set. She twisted and screamed in silent agony as the color drained from her clothing.

"Stop!" Delilah cried. "You're hurting her!"

It was true, and the flickers and the girl's contortions grew more erratic until Nevaeh couldn't stand to look any longer. She closed her eyes and turned away.

In a few seconds, it was over.

"Got her," G.I. Joe said.

"Slimer neutralized at the Gurpie camp," G.I. Jane said into the radio on her shoulder. "Chalk another one up for the good guys."

"You killed her," Delilah said. Drift was looking at his paint-streaked boots with a shamefaced expression, as if he knew only too well this situation. He wiped a tear away absently.

"It was already dead," G.I. Jane said. "It woulda killed you just like those other ones killed your friends if we didn't spot it in time."

"Never trust a slimer," Joe said.

"They're people," Drift grunted.

"Not anymore," Jane barked. "They're nothin but deadheads." She shook the sonic weapon. "Wiped off the earth by two-point-one hertz." Jane returned the weapon to her belt. Joe did the same.

After the soldiers left, talk returned to the infrasonic barrier the soldiers and teams in black uniforms had put up over the previous days. "We can't let them do that again," Delilah said. "There's almost a hundred ethereals at the Temple—"

"We'll take it out," Drift said, nodding. "The question is how. We'll need some sort of distraction. If we can get enough people to cause a ruckus here in camp, two or three of us could take out one of the posts. From what I saw, it looked like they ran the cable in series instead of parallel. Rookie mistake. If we knock out one post, it'll cut the circuit to the rest of them down the line."

"Like Christmas tree lights," Nevaeh said.

"Exactly. If we wait until the thing's up and running, they'll be so preoccupied by our distraction and cheering on their own team, they might not realize what the hell happened until it's too late."

"But if we're not able to break the circuit in time," Delilah said, "the same thing that happened to that poor girl will happen all over town. Everyone at the Temple will disappear."

"We run that risk, yeah. But if we do it before then, it'll buy us a few hours tops until they fix the circuit and start all over. This way, they'll think something shorted and spend the whole day looking for the problem."

"Well then. What kind of distraction were you thinking?" Nevaeh asked.

Drift shrugged. "We're protestors. We'll do what we do best."

Delilah's eyes glimmered in the firelight, and a smile spread across her face. "When?"

"I overheard the soldiers say they're turning it on tomorrow, around eleven-hundred hours."

"Eleven AM?"

Drift nodded again. "Eleven AM."

Nevaeh stood, her knees popping like kindling in the dying fire. She grabbed her wicker chair and hoisted it over her head.

"Where are you going?" Delilah asked.

"To brew us some coffee." Nevaeh winked. "We'll need plenty of energy if we hope to plan a revolution in one night!"

Out Of Body, Out Of Mind

Saturday, November 9th, 10:10AM.

LILIAN WAS STARTING to think no one would ever come to their rescue, if anyone else was still left alive out there at all.

Her rational mind knew there had to be someone, but she couldn't remember the last time they'd heard any sign of human activity from outside the bunker. Not even the bark of a stray dog had reached them in at least a day. Just birds, chirping without a care for the predicament of the human inhabitants of Duck Falls… and the Swarm or the Behemoth or some other insane entity beating against the hatch door, trying to get in.

Had the six of them really spent three nights and two whole days in this cramped underground space? Lilian hadn't seen the sun since… when did they finish burying her father? Thursday morning? Was it the weekend already? Mr. Laramie didn't have a calendar but she thought that it was.

Hard to believe only a few days ago she'd been in California, struggling over how to juggle school with her GRP2 duties. None of that mattered anymore. Soon, school itself would cease to exist. Civilization was only a hair's breadth away from extinction. Rex Garrote meant to snip that hair without a shred of remorse.

She lay in bed for a while, staring up at the ceiling, savoring her last moments alone. The room was dark, but she knew it was morning. Without turning on and off the lights the distinction between night and day was nonexistent. Luckily the Laramies and her mother still seemed to be working on a relatively normal clock for people their age. Without them to mark the time, she might have slept all day and stayed up most of the night.

Even awake, she spent most of her time just trying not to lose her sanity. But routine was already taking its toll. Wake up, brush teeth, eat breakfast, clean up, read her book, play a board game, eat lunch, clean up, read her book, play cards, eat dinner, clean up, watch a DVD, have a shower, brush teeth, go to bed, only to repeat the cycle all over again the next morning.

Last night she'd been brushing her teeth in front of the mirror in the cramped bathroom, still smelling vaguely of Grandma Laramie's latest runny bowel movement, and she'd suddenly realized she couldn't remember if she'd just woken up or if she was on her way to bed. She'd been tired, but without any real exercise—aside from a few laps a day on the stationary bike in the Laramies' room—Lilian found herself waking up tired and remaining that way all day long. She felt as lethargic as she had in the first few weeks after Ghostland, like a form of post-traumatic stress.

If the quarantine lasted much longer, she thought she might just open up the door and let the Swarm take her. Anything had to be better than this purgatory.

"Get it together," she told herself. "Get up, brush your teeth, eat breakfast. Only three more chapters left. Got to find out what happens to my new Aussie friends."

The morning after they'd buried her father Michael had run into the house and grabbed a boxful of books, board games and perishable food from the fridge, while Lilian had kept watch. When the internet and cell phones went down that afternoon, having these items made the lockdown a little easier to handle, though stress levels were still pretty high with the Swarm venturing back every so often to batter on the door and "scare the bejesus" out of them, as Wendy had said. Since then, Lilian had taken comfort in reading about the fate of the characters in Nevil Shute's On the Beach, about a group of Australians dealing with the aftermath of nuclear war. It helped to take her mind off of their own survival, over which they seemed to have very little control.

It was odd, she thought, that Bram had been reading the exact same book right before the actual apocalypse, but she supposed coincidences like that happened all the time. Besides, post-apocalyptic fiction was pretty much ubiquitous these days. Michael had told her this book was probably the first of its kind, though it wasn't much like the post-apocalyptic stuff she was used to, which was mostly about zombies, viral outbreaks or some dystopian murder contest. Nuclear holocaust seemed quaint in comparison.

Dressed in fresh clothes Michael had scrounged from Wendy's wardrobe—most of her outfits were either skirts, fancy white blouses and suit jackets, but she had a few casual outfits—Lilian padded down the hall in bare feet. Everyone was already up, sitting in the kitchen and living room. Blake and her mom were watching one of the Shrek movies. Wendy and Michael were playing cards. Grandma Laramie sat doing her crochet pattern, which seemed to be her favorite form of entertainment.

This is the way the world ends, she thought. Not with a bang but with a yawn.

"Morning," she said.

Everyone greeted her. Blake smiled, and though she had no reason to believe it Lilian suspected she was starting to bore him. She couldn't blame him if she was. She was bored of herself.

She took the milk out of the fridge—real milk, not almond like she preferred, smelling like it bordered on sour—a bowl and spoon from the cupboard and drawer, and one of the plastic containers of cereal. Michael had already had to refill them once from the large boxes in the storage cabinet. How long until we run out of food? she wondered. He'd said two weeks but the refrigerated staples, the fruit and veggies, none of that would last much longer than a week at most. Then they'd be stuck eating the Army rations they'd had their first night in the bunker, heated with water boiled on the stove. She could still taste the pasty "Creamy Chicken and Rice" from that first night's dinner underground.

Somebody has to rescue us before too long.

They were all thinking it, but the topic was no longer up for discussion. Her mom said worrying about when they'd be rescued wasn't helpful. Ben's parents had agreed.

Lilian ate her Cheerios, its crunch in her ears the soundtrack to what Allison would have called "morbid intrusive thoughts." What the government was doing didn't make much sense. The military and Hedgewood must have cooked up some kind of plan to recapture the ethereals after the Recurrence Field exploded—unless the plan was to wait for the people of Duck Falls to die, then sort out the mess.

As worried as that idea made her, it didn't seem like a strategy any sane person would implement. Then again, Hedgewood had let the Ghost Brothers back into the park knowing exactly what had caused the tragedy on opening day. And from the news footage they'd seen before everything went dark it seemed like Hedgewood was working very closely with the military.

If that was true then Mr. Laramie was right: they would have to break quarantine, before it was too late for any of them. Rex Garrote and his newly freed ethereals had a stranglehold on Duck Falls. The only thing stopping him from spreading out across the world was a power-mad billionaire and a hundred or so soldiers. Their tanks and guns wouldn't do much to hold off a swarm of bloodthirsty ethereals.

And Ben's still gone, she thought. Where the hell is he hiding?

Lilian dumped the dredges of milk down the drain and scooped the last few soggy Cheerios into the trash. She rinsed the bowl and set it in the sink, then picked up her book and sat beside Blake. He patted her knee and kissed her cheek. She smiled at him, even though she didn't feel much like smiling. She'd never imagined she would find herself missing school, but here she was, wishing she was back in her dorm room at Stanford, trying to ignore Abby's constant text message alerts.

"Have a good sleep?" Blake asked.

She shrugged. "Not great. Grandma Laramie farts in bed."

"Baloney!" the old woman said, looking up from her crochet pattern. She never seemed to hear anyone unless the conversation was about her.

"Almost done?" Blake asked.

"Huh?"

"With the book."

She looked at it, lying closed in her lap. She'd zoned out and forgotten for a second she'd even been reading. It seemed to be happening more and more often, the longer they were trapped in the bunker. "Oh, yup. Few more chapters."

"Is it good?"

"I would've put it down if it wasn't."

He nodded, seemed to realize she was done talking, and pretended to be focused on the movie. The large green ogre had just scared off the army that had come to relocate him from his swamp. She wished someone would come to relocate them. Hedgewood could be her Lord Farquaad.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Lilian's heart leaped almost painfully as everyone looked up at the door, still reverberating from whatever had struck it. Blake hastily paused the movie, likely thinking the sound had attracted whatever was outside.

A survivor? she thought. Another ethereal?

Whatever it was, it didn't sound like the Swarm or the Behemoth. They'd thumped against the door, whereas this had been a hollow, metallic sound. Metal on metal. They'd heard screeching, thumping and beating in the last few days and nights. All kinds of inhuman sounds. Never this.

"Why won't it leave us alone?" Wendy whispered.

"That sounded different," Blake said, echoing Lilian's thoughts. "Didn't it?"

Before she could reply, a voice Lilian recognized came from the other side of the door: "Hello? Can anyone hear me?"

"No way!" She leaped up from the couch, not caring that she'd lost her place in the book, her heart swelling with hope, relief, joy. After three days in hiding, they were finally being rescued.

Nobody else moved from where they sat. None of the others had heard the voice outside, only Lilian.

It was Ben.

* * *

Bram awoke to sunlight streaming in through the gauzy curtains above the Roths' big, comfortable bed. Despite the maelstrom of disquieting thoughts he'd woken to, it was without a doubt the best sleep he'd had in ages. The queen-sized orthopedic mattress was a luxury compared to his cot at the Temple. It felt like he'd been sleeping for days rather than hours.

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed, and he's still here!"

The voice frightened him—more that he knew the speaker than the fact that someone had been watching him sleep. He sat up obediently, looking around in confusion until he saw the man standing in the corner of the room, his dark smile shimmering as he stepped out of the shadow behind the open door.

"Rex… what happened?"

"Morning, Goldilocks. Looks like you overslept."

Bram swung his legs off the edge of the bed, but his limbs and joints felt much better than they had the night before. He felt refreshed, though his tongue tasted like dogshit.

"I couldn't get to Lilian. I tried but—"

Garrote patted Bram's knee placatingly. "Shit happens. Fortunately for the both of us, you only wet the bed." Rex nodded toward Bram's midsection. "You've been out cold for three days."

Bram glanced down at the stain in his pants. Three days? How had he been out for so long?

"I tried waking you but the truth is, I've been a very busy boy. Orchestrating the End is such tiring business."

"I'm sorry, I… I don't know what happened."

Rex shrugged. "I believe one of my pets may have mistaken you for a soufflé. Don't worry about the time, Bram. Many things have transpired since we last spoke, which have made my need for Lilian greater than before. My ace in the hole turned out to be a turd in a punch bowl, you see. I was certain this time he would change his mind. Alas, I was wrong."

Bram frowned, unclear who the "turd" was meant to be, nor why Rex thought he might change his mind "this time." But these details were beyond his purview. "It's been three days, she could be anywhere by now—"

"No, my friend, she hasn't moved. There's a quarantine in effect—" He slapped his forehead dramatically. "Oh, of course you don't know that. You've been catching up on your beauty sleep. Unfortunately, I'm unable to reach her myself. Not in the state I'm in, and I don't mean Maryland. They're quite protected in that ingenious little bunker of his. Like father like son, I suppose."

"Bunker," Bram repeated.

The writer frowned. "There's that soft brain again. I suppose my pets didn't help with that, did they?"

Bram ran a hand through his hair. "No, I'm fine, I—"

"Good. Fetch Lilian. Bring her to me tonight. When the moon is full."

"But… I thought you said the moon wouldn't be full for another three nights?"

Another joyless smile crossed Garrote's lips. "The moon can be whatever I like in the Dark Rift, my friend. It could be a wheel of cheese in the sky, if I wish hard enough."

Before Bram could ponder the meaning of this, he found himself in a wide, tall room filled with computer stations and a wall of television monitors, many of them cracked. It looked like a cyclone had hit the place.

Rex stood over a frowzy-looking man slumped in a desk chair behind several flashing computer monitors. The man wore dandruff-flaked glasses and some kind of electronic web over his greasy, matted hair, and he absolutely reeked—though Bram supposed he didn't smell much better himself.

"You don't want to fail me again, Bram," the writer said. "This is what happens to people who do."

Rex grasped the unconscious man's head in his hands and spun it backwards with a brittle cracking like twigs. He tore the man's head right off, causing two weak gouts of blood to spurt from the stump, and tossed it casually from hand to hand. Garrote's eyes were alight with flames, his teeth stained by blood.

I'm dreaming, Bram thought.

"Best not believe that, my friend," Garrote purred. "Because if you fail me, your fate will be far worse than Harrison Greely's. You can take that to the bank."

With that, he tossed Bram the severed head. Bram held up his hands to deflect it and sat up abruptly, sweat standing on his forehead, hands held out in protection. The Roths' bedroom was just as he'd left it a moment ago. The stench of his urine prickled his nostrils.

Not a dream, he thought. Don't you dare believe that.

He rolled out of bed and tore off the pillowcase he'd thrown over the vanity mirror. His face looked gaunt.

Three days. Jesus. Rex was right—at least I didn't shit myself.

His thoughts returned to the bunker, where Rex had mentioned in his not-quite-dream Lilian was hiding. It must be right there in that backyard.

He ran a quick, cool shower, gulping down mouthfuls as the water rained over him. Scrubbed clean, he toweled off and put on a pair of Lilian's father's jeans. They were a few sizes too big around the waist and a few inches too short—what kids would've called "flood pants" in his grade school days. His own were stained beyond a quick scrub in the sink. He strapped on one of Mr. Roth's belts, poked a new hole, and went to the kitchen. He was as hungry as to be expected, having not eaten in three days.

He opened the fridge, pleased to discover the power remained on. He cooked breakfast on the gas stove, ate the two runny eggs and multigrain toast with peanut butter and strawberry jam sitting at the table, reading last week's copy of the Duck Falls Squawker. It was brimming with the latest gossip about GRP2 (alternately called "the Temple folk" and "Gurpies"), the Ghostland Tragedy, the Hedgewood lawsuit, and the coverage of the Duck Falls Fall Festival from a few weeks back. He read the paragraph about this year's heaviest sow and the winners of the butter sculpting contest aloud, in amusement, finished a single cup of black coffee and left the rest to go moldy in the carafe.

He'd need plenty of energy to astral project again, particularly if that thing was around. Rex's "pet." Just the thought of encountering it again made him shiver.

He couldn't transverse from here again. He needed to get closer to where the totem had led him, to the yard with Garrote's "ingenious" bunker, and leave his body in a safe place nearby. The less distance he'd have to travel, the easier it would be on him. Besides, all of his fresh pants were folded neatly in a suitcase at the Temple.

He chuckled to himself. If you couldn't see the humor in a bad situation, it would kill you. Bram knew that from personal experience.

He went to the living room windows and peered out through the blinds. The street was deserted—or was it? A shadow passed under the awning across the road. At the antique shop.

Bram watched the shop for a long moment. Finally, the shadow slipped out from beneath the awning, and the bedraggled young woman came into view. She looked almost feral, hugging herself and walking briskly from store to store, ducking into each alcove and alley she passed. Two young children followed her, as dirty and disheveled as their guardian.

Bram could only imagine what this woman must have been through. Whoever she was and why she might be out there alone with two young children, Bram couldn't help them.

Garrote was waiting.

He laid his mug and plate in the sink and returned to the bedroom for his shoes and Lilian's totem. The teddy bear lay in pieces scattered on the mattress and the floor. He puzzled over this a moment, picked up the pieces and got moving.

* * *

It took Bram half an hour to cross town, ducking in and out of alleys and doorways, between houses, into open garages and behind cars, but he finally made his way back up the hill to a house with the front door kicked in and furniture blocking its bay windows, a few doors down from the house with the bunker. The smell of decay struck him the moment he stepped over the threshold. He pinched his nostrils shut, sidestepped a dead man under the battered door, flies lighting on the corpse's bloated, gray face and the tacky pool of blood surrounding it, and entered the dim foyer.

"Hello?" he called, skirting around an upturned wooden table. His voice didn't quite echo, but there was an empty quality to the air, as if the place had been abandoned for days. "Is anybody here?"

No one responded. He peered into the living room. Empty, aside from the jumble of furniture.

He found a woman lying dead in the kitchen. He could only tell she was female by the shape of her decaying body. Her face had been obliterated, her entire skull crushed, bits of meat and flesh and bone in the blood-matted halo of hair like nascent planets orbiting an imploded star.

He crept up the carpeted stairs and checked the three bedrooms on the second floor, one furnished as an office, the others as master and guest. All three were empty. The best of the beds was surrounded by photos of the dead couple downstairs feeding each other cake at their wedding, walking hand-in-hand on a tropical beach, ziplining, scuba diving. They had lived their lives to the fullest but died as we all did: alone and in agony, shitting themselves, praying to their gods.

Bram flipped the photos facedown. If their ethereals were nearby, the less mementos of their former lives to draw them to this room the better. He didn't plan to be here long, but it was best to be cautious. He couldn't afford another interruption.

He stripped the bed, removed his shoes and sat on the bare mattress. It was plusher than the Roths's queen-sized bed. Pillowtop. Possibly a California king. The room was tastefully furnished with modern sconces and dark wood.

He laid back on the bed holding the scraps of Lilian's teddy bear against his chest. A few deep breaths got him focused, then he was floating above the bed. He barrel-rolled to look down at himself, to any observer just a man having a nap on a comfortable bed.

Satisfied, he hovered out of the bedroom. Soft weeping arose from the floor below. Returning downstairs, he saw the woman from the kitchen—he recognized her from her green sweater and golden-blonde hair—standing over her husband's body, her face in her hands. She took her hands away as he tried to creep past her, and her bleary eyes zeroed in on him.

"Who are you? What are you doing in my house?"

"I was…" He thought fast. "…looking for survivors."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you one of them?"

"One of who?"

"I've seen ghosts," she said matter-of-factly. "At least I think they're ghosts. I can see through them sometimes. I don't think they can see me, though." She looked down. "They killed my husband."

"He's probably out there looking for you," Bram said, nodding at the sunlit doorway.

"Who?"

"Your husband."

She frowned. "But he's dead."

She clearly hadn't looked down the hall yet. "Brit," he said, catching her name from the miasma of thought surrounding her, as he had with the detective on the day of the explosion. "You're dead, too."

"No." She shook her head. "No, that can't be right. If I'm dead, how am I—?"

"Think back."

Her brow clouded. She looked down at her husband's corpse, to the doorway, then down the hall. Bram could see her splayed feet through the kitchen door. The furrows in her brow cleared. She seemed to understand, even if she hadn't quite come to terms with it. "The clown," she said. "It did this."

"Clown?"

She nodded. "It broke down the door. It caught me in the kitchen. I heard the little squeak from its horn. It reminded me of a clown's nose."

"It could very well have been," Bram said. "I wish I could stay and help you, but I've got to be somewhere. You should try and find your husband."

"Find him?"

"He'll be out there, somewhere. He's probably just as worried about you as you are about him."

Her teary eyes went wide. "You really think he's out there?"

Bram couldn't say for sure. With all the potential dangers for a newborn ethereal, it was just as likely he'd been absorbed by hungry imagoes. "Sure," he said, shrugging. "Stranger things have happened."

The woman smiled. "Thank you." She turned to the door, then turned back, seemingly off in thought. Her eyes widened and she gasped, looking down at her husband's corpse. Suddenly she was sobbing into her hands again, moaning the name "Glenn" over and over.

She was looping. Unable to help her, Bram slipped past unnoticed.

Outside, he followed the bear's thread across the lawn. Like the day before, it led straight to the three-story home at the end of the cul-de-sac. It was on a slight rise, even higher than the rest of the sloped street, and Bram thought he could probably see the entire town from its second- or third-story windows. Large, muddy tire tracks ran from the street up the driveway. The thread plunged into the earth below its wraparound porch. He supposed Lilian must be hiding in a basement bunker.

He floated up the walkway to the porch, passing through the front door with ease. An end table lay overturned in the living room. Otherwise, the first floor appeared to be in order, until the thread led him into the kitchen, where the cupboards and drawers were all open, with discarded contents spilling out, scattered on the floor and counter.

There was a door in here, below the stairwell, leading to a cellar. But the thread was at a low angle, directing him to the yard. The backdoor stood slightly ajar.

He passed through it. The porch stairs were broken, and a pile of rotten innards lay in the grass, buzzing with flies. A red car was upturned in the driveway. The back lawn rose in a low mound toward the center. He heard voices, which seemed to be coming from a hole in the earth where the thread disappeared.

Rex was right. It is a bunker.

He recognized Lilian's voice and ducked, hovering low across the lawn.

"…soldiers posted at roadblocks. They won't let people in or out. They're pretending it's an infection."

A boy responded to her. Bram recognized his voice as well.

Ben? But how? He's supposed to be at Hedgewood.

Bram hid behind a large, rough-barked tree with a view of the entrance to the bunker. He could see Ben hovering there now, and Lilian standing in the capsule-shaped doorway beyond. If he could just slip past Ben unnoticed….

He stopped himself. Lilian had been able to see his discarnate at the cemetery. Unless he dropped into the alcove from above, she would spot him, and Ben would catch him creeping above his head.

I can wait. He can't stay forever—

A low rumble shook the leaves above his head, and the ground began to tremble, pebbles bouncing on the asphalt drive. Voices from the bunker rose above the noise but Bram couldn't hear what they were saying.

"Mom!" Ben cried. A man replied from inside the bunker.

Bram ducked further behind the tree, only now noticing the pile of earth in the shape of a grave at his feet. Can they see Ben? Can they see me?

Above the rumble the familiar deep, resonant hum rose to a crescendo. Bram knew it couldn't harm him outside of his body but he could barely hear the voices of the people in the bunker, all crowded into the alcove: Lilian, Ben, and a middle-aged couple Bram assumed were Ben's mother and father. The sound intensified.

In the next moment, Ben disappeared.

His mother said something Bram couldn't hear, her face distraught.

"Ben?" his father cried. "Ben!"

Now! Bram told himself. Get her before they close the door!

He launched himself at the bunker entrance. By the time Lilian spotted him hurtling toward her he was already too close for her to do anything but utter his name.

He grabbed her by both hands and pulled.

* * *

Bram had appeared almost out of nowhere, occupying the space Ben had just left. At first Lilian thought he'd come to help, but something in his eyes and hard face made her reconsider even before he grabbed her by the hands and started to pull.

She fought against him, but it felt like her skin was tearing off, like her body was slipping away from her.

It's my astral self, she thought, remembering that night at the cemetery, how she'd seen two Brams standing in the rain. The full horror of it struck her: He's pulling me out of my body!

"Who's Bram?"

Her mother's voice seemed to be coming to Lilian from the far end of a long tunnel, but the meaning of what she'd said reached her. They couldn't see him. Whatever had made Ben visible to them—Was it this sound?—didn't seem to effect Bram's astral body.

And they won't see me, either.

She tried to call out to her mother but her lips were no longer under her control. The best she could do was utter a low moan as she fought harder against him. It was no good. He was much stronger than her, adept at living outside of his body. With one final tug she lurched forward, and a sudden chilling numbness fell over her like a cold, wet blanket.

She looked back as Bram drew her up the stairs, watching as her body, still intact, hopefully still living, collapsed into Michael's arms.

Blake called her name. Her eyes were shut as if she was asleep, and Michael was trying to shake her awake.

"Ohmigod, Lilian!" her mother cried.

"What happened?" Blake asked, joining them.

"She fainted," Michael said. "She just fainted dead away."

Lilian called out to them from across the lawn but of course they couldn't hear her. What would they think if she never returned to her body? That she'd fallen into a coma? How long could her body survive without her?

Bram carried her along behind him, and finally the people in the bunker slipped out of sight. As he dragged her down the driveway to the street Lilian wondered if she would ever see any of them again.

Part 2

Ghost Town

The House perched atop the hill had leeched its evil into the earth for little over a century, and the townspeople below unwittingly consumed it, many of them their entire lives. A person could only absorb so much poison without eventually succumbing. Thus, when the House called out to protect it, the townsfolk came running. Soon, a good-sized mob had gathered outside the gates, and the writer decided he would need more fuel if he wanted his House to burn.

— Rex Garrote, The House Feeds Again

Protest brings peace. It is clear we can no longer afford to stand on the sidelines and watch as our ethereal brothers and sisters are exploited and harmed for entertainment and profit.

— GRP2's "Guide for Peaceful
Coexistence Among Ethereals"

Ghosts & The Machine

THE FACT REMAINS," Thea said from the podium, raising her voice to be heard above the roar of dissent, "we have a crucial decision to make. Do we turn on the Recurrence Field Hedgewood gave us, or do we risk letting all manner of rogue entities into the Temple?"

"Isn't that why we're all here?" Coop shouted from the audience. "This place is supposed to be a refuge for ethereals and their allies."

"Of course, it is, Coop. But we can't keep fighting off invasions forever. Our ethereal friends are struggling to hold them off as it is. People are dying—"

"Ethereals out there are in just as much danger!"

"That's why I'm putting this to a vote. We've taken in as many as we can. It's time, Coop."

The entire church raised their voices again, drowning out whatever reply Coop might have attempted. Anyone who knew what she and Bram had done would've said it was a little late for a crisis of conscience. But that was exactly what Thea was dealing with at the moment. People had died out there, were still dying. Those deaths were a direct result of a decision she'd made.

In the whole time Thea and her fellow Gurpies had spent barricaded in the Temple, Bram hadn't returned. It occurred to her, and not for the first time, that he could be among the dead out there. Or he could be trying to work his way back. He could be holed up somewhere, unable to project. The fact remained, he'd abandoned them in their hour of need, and she was beginning to wonder if there hadn't been an ulterior motive behind all of his gentle coercion over the past few months.

We have to do it, Thea, he'd said. For the people.

But Bram couldn't have gotten it done if not for her. This was her fault, she knew that. She had to make things right.

In the three days since the explosion, they'd taken in strays and fought off as many violent attacks as they could with all of the psychic weaponry they had at their disposal. Without power or communication with the outside world since General Zaydan had locked down Duck Falls, tensions were high. Everyone was exhausted, angry and frightened, Thea included. The town should have been evacuated. Instead, they'd closed all the roads and made it impossible to communicate even with each other.

At least before they'd been able to follow the news. Now there was no word from anybody. Would anyone be coming to rescue them? Did anyone beyond those roadblocks and soldiers know the truth?

What does it matter? she thought. Nobody's coming for us. That's obvious. We're all going to die in here and it's all my fault… but maybe there's time to turn this ship around.

She stood at the pulpit now, facing her people. Only Hedgewood's mini-Recurrence Field would protect them from the coming hoard. Still, she couldn't force the decision on these people. If they chose to keep fighting, that was their choice to make, even if it meant they would most likely all lose their lives. This was a democracy, not a dictatorship. She'd already unleashed this hell upon the town, upon people she considered friends and colleagues. She wouldn't betray them a second time.

Of course, she realized by turning on the machine she'd be playing right into Hedgewood's hands, doing exactly what he'd said she would. For all she knew he was waiting for this exact moment to swoop in with his Army goons and escort them all back to his underground lab out there in the desert. Make her do the dirty work of convincing these people to submit themselves willingly, then wipe them all out with a single keystroke.

They couldn't keep fighting forever. Something had to give.

She waited until the uproar had died down before speaking again. "All in favor of using the Recurrence Field to protect the Temple, to keep us safe, say 'aye.'"

The church filled to the rafters with the sound of approval.

"Those opposed, say 'nay.'"

The nays were far fewer but nearly as loud in their opposition.

"All right, it looks like the 'ayes' have it. If those of you who voted no would rather not stay, the rest of us won't hold it against you, and of course you'll be welcomed with open arms once we're able to turn off the machine. But if you're ethereal, you'll have to leave. Once it's on, if you're inside the field, there's no getting out."

"That's not fair!" Coop shouted.

"I'm sorry, Coop, but the people have spoken. In twenty minutes, I'm turning on the Recurrence Field."

* * *

Le Mon groaned as he returned to consciousness. Time had slipped away from him again. It'd started happening the day of the explosion, just an hour here and there, as he lay—not quite dying, because he was already dead, but whatever this state of second death was called. Double-death. Thea and Coop and a few of the others had come in to check in on him from time to time, but there was still no word from Bram with this ritual of his. Le Mon couldn't help but wonder, as the intervals between each slip of awareness grew shorter, if the next time he might not return at all.

Sweet oblivion, he thought bitterly.

Another wave of agony rolled over him. The infected wound felt like a pickup truck repeatedly backing over his arm with studded tires. He considered the last time he'd experienced pain like this—oddly enough stemming from just about the same place. Back then he'd been in far more emotional turmoil, and the physical pain he'd endured had come as a relief.

Shawna. He saw her feeble smile, forever caught in the torment of her last days. Hairless, her face gray beneath the tie-dyed kerchief. They'd spent only a few years together before cancer took her life, but it had felt like much longer. He'd known her better than anyone, and she him. They were kindred spirits: she'd said it so often that when he'd finally passed through the veil of death, he'd expected to find her waiting for him on the other side.

Instead, he'd found himself alone. Cursed to an afterlife without her, by taking his own life.

The wounds he'd inflicted with the straight razor he'd used since the day his father had taught him how to shave were long gone, but the grief that caused them was an open wound. He'd lived thirteen years without Shawna Gaines. Thirteen years to the day. He remembered the TV had been showing an interview with Sara Jane Amblin, talking about her Recurrence Field. It was a work day. Junkies and crackheads and crystal queens and pill-popping soccer moms passed through his small office overlooking the parking lot. Broken people with broken lives. He'd loved the job but it took its toll.

He'd gotten home and sat down on the sofa, eating a half-heated leftover étouffée when something about what Ms. Amblin said had shaken him. He remembered she'd said, "When I was a little girl I lived in a haunted house." But what had struck him, what had made him set down his dinner bowl and go to the bathroom, open up the cabinet and take out his straight razor from its case… the words were lost to him. It didn't seem right that he could remember every stupid detail about that night except for the words that had made him believe taking his own life would finally allow him to see his Shawna again. Like life's last revenge on his already beaten soul.

Well, the hour was coming around again. He'd be dead for good this time. For-real dead. Never-coming-back dead. Sweet oblivion. The damned cat had got him good, passing along its own form of cancer, eating him from the inside out. If Bram didn't come back soon, Le Mon doubted he'd survive another hour. The O'Neals were already gone. It had taken them—last night? This morning? Time meant nothing anymore.

Einstein said "Time's an illusion," Le Mon thought. A construct made up to sell watches and keep the trains from crashin into each other. Who was it said we all stuck in one moment in 50 A.D.? What if those dudes were right? What if everything is all happenin at once, past, present and future—the only thing that separates it all is this illusion we called Time? What then?

Coop had passed along the bad news about the O'Neals, consciously avoiding the implication that Le Mon's own end was drawing near. Others had come to sit vigil with him since. Thea herself had just spoken to him maybe twenty, maybe a hundred minutes ago. She'd wanted him to know they were considering turning that damned machine on, and asked if he'd wanted to be there. He'd told her no thank you. No telling what would happen to an ethereal in that thing, and he sure as hell didn't want to get stuck in a loop like those poor people at Ghostland had.

For the most part he'd been back here alone, left to suffer in peace. Born alone, die alone… and what comes next? Disappear into the Dark Rift? What comes after the afterlife?

Who came first, the chicken or the egg? he thought. If you believe Ol' Einstein, the climax was mutual. Both of them suckers came at the same time.

His laugh set off another flare of throbbing pain. He groaned as darkness enveloped him, his awareness slipping away for likely the last time. He tried to hang on, tried to focus on the pink unicorn facing him on Thea's desk—she'd put it there to comfort him, Lord knows why—the framed photos with their backs to him, the knotty-pine wallpaper, the popcorn ceiling, the newspaper clippings and magazine articles about GRP2's exploits in frames on the wall.

He took in every minute detail, hoping they wouldn't be the last things he'd ever see: the dust bunny under the desk, the light scratches in the multiple layers of varnish on the hardwood floor, the knots in the faux-pine wallpaper that looked like faces, watching him in his final moments—

Leon.

Shawna's voice was little more than a whisper, drawing him back from the precipice of eternal sleep. From the past? A memory?

Leon, come.

Not a memory. It seemed he could almost feel her breath in his ear, even though it was impossible. The last time he'd felt anything but pain, really felt something, was when he'd run his wrists under a stream of ice-cold water in the sink in the Algiers apartment. He'd known exactly how to do it from seeing so many failed attempts in his office. Numb the pain. Slice deep and downward, not across.

His head twitched to the left, following the sound of her voice. Faces in the fake-pine wall greeted him. He was still alone here. The door was shut. Shawna's voice couldn't have come from inside the room, but he'd heard it as clear as the last time he'd sat with her, in the hospital room that had smelled like a hothouse from all the Get-Well flowers. She'd spoken right into his ear just like she had that night, whispering her last words to him:

Let go.

"I can't," he'd said then, tears streaming down his unlined cheeks. He groaned it now, in one last desperate attempt to cling on to this afterlife: "I can't."

What's holding me here? he wondered. Once Garrote gets his way, all that's left for any of us is pain and misery. Only wish I coulda got to see Ben one last time, if he's not already gone on ahead of me.

Her voice came again: Leon, please.

He could almost feel her hands gripping his own, like they had that night. Not weak and bony, not like back then, but firm and strong. The way she'd held them the first time she'd pulled him into bed in her hot, cramped apartment above the drycleaners in Algiers during Mardi Gras, and they'd made love with the windows open for anyone to hear, a cool breeze blowing in from the Mississippi, petals from the red begonia in her hair scattered on the bedlinen.

He wanted to follow her, just as he had then. To go wherever she wanted him to. But what if it was a trick? What if her voice, her touch, was just his mind trying to fool him, to give him false comfort in his last moments? What if the Dark Rift really was all that awaited him?

Leon…

He'd risked everything for her before. Risked ending his own life, risked facing Purgatory or Hell or an endless afterlife without her. Could he risk it all again?

In a heartbeat, he thought. The knots in the wallpaper coalesced into a Rorschach image of her smiling face.

My lovely Shawna…

Le Mon let go.

* * *

Two of the brawnier Gurpies rolled the Recurrence Field into the Temple's inner sanctum, brought it to the foot of the stage and plugged it in to the extension cord left there. Thea approached it, reading the handwritten instructions Hedgewood had left in an envelope taped to the crate. His handwriting was as prissy and precise as the man himself. If it hadn't been necessary, she would have torn up the note out of spite.

"Okay," she said, holding out the instructions. "It looks pretty simple. Press this button, enter the keycode, set the magnitude, et violà."

"Thea," Coop pleaded. "This is exactly what he wants. They'll be sitting ducks. He'll put them back in cages."

Thea closed her eyes and took two calm breaths. "Coop, I appreciate and respect your opinion. But we voted. You had your chance to leave."

"I stayed for them." He nodded toward the pews. "What do you think they'll do to us? You think they'll just let us go?"

"What are you saying, Coop?"

"The military! You can't cover up a crime with this many witnesses. Who's to say they won't just nuke the whole—"

"Coop! You're being paranoid. If they were planning to nuke us, they would have done it already."

He let out a frustrated growl, tugging on his dreads.

"I'm turning on this machine. We have to protect these people. That's why we're all here, isn't it? That's what we've committed our lives to. We're their only hope, Coop. This machine might be theirs."

When he turned back, tears stood in his eyes. "Thea, please…."

"My mind's made up," she said, and thought, This is the only way to atone for what I've done. We can't fight forever.

She reached for the power button. Coop looked away. Hundreds of eyes watched her from the pews, corporeal and ethereal. They would each remember this moment forever: the decisive action that had spared them from her fatal mistake.

She pushed the button. It made a sharp beep and the machine came to life with a hum of electricity.

Coop opened his eyes a crack to look. Nobody had died. Everything was exactly the same as it had been before she'd pressed it.

Right. Still need to enter the code and set the dial. Don't get ahead of yourself, girl.

She punched in the code, a seemingly random string of numbers, each with its distinct tonal beep. Then she reached for the dial—

A deep, resonant hum stopped her, shaking the floor beneath her feet. The windows began to rattle. She turned to Coop, who watched her with mortal terror.

"What's happening?" she called out over the noise.

"It's the machine! I told you!"

"It can't be the machine! I haven't even set the magnitude!"

Voices erupted from the pews in shock and fear. Ethereals and corporeals held one another, reaching out for comfort. At first Thea couldn't understand what was happening, but as the noise grew in intensity, she saw her ethereal sisters and brothers losing color and form. Corporeals, each wearing their own pair of glasses, reacted in absolute horror. They'd only just begun to see these people who'd lived invisible in their midst for months and now they were fading away before their eyes. Near the stage, the new couple, Andy and Lamb, hugged each other as the two ethereals they'd come in with flickered briefly and vanished from sight.

Whatever this sound was, Hedgewood was to blame, of that Thea was certain. It was causing every ethereal in the church to disappear.

Coop was right. She'd made a mistake.

She had to turn off the machine.

With trembling fingers, she reached for the power button.

"Wait!" a familiar voice called out.

Thea looked over the crowd. Many ethereals had nearly disappeared, or were gone already. She saw him coming up the aisle between the pews, a slender adolescent boy with a haystack of brown hair, blue T-shirt, cargo shorts, sneakers with white tube socks pulled up above his ankles, a look of warning in his warm eyes. He was walking about an inch above the floor, all the color drained from him, his form flickering in and out like a dimming lightbulb along with the others.

"Ben?" she said—gratitude and anxiety competing for control of her next words. "Is that you?"

* * *

Ben winked back to the Temple just as Thea reached for the button on the machine. He recognized it as the same he'd seen in Hedgewood's lab: it had been directly connected to his and Jeremy Cruikshank's containment capsules. It could only be a portable Recurrence Field.

"Wait!" he cried out, hurrying up the aisle.

Terrified ethereals faded to nothing around him as Hedgewood's infrasound—he must have been pumping it out of the emergency broadcast system for how loud it was, the same one that blasted the air raid siren to call volunteer firefighters to an accident—pumped out 2.1Hz of infrasound at a volume loud enough to smother the whole town.

Faces he recognized, of friends and others he'd freed from death loops, twisted in helpless terror. Hedgewood was taking them all out at once—that was his plan all along, why he'd been testing the device on Ben and Jeremy—but did he know he would be condemning them all to the Dark Rift? Would he even care?

An awful thought he couldn't push away struck him again: Garrote was right.

The walls and ceiling split open like fabric, rays of darkness piercing through the cracks. The sound of terror from the pews reached an agonizing crescendo as he met Thea by the stage. She and Coop seemed unconcerned by the Temple splitting apart. If they were, they would have stepped out of the shadow that had fallen over them and the machine. Ben guessed they likely weren't even able to see it—that the Dark Rift was only visible to the already dead.

The machine was on, humming lightly. It must have been an agonizing decision for Thea to make, deciding to use it. He didn't envy her, and he fully understood why she'd want to turn it off now.

But he feared it was their only hope.

"Don't turn it off!"

She gave him a quizzical look. Could she even hear him? The voices of the others faded in and out like distant radio signals, the sound of reality coming apart around them drowning them out.

"You need to leave it on!" he shouted. "Hedgewood's doing this! Some kind of infrasound system! If you turn it off we're all goners!"

"It's not fully on yet," she said. "I still have to enter the magnitude."

"Then do it! Quick! Before it's too late!"

"Don't do it, Thea," Coop said. "I'm begging you."

Thea shared a hesitant glance with Coop. He looked terrified. As she pressed the numbers, Ben peered out at the pews. There were even less ethereals than when he'd first gotten here. Already a dozen or more had been sucked into the Rift. Hedgewood's infrasound worked far too efficiently. He and his phony nurse, Danica, were likely congratulating themselves right now, watching it all on CCTVs equipped with the same hardware as the cameras the Ghost Brothers had brought into Ghostland.

As the hum of the Recurrence Field grew louder, competing with the infrasound, Ben realized Thea must have gotten this equipment from Hedgewood. The implications of it weighed on him heavily.

"There," she said. "It's on."

All around them the remaining ethereals began to solidify, the color returning to their skin and hair and clothing. The tears in the church ceiling healed, and the darkness ebbed away. The infrasound drone was nearly inaudible now, completely overtaken by the higher-pitched hum of the Recurrence Field.

Thea sighed heavily. Coop gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, all forgiven. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Forget it. We're safe. At least for now."

But how many did the Dark Rift already take? Ben wondered. Dozens? Hundreds?

"Where's Le Mon?" he asked, dreading the answer.

Coop and Thea shot anxious looks toward the back of the church.

"Ben," Thea said. "Le Mon is very sick."

Ben reached out with his mind but heard nothing. Either the Recurrence Field was blocking Le Mon's frequency from him or…

"Where is he?"

"He's in my office."

"Are you sure? I can't feel him there."

"He was just there."

Ben winked out, heading for Thea's office… only to reappear at the edge of the sanctuary, slightly closer to the back hall. He tried again and ended up no closer. He could only shift as far as the outer edge of the field.

With the Recurrence Field running, every ethereal in here was trapped, just like at Ghostland.

And if Le Mon or anyone else is outside of it, they're already gone.

* * *

General Zaydan surveyed the town below from his mobile command post, through a pair of ReOss-equipped M22 range finders. Sweeps had shown elevated spectral activity all over the map. Bloodthirsty ghosts tearing through the streets of Duck Falls like looters in a riot, leaving mayhem and destruction in their wake. The general refused to call them "ethereals" the way Ollie Hedgewood did. That was the collaborators' name for them. "Spectral" and "ghost" were only a handful of the names for the enemy he allowed under his command. Bogeys, haints, revenants, wraiths, nothings, deadheads, slimers, caspers: all were acceptable terms. Add a dash of expletives into the mix, as necessary.

"Make no mistake," he said, handing off the binoculars to Colonel Martin, who adjusted them for his close-set eyes. "This is an insurgency. Those bleeding hearts in that so-called Temple have been freeing and harboring potential terrorists for months. Their very existence is an affront to the American way of life."

Colonel Martin agreed with a thoughtful hum.

Typically, NORTHCOM would have been in charge of an operation playing out on American soil. If General Zaydan hadn't already been working with Hedgewood for almost a decade, he might not have been granted the privilege by the POTUS himself. His men knew Hedgewood's tech inside and out. It was, as the president had suggested, a "no-brainer."

The fact that the slimers had slaughtered over two-thousand red-blooded American citizens at a theme park, of all places, where a family should feel safe bringing their children, had put them on the general's radar. Like many, he'd felt rage simmering in his heart toward their kind, but his work had been elsewhere, combating terrorism and insurgent scum in the great sandpits of the Mideast. He'd become personally involved when it was discovered so-called ethereals had interfered in several black bag operations under his command. Now these abominations were running rampant through small-town America. It was the business of every freedom defender to step up and fight when John Q. Public came in harm's way.

"This is a declaration of war on humanity," he said. "We will not abide these acts of aggression any longer."

"On that we are in full agreement, General," the colonel said, handing back the binoculars.

Hedgewood's TANDY system, the infrasound array, seemed to be doing its job rather efficiently. He'd watched as a pair of ghosts—an Asian man in a drab gown and loose trousers, and a high school football player with his severed head in a helmet tucked under his arm—faded from existence just inside the perimeter. Outside the array, the sound was much less audible. It would be torture within the Zone.

"Send your units in, Colonel. Hit any stragglers with everything you've got. With God on our side, we'll have this entire town cleared by nightfall."

The New Abnormal

BLAKE AND MADDIE carried Lilian over to the sofa and laid her across it, propping up her legs with extra pillows. The skin of her face was cool, with a waxy quality that made Blake uneasy. If not for that, he could have easily assumed she'd passed out.

He knelt beside her. She was breathing shallowly and her eyes moved behind her lids, as if she was in a deep sleep. He shook her gently and called her name. She didn't wake. "She's still breathing, at least. That's good."

"Oh, thank God," Maddie sighed.

"Mr. Laramie, can you get me a flashlight?"

Michael looked eager to be directed. While Blake checked Lilian's pulse on her neck—a bit slow but steady—Michael hurried off to the kitchenette, opened a drawer, and returned with a Maglite.

"This good?"

Blake took the flashlight. "That's perfect."

"Who's Bram?" Maddie asked again, while Blake twisted the flashlight on.

Michael frowned. "What?"

"She said 'Bram' right before she… did she faint or pass out?"

Wendy looked at Ben's vampire toy in her hands. "Didn't Bram Stoker write Dracula?"

"Why would Lilian say his name?"

Blake lifted Lilian's eyelids one at a time. Both pupils constricted and dilated quickly in reaction to the flashlight, which he knew from a medical training course in his first-year at Stanford meant that her brain was still functioning. What to do if she didn't wake up after a few minutes hadn't been covered. In that case, he supposed they would need to get her to a doctor. "I think she's unconscious. But her eyes reacted to the light."

"Is that good?" Maddie asked.

He nodded. "I think that's good."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Blake handed the flashlight back to Michael and sat on the floor beside Lilian, leaning against the sofa.

"Do you have smelling salts in your first-aid kit, Michael?"

"I didn't see any when I did an inventory."

"Okay. Um… how about glass cleaner? I know there's no windows in here but maybe you have some for the bathroom mirror or the stove?"

"You know what? I think I do."

Michael hurried back to the kitchenette.

"What happened just now?" Wendy asked. "Was that possible, what we just saw? Ben is…" She swallowed audibly. "He's gone, but we all just saw—"

"I think it must've been that sound we heard," Blake said. "Whatever made it—" He shook his head. "I remember reading about something like that when Lilian first told me she was seeing ghosts. There was this study, right? A psychologist and researcher wrote this paper about ghost sightings. They thought that infrasound, at a specific frequency, could be what caused some people to see ghosts, by making the human eye vibrate beyond the normal frequency."

"Vibrating eyes?" Michael said, returning with the spray bottle of Windex. "That's a bit farfetched." He handed Blake the bottle.

"We all just saw Ben out there, didn't we?" Blake unscrewed the cap of the bottle. "Your wife felt his touch. Do you have a better explanation?"

Michael looked down at his hands and said nothing.

"So what if the Army and that Hedgewood guy are pumping out this frequency all over town?" Blake said. "Like an array of infrasound."

"But why?"

He shrugged. "So they can see the ghosts, I guess, and get them under control."

"What about Lilian?" Maddie said.

"Well, she could always see ghosts. Maybe the sound made her eyes vibrate too fast and she passed out?"

They all looked down at Lilian.

"We need to wake her up," her mother said.

"That's why I asked for this," Blake replied, holding up the bottle. "Smelling salts are ammonium carbonate. Windex has ammonia, that's the strong smell. It's not as much as smelling salts, but hopefully it'll be enough." He tilted her head to the side and wafted the open end of the bottle under her nose. Her breathing didn't waver. She didn't react.

"Hmm."

"Hmm, what?" Maddie said.

"Well, it didn't work." He handed the bottle back to Michael.

"Obviously," Wendy said.

"But I'm not sure what that means. Maybe it's just not strong enough."

Maddie knelt down beside him, brushing Lilian's hair out of her face. "What if she's… I don't know… in a coma?"

"You see her eyes going back and forth like that? That's rapid eye movement. REM sleep. Coma patients don't show eye movement. That means she's probably dreaming. If she doesn't wake up in a few minutes, we can consider that she might be, I dunno, not able to wake up on her own, I guess. Right now, she's just conked out. It's not great, but it's not worst-case scenario."

Michael frowned. "What happens if we can't wake her up? What if she stays… like this?"

"Then we'll need to get her to a doctor as soon as possible."

Michael nodded toward the door. "That means we'll have to go out there again."

They all shared an anxious look.

* * *

Lilian glided along behind Bram's astral body, feeling like she was following the player character in a third-person shooter. She could turn her head from side to side, up and down, but she couldn't pull herself away from him, and nothing of herself was visible when she looked down. She felt light and airy as they continued along Koestler Street, like floating in saltwater the exact same temperature as her skin. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be an ethereal, like Ben.

Am I dead?

"You're not dead, Lilian."

Bram spoke without speaking, peering back over his shoulder, his lips unmoving. Somehow she'd heard his thoughts, and he'd heard hers. She knew she hadn't spoken aloud herself, because she had no lips to speak with.

"You're discarnate," Bram told her. "Astral traveling. Your body is alive and well back in the bunker. Your friends and family will think you're sleeping."

Where are you taking me? Why did you do this to me?

"All of your questions will be answered in time. For now, try to relax. Astral travel can be difficult on the mind of a first-timer. There's a possibility you might suffer from dissociation."

I want my body back!

"I can't do that. Not yet."

Why not?

"Because you're needed. You're a larger piece of the puzzle than you might think. This was all put into motion a very long time ago, long before you or I were born."

She puzzled over this as Bram ushered her up the walkway to the house next to the one she'd grown up in. The McGowans lived there now, a young couple from Baltimore.

Mrs. McGowan stood just inside the doorway. The door lay at her feet, on top of her husband, who appeared to be dead. Flies buzzed in the halo of blood around his head. Mrs. McGowan was dead herself—it was her ethereal mourning her husband, weeping into her hands. She vanished as Lilian and Bram passed the body on the floor.

Where did she go? Lilian said.

"That sound. Do you hear it? It's what made Ben disappear. Infrasound. Hedgewood used it on us at the Institute, to test its effects on transversing."

Trans-what-ing?

Bram ignored her. They reached the second floor and he swept her down the hall, turning into a bedroom. His body lay on a bed stripped of linens. He was holding pieces of brown fuzz and cotton Lilian recognized as they neared. It was Whatsit, her stuffed bear.

You went to my house?

"I did."

Why did you rip up my bear?

"I needed something of yours to find you. He was in your luggage. Now, fair warning, this part might feel a bit… disorienting."

Without another word Bram reentered his body, pulling her in with him.

For a moment, all she could see was the pink hue of sunlight behind his eyelids. Then his eyes sprang open, though her perspective wasn't quite right, as if she was looking out through almond-shaped windows, his skull a dark room. She heard him inhale a deep breath, though the sound was somewhat hollow, like hearing it from inside a tunnel. His voice had the same hollow quality to it: "Try and stay calm."

Stay calm? This is not okay, Bram! Let me the fuck out of your head!

"It's just for the time being," he said, sitting up on the edge of the bed. She felt a strange sense of vertigo, looking out through his eyes as he moved. "I need to get the two of us closer so I can transverse again."

Closer? she cried. Closer to what?

"To Ghostland," he said, already moving toward the stairs. "I'm bringing you back to Garrote House."

Recurrence

WAS IT IRONY that he'd escaped one Recurrence Field only to trap himself in another? Whether or not it was, he had to laugh, if only to keep his sanity. It had only been seven minutes since the infrasound started, but with no idea whether Le Mon or any of the other ethereals outside the Temple had survived and no way to find out, he couldn't get calm. Many of the others trapped in here with him had absorbed themselves in work, folding flyers that would never be distributed, crafting slogans that would never be chanted, deciding which ethereals in the outside world were most in need of liberation, despite the fact that many if not all of these would-be saviors were likely to never leave the sanctity of these four walls ever again.

How much time until Garrote opened the Dark Rift? An hour? Two? It had been days since Hedgewood's people kidnapped him but only a few hours since Garrote had left him in front of the Temple. Would any ethereals outside the Recurrence Field survive until then? Would it even matter?

He studied the faces of the people around him, living and ethereal. He'd been trying to figure out who'd already been pulled into the Dark Rift, but there were so many new people, ethereals and Gurpies, that he couldn't tell. His gaze fell on a young living couple consoling each other near what he'd established was the southern edge of the field, in a shaft of multicolored sunlight from one of the stained-glass windows, in which a robed and bearded man held a framed picture of Jesus. Thea, raised a Catholic, had once told Ben it depicted Jude the Apostle, the Patron Saint of lost causes.

"Ben?"

Her voice startled him. She stood over him, where he sat cross-legged in the aisle.

"Thank you for not letting me change my mind," she said. He sensed caution or possibly anxiety from her. Something weighed on her mind that she wasn't ready to reveal. He could find out for himself, if he wanted.

"He's looking out for us now," she said.

"Huh?"

She nodded toward Saint Jude. "GRP2. The mother of all lost causes."

Ben considered dissuading her, but thought better of it. What purpose was there in lying, so close to the end?

"Coop and I just did a headcount. We lost thirty-three ethereals before we managed to get the Recurrence Field up and running. Just under half of them. Le Mon, Alan Sparrow, the O'Neals, and the two ethereals who came in with that young man over there the other day are among them."

"I'm so sorry, Thea," Ben said, glancing at the young couple under the window. He remembered what Le Mon had told him about the Dark Rift, that ethereals who came back from there—if they ever did—came back changed, cancerous tumors of their former selves. Like malignant shadows.

"I guess we just have to hope they've gone on to a better place," Thea said.

Ben nodded, though he doubted they had.

"It's weird, don't you think?" she said. "How you got here just in time. Almost as if you knew."

"I didn't know anything. All I knew was that sound out there is the same thing Hedgewood used on me in his lab."

He'd already told her what had happened, in vague detail, everything but the horrible crab-monster made of shimmering darkness that had crawled out of the wall, and his certainty that the infrasound would send every ethereal within its radius to the Dark Rift.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not your fault."

She uttered a thoughtful hum. "It is still strange, don't you think? Almost like you returning to us was…" She shrugged. "I don't know… preordained."

Ben snorted. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing. I've just had a lot of time to think."

It's only been ten minutes, he thought. Though he remembered it had only been ten minutes for him. For Thea and Lilian and the rest of them, it had been days.

"Do you believe in kismet?" she asked.

"The dating app?"

Thea chuckled. "No. Like, fate. Destiny."

Ben considered it. "I dunno. Maybe. Probably not."

She nodded. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. Too many to count. But the worst mistake I made…" Her lower lip quivered and her eyes began to glisten, pooling with tears. "Bram and I are responsible for what happened to the Recurrence Field. The explosion."

"I know," he said.

"You kn—" She swallowed hard. "How did you—?"

"I followed you guys to the shed the night they kidnapped me. I saw all the explosives. The C4. Where did you get all that stuff?"

"Bram has a conta—" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I'm trying to tell you, I'm the reason Hedgewood took you that night."

For a moment it felt like he was sinking into the floor. He had to make a concerted effort to stay afloat. The thought had crossed his mind that either she or Bram had been behind his kidnapping, but he'd never believed it. "You… what?"

"I made a deal with him—God knows I regret it, and I'm so, so sorry, Ben. I know I can never make it up to you—"

"You sold me out." He laughed. "You did it."

"We needed his equipment, and a reason the two of us could be face-to-face when I pulled the trigger to blow the Recurrence Field. He wanted you and we needed an airtight alibi. Now that I think about it, he probably knew it was me the second it happened, regardless."

"So you just handed me over to him for some special glasses and keeper suits."

"Not some, Ben. Two-hundred units each. And the Recurrence Field that just saved dozens of ethereals. I know that doesn't make it right—believe me, I've been beating myself up over it every second since—but now you're back, now that you're safe, I have to think that counts for something. You came back at the exact right moment to stop me from making another terrible mistake… I have to believe that happened for a reason."

Tears spilled down her cheeks and she wiped them away absently. Ben knew her well enough to know her tears were genuine, not for show. He no longer saw any reason to hold anything back from her now. She'd nearly gotten him sucked into the Dark Rift, that was true. But if he hadn't been kidnapped, it would've been too late to save any of them once the infrasound went off. He wouldn't have known what it was until it was too late, and there would've been no Recurrence Field in the Temple to protect them. They all would've vanished into the Dark Rift, and only a handful of the living would have seen it happen. He likely never would have been able to talk to his mom and dad again. To tell them he was all right. To hold his mother's hand.

"Thea, I forgive you."

Thea startled. "You—what? How?"

"Because you're right," he said. "All of this, the explosion, me getting kidnapped, the mini-Recurrence Field, the infrasound. It's not irony. It's destiny. We're all safe now because you made that deal. No matter how I feel about it, despite how awful it was for me in that… that place. If it didn't happen, we'd all be gone."

She looked off, toward the sunshine streaming in through the stained-glass windows. "St. Jude protected us."

He shook his head. "You protected us, Thea. You brought these people here. No matter what you did or didn't do before or after, without you these ethereals, these people, they'd all be gone."

Thea allowed herself a smile. "Thank you, Ben." She sighed deeply. "For everything. I wish I could take back what I did to you. I wish it didn't have to happen that way."

"Well, I survived. Most of the others survived, too. And the ones who didn't… I think I know where they are."

Her dark eyes alighted with interest. "Where?"

"In the Dark Rift," he told her

* * *

"I can't believe they're gone," Andy said.

It was the second time he'd said it since the "loud sound" made many of the ghosts disappear, including his gwisin, his friendly spirits. Lamb had led him to a shaft of sunlight shining through a stained-glass portrait of one of the saints—the one holding a picture of Jesus, like he was waiting at a convention line to get it signed—and sat him down in its warm glow. It was as close to comfort in this small, unwelcoming space as she could find. She hoped just sitting here with him, gently stroking his hair and listening to him unload, would give him some solace.

"I know, punkin," Lamb said. Because she did. She'd lived with her mother all of her life, aside from a stint of about six months in her late teens when she'd dropped out of school to follow some dumb boy and his lame alt-rock band on tour. She'd come right back to her mom's shop after the breakup, and she'd stayed with her mother right up until the end. She'd watched her mother die. So if anyone was familiar with loss, it was her.

Andy had lived with his spirits, his gwisin, for as long as he could remember. He may have never seen them until less than an hour ago but they'd been a guiding influence in his life, wanted or not, as early as the time they'd saved him from being crushed by a pallet of frozen dinners when he was one or two years old. They were important to him. They'd guided him to Lamb, probably to save her mother, and even though he hadn't been willing or able to listen to them at the time, they'd helped the two of them save potentially several more psychics at the convention. They'd probably even saved those kids three days ago, guiding them toward the bomb shelter before all Hell broke loose in town.

So what if they'd led the two of them here, where it seemed like they'd been prisoners for three nights and two days? They'd survived and they were together. With Thea's glasses on, Andy had seen his gwisin fade away before his eyes as the sound they'd predicted grew louder and more persistent. Lamb had comforted him as best she could. He could take all the time he needed to recuperate. It seemed like time was one thing they had plenty of in here.

Andy looked up, taking in the religious dude in the stained-glass window above them for the first time since they'd sat down. He'd grown up Methodist but still couldn't tell one old, bearded white guy in a robe from another. Church and Sunday school had always been a drag. He'd only ever wanted to race home and read his comics, and in later years to skateboard with his buddies at Freedom Park. Once or twice, he'd even been nudged in that direction.

It felt strange to grieve someone he'd never really known. How could he mourn the loss of people whose faces he'd only just seen? But they'd been as close to him as any friend. Closer. They'd been with him longer than his own parents. He wished he'd spoken to his mother about them. He wished he'd known them more.

"It's strange," he said finally. "It's like there's a hole in me. Not like I'm empty, just that there's… something missing. I can't feel them anymore and it's not… I don't feel like crying or anything. It's not like that. But I feel like I should. Does that make sense?"

Lamb smoothed his hair. "Course it does. You know I'm here for you, sweetie. Even if I can't fill that hole, I'm right here and I'll be here for as long as you want me."

He looked up hopefully. She smiled down at him, and as she did her necklace slipped out from her top, dangling before his eyes. The sideways figure eight, the symbol for infinity. The last time he'd seen it, it had been between her breasts as they lay in bed, in the small bed and breakfast room they'd rented. He held it a moment.

"Forever?" he asked.

"Forever," she said—though Andy wondered how long that might end up being. He craned his neck and she leaned down to kiss him.

"I was about to ask if there was room at the inn," a woman said, startling Andy. "But I guess I'll leave you to it."

Andy recognized Sam's voice before he looked up to see her standing over them, awkwardly shifting on her feet with her hands behind her back. "Sam! Thea never told us you were here."

Lamb looked over his shoulder. "Sam's here?"

"Yeah, she's right—" Andy's voice faltered. Lamb couldn't see her, and Sam hadn't said anything further, but her expression was almost apologetic. As he lowered the glasses she disappeared from view, like his gwisin had only a few minutes ago. He settled them back on the bridge of his nose with a hangdog look. "Oh man, I'm so sorry, Sam. I thought—"

"Oh no," Lamb said. She'd sensed a presence nearby, but with all the ethereals in the Temple it was impossible to distinguish one from the other.

Sam held up a hand. "Don't worry about it. I've been hanging around for a while, trying to figure out how to say hello without spooking you two. I guess Lamb can't see or hear me, so if you wouldn't mind passing it along."

"I will."

"Gimme those damn things," Lamb said.

Andy peeled off the glasses and Lamb put them on. Her mouth dropped open at what she saw. The church was full to the brim with people, far more than before she'd put on the glasses. Some were floating, some were flying, others were doing all kinds of tricks. Many of them were dressed in clothing from different eras, like a costume party. She saw Thea Petralia a few pews over, talking with a skinny teenage boy with messy hair who hadn't been there a second earlier, and Sam stood over Lamb and Andy, twiddling her fingers with an awkward smile.

Lamb lowered and raised the glasses, which she'd already noticed seemed to be the typical reaction people in the Temple had when they'd first put them on. Now she knew why.

"Oh my God, Sam! It's good to see you!"

"Good to see you, too, Lamb. I'm sorry I didn't come around sooner. I've been busy making the rounds and time kind of… slipped away from me, I guess. I'm glad you're both okay."

"No need to be sorry. And thanks. I'm sorry you, uh—I mean, what all happened?"

"It's kind of a long story."

"But you're… are you okay? With everything?"

Sam shrugged. "There are things I'd do differently if I'd known where I'd end up. If not for Thea's friend, Bram, I guess I'd probably still be haunting the scene of the accident. But I'm acclimating. Getting used to not having a body, not having to do things that had become routine. And everyone here has been very welcoming."

"That's good. I guess Andy and me've kinda been keepin to ourselves. We should probably go and—"

"Ah, you found each other." Thea had approached from the outside of the pews and stood beside the shaft of colored sunlight through the window. The teenage ethereal boy had come with her. She handed Andy a new pair of glasses, which he put on. "I'd like to introduce you to someone, if you have a minute. This is Ben Laramie."

"Hey," he said. Lamb and the others greeted him and offered their names. The boy—Ben—repeated their names as if to commit them to memory. He seemed a bit shy but friendly enough.

"Ben's been with us for quite some time," Thea said. "He arrived with the first group of ethereals at the Temple. Without his help, we wouldn't be where we are today—" Her brow creased. "I mean, not today. Today's a bad example. What I mean is, we wouldn't have quite as many ethereals here if not for his help. And those who are still here wouldn't be if he hadn't convinced me to trust my instincts and turn on the Recurrence Field."

Ben looked away somewhat shyly.

"He also happens to know a great deal about our current situation. I've got a few things to take care of. Why don't you tell them what you told me?" She went off, heading along the windows to the front of the church.

Ben began somewhat awkwardly, telling them that the dead horror writer who created the park, Rex Garrote, hadn't actually been dead. He'd been stored in a tank underground, wired directly to the park's controls so he could orchestrate his escape, committing mass murder by taking over the ghosts in the park. Lamb thought it sounded farfetched but she didn't say so. The kid didn't seem like a liar, and she'd already heard all about the incident on TV. Ben's story seemed less unlikely than most of the theories floating around.

"That must've given my dad a thrill," Sam said. "He was always so sure Garrote faked his own death."

"He was right. Garrote burned to death but not until that day."

Ben explained how Garrote had nearly killed him four years earlier when the old house rolled through town toward the park. He'd gone from Garrote's number-one fan to his worst enemy over the following years, learning everything he didn't already know about the man in order to be ready when Ghostland opened, to burn the house down with Garrote still in it. He seemed regretful he hadn't been able to destroy the house himself, with all the danger they'd been in, but it had fallen down on its own, into the underground passages, collapsing on the man who'd murdered Sam's dad.

"That's a pretty awesome story," Andy said. "I never did anything cool like that when I was your age."

Ben laughed. "Well, I guess consider yourself lucky."

"So Rex Garrote is dead now?" Sam asked. "For-real dead?"

"Garrote might be dead but he's far from gone. He's gathered up an army of ghosts, recruited them or brainwashed them, I'm not sure. I don't know if that's what's happening outside the Temple right now, if they're all with him or it's just general chaos, but he's got worse in store for Duck Falls, and he won't stop there."

"How can it get any worse?" Lamb asked.

"This is gonna sound weird—"

"Everything you've told us sounds weird," Sam said. "But I believe you."

"Me too," Andy said. He turned to Lamb, who agreed with a hesitant nod. It was weird, but everything that had happened since she met Andy back in Vegas was weird, and things had only gotten weirder in Duck Falls. She'd believe just about anything at this point, so long as Ben had a plan to get them out of this place.

"Okay, so there's this sort of metaphysical plane called the Dark Rift," Ben said. "I asked around about it. Some people think it's Hell, some say Heaven. Other people think it's the opposite side of a black hole, a mirror universe or something, I guess. Le Mon told me once that people who come back from there come back changed. Malignant shadows, he called them. I don't know if anyone really knows for sure. But I saw… something… something evil, something not from this world… when I was out in the desert, in the Hedgewood Facility. And I think it came from the Dark Rift."

"What was it?" Lamb asked, afraid she didn't want to know the answer.

He told them about the alien-like creature he'd seen, the mutant crab thing made of dark matter or black goo or whatever it had been. "And that's not the worst of it. All of those dead psychics, including your mom, Lamb—Rex Garrote's the one who killed them."

"That motherfucker!" Lamb spat.

"I'm sorry," Ben said. "He's planning to use their psychic energy to open the Dark Rift. Whatever's inside, it'll all bleed out into the physical and the ethereal planes. More things like I saw at the facility… who knows what else. What happened at Ghostland'll look like a day at Six Flags."

"So what can we do?" Andy asked. "Is there any way we can stop him?"

"Not with Hedgewood's infrasound still running," Ben told them. "But they won't keep it on forever. As soon as it's off I'm going back to Ghostland, and I'll bring whoever wants to come with me. I think we can stop Garrote for good, if it's not already too late, and I need as many people as I can to help me. Before you say yes or no, I should probably tell you that if we fail, and there's a real possibility we will, Garrote will kill you all, and send me and Sam to the Dark Rift. But if you don't come along, he's going to kill you all anyway, so I guess it's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation."

"Well, that sounds cheery," Sam said.

Andy turned to Lamb, eyebrows raised inquisitively.

"You're fuckin-A I'm gonna help," she said. Andy gave her a look of surprise. "I'd kill the bastard with my bare hands if he wasn't already dead for what he did to Mom. 'Sides, anything has to beat sittin around here just waitin to die."

"I guess that means I'm coming, too," Andy said with a resigned sigh.

"Count me in," Sam said. "If there's any chance I can see my father again and finish what he started, that's gravy for me."

They all turned to Thea, who'd rejoined them when he began to tell them about the Dark Rift, had quietly contemplated the conversation throughout. "As much as I'd love to join you all," she said now, "my responsibility is to the people here."

"You're right," Ben agreed. "You and Coop need to protect them for as long as possible. For all we know, Garrote could be planning an attack on the Temple. Or Hedgewood and that general."

"We're prepared for that," Thea said. Off his surprise, she explained: "I've had some time to consider what you told me since you've been gone. We've been training."

Andy grinned. "Which was totally awesome, by the way. That little girl with the lightning balls? Very cool."

Lamb patted his thigh patronizingly.

"Well, okay then," Ben said. "Hopefully Garrote's too concerned with opening the Dark Rift and leaves the Temple alone." He faced Andy, Lamb and Sam. "As for the rest of us, the second that infrasound goes off, we go get Lilian and head straight for Ghostland."

Astralogy

LILIAN STARED OUT through Bram Merritt's eyes, a prisoner in someone else's skull. A person inside another person, like a Russian nesting doll, and maybe Rex Garotte speaking through Morton Welles's lips was right after all: maybe she was crazy. Maybe everything that had happened after she'd left the house of mirrors was in all her mind, Ben and Allison were still alive, they'd never met Leonard or Niko or Detective Stan Beadle, and they hadn't been attacked by a hundred ghosts and nearly died and miraculously escaped at the last possible second. Maybe she hadn't gone off to college, met a boy and teamed up with the Gurpies, spent the last few days hiding out in a bomb shelter with Ben's parents in their backyard. Maybe her dad was still alive and happy, bringing her mom flowers at work. Maybe all of this was just a fantasy cooked up by a deranged mind, plagued by her grandmother's curse, the ghosts in All Hallows' Close, and she was really in a bland white room with cushioned walls and round corners, drugged and drooling onto her pillow.

I'd deserve it for letting him free, she thought.

"I'm sure it's easier to think of it that way," Bram said. "But believe me, the alternative is worse than the reality."

Could you please stop listening to my thoughts?

"Wish I could. Walking clears my head. But it's either listen to you or that godawful infrasound. I got enough of that in the Institute to last a lifetime."

What is it? Do you know?

"Hedgewood's people designed it to… how did they put it? Eliminate ethereals."

Lilian felt her final hopes dash. Was that why Ben had appeared briefly only to vanish? She and Bram had walked down the middle of Koestler Street and hadn't seen a single ethereal, not since the woman mourning her dead husband had vanished. Were they all gone? Ben and Le Mon? The O'Neals? Everyone else she'd liberated? Everyone who'd died at Ghostland, too? Allison and Detective Beadle? Niko and Leonard?

She worried about Ben. The way he'd left them… it had felt more like a final goodbye than a See you later. They'd all been crying, except for Blake and Ben's grandmother. But Lilian barely had a moment to process it before Bram had stolen her away.

"Wherever he is," Bram said now, "you'll see him again. Rex will make sure of it. He isn't through with either of you yet."

Won't that be fun? We'll have ourselves a Rex Garrote-tried-to-kill-us family reunion.

Bram uttered a sharp laugh.

She wished she could see inside his mind as easily as he saw into hers, but when she tried to look around, she saw nothing inside his head but clouded darkness. He'd obviously had a lot more practice at hiding his thoughts. And she was agitated. Anxious. He was taking her back to Ghostland. The Recurrence Field was gone, and the Ghostland program had been turned off, but Sara Jane Amblin herself had called it a nuclear meltdown of dead energy. Over two-thousand deaths on top of all the ethereals they'd kept captive. How many of them had survived the infrasound? How many were still out there? Which of them had Garrote claimed for his side of the coming war?

"You'll see you're wrong about him," Bram said.

Her thought was cautious: What do you mean?

Bram sighed. For a moment the darkness in his mind opened like parting clouds and she sensed something in there—adoration? devotion? She couldn't tell. But it was clear on which side of the war Bram's allegiance lay.

"The infrasound," he said, "whatever it's done to the ethereals, he'll make it right again."

You're with him, aren't you?

"He's with us. Looking out for all ethereals."

That's bullshit.

"It's true. He's the only one who truly cares about any of us. He saw all of this coming, a long time ago. All of the pieces are falling into place, one by one."

If he's so all-seeing, why did he need to kill all those psychics?

"He's just a man." She felt Bram's lips curl in a smile. "A great man. But still, only human."

Jeez, you've really got a hard-on for this guy, don't you?

"You joke, but if you knew what he did for me—what he's doing for all of us…."

They had emerged on Main Street, and she surveyed the wreckage through his eyes. There was no one in sight, only abandoned vehicles. One car had wedged itself so tightly between a brown delivery truck and a white van that all three vehicles had sustained heavy damage. A fire truck and one of the sheriff's department SUVs were parked by the wooded entrance to Duck Bill Park she and Blake had biked down three days ago. All of this was caused by the accident she'd seen the other day. They headed for it now.

A palm slapped the inside of a hatchback window as they passed, startling her. Bram peered inside. The chalk-white face of a woman stared out from the dim interior, gaunt and frightened. Trash lay scattered around her in the back. Empty water bottles, food wrappers and torn brown paper bags holding loose cans. Lilian thought she must have been hiding in her car the past three days.

"Please," the woman croaked with chapped lips.

Bram turned away, continuing toward the accident.

We have to help her!

"Only Rex can help her now."

You're insane.

"No," he said, and that was all.

Crows fluttered away from the roof of a white van as they approached the park road, cawing excitedly. A corpse was sprawled there. Impossible to tell who it was, whether she knew them or not, since the birds had pecked away so much of the flesh and clothing. Dried blood had caked the shattered windshield and streaked down the white sides.

"Don't worry," Bram said. "Imagoes got to this one well before the crows did."

Those things we saw in the cemetery?

"Yes. They absorb the energy from ethereals."

So what'll happen to Le Mon and the O'Neals?

"They'll deteriorate until there's nothing left of them, unfortunately," he said, reaching into his right pocket. She felt a brief cool sensation in his mind and his hand came out holding a set of keys. He found the right one and stuck it in the door, twisted it, jerked the handle. Then he slipped behind the wheel and pulled the door shut, as if the end of Le Mon's afterlife meant very little to him. "But Rex will help them. That's what this is all about. Why I'm taking you to him."

He opened the glovebox. A dull, black revolver tumbled out and he caught it deftly, popped the cylinder out, and checked the rounds. He counted in his head as he spoke. She heard the numbers clearly: one, two, three, FOUR.

While he counted, Lilian turned quickly back toward the darkness in his mind. It had parted enough for her to see a man on a table, writhing. He wore a straitjacket and men in white smocks held him down. One of the men shot a needle into the restrained man's neck and he sat up as the needle came out, long enough for Lilian to see the man in the straitjacket was Bram. Then all three of them faded away and the darkness returned.

"What are you doing?" Bram said. She wheeled around, startled and anxious. He had a knapsack open in his lap, tucking the revolver inside, along with a water bottle, a flashlight, and a few other things Lilian wasn't able to distinguish before he lifted his gaze to the blood-encrusted windshield.

Nothing, she said.

"Eyes front. There's nothing for you back there."

His hard face reflected back at her in the rearview as he spoke.

Fine, she said. How do you know so much about imagoes, anyway? she asked, only vaguely curious. She thought if she could keep him distracted, get him talking about something, anything, she might be able to get a look at his memories again. Find a way to escape his mind.

"Tibetan mystics were the first to discover them," he said. "They called them tulpas. They're thoughtforms. Entities created out of whole cloth. From the mind."

Like imaginary friends?

"In a way," he said. "That's why they need to ingest ethereal energy in order to exist."

But if they're imaginary, she said, how can they eat ethereals?

Bram sighed through his nostrils. "Everything is real, in a sense, even imagined beings. Dreams, thoughts, music, stories. They all exist in some form or another. As electrical impulses or sonic waves or images in the brain. If I say the word door, you might actually see a door, if you're a visual person. If not, you can at least perceive one. You know most doors have a rectangular surface, a lock and a handle. Some might have a keyhole. If I say it's a red door with brass fixtures and a skeleton keyhole and a knocker with the face of a lion, your mind fills in the gaps. It becomes more real, more tangible in your mind's eye."

She could almost picture the red door herself. But it's still not really real, she said.

"Who's to say it's not? If I tell you even more about it, we're both seeing the same door, aren't we? Like reading a book. Sometimes you imagine the characters as you read. The more you know about them, the clearer they are in your mind. You have feelings for them. You're scared or happy when they're in trouble or in love. They exist for that period of time within your mind. Like you exist in my mind right now."

He opened the driver door and stepped out, swatting away a cloud of flies from the corpse above his head.

That's different, Lilian said. I'm a real person.

"Prove it," Bram said as he hoisted the backpack onto his right shoulder. He held the strap taut as he crossed the road, weaving in between an abandoned minivan and a delivery truck.

What do you mean?

"If you're real, why can't I see you?"

Because you left my fucking body in the bunker!

"I know that. But if I told that woman in the car back there I have a teenaged girl named Lilian Roth in my head, she'd think I was crazy. She'd tell me to prove it, and I wouldn't be able to. To her, you wouldn't exist. Just like to your friends at school, maybe even your little boyfriend, the ethereals you saw were imagined. Get it?"

He'd taken them up the middle of the road, walking along the double-yellow line, swerving only when a vehicle lay in their path.

"But if I told her more about you, if I described you in detail, your height, your age, your hair color, if I told her you went to Stanford for political science where you met a boy named Blake Carter who studied second-year psychology, if I described how Blake smiled when he watched you on the plane and turned away the moment you looked up at him, pretended to be looking out the window because he didn't want to embarrass you. If I told her you'd brushed your hair behind your ear self-consciously when you noticed him looking, even though you've already slept together—"

Gross. That's private, you perv!

He ignored her. "—if I told her that you were at Ghostland on opening day, and you lost your childhood best friend and your therapist there, and three nights ago you buried your father in Ben's backyard under a big oak tree, she might start to get a picture in her mind of a teenaged girl named Lilian Roth. And how is that any different than a real person?"

Fine. I get it.

"You asked me what an imago is, so I'm telling you. It's a psychic manifestation someone imagined into being. Their thoughts were so powerful, so intense, they created a sort of living thought. They're often animals because children are more likely to believe in the imaginary than adults. As we get older we believe less in the imaginary world and more in the real world. But you and I both know the imaginary is more real than most people would like to admit."

Lilian remained silent, considering this. Up until a year ago she'd considered ghosts a part of the imaginary world. Same with psychic powers and imagoes and the Dark Rift. Now she knew all those things were real—unless this really was a schizophrenic delusion, possibly not even her own. Maybe she was just an imaginary young woman in the mind of a delusional man, drugged and straitjacketed in some tucked-away corner of a mental hospital. Maybe her whole life was someone else's fantasy. Images in a mind. Words on a page.

That's crazy, she told herself. You're being stupid.

Bram grinned. "Like I said, the alternative is worse than the reality. We don't have to talk anymore if you don't want to. Let's just walk a while in silence, hmm?"

As much as she didn't want to admit it, the thought terrified her. I think I need to talk, if that's okay. If I don't… I think I might lose myself.

"That's fine," Bram said.

The road ahead was empty. In the three days since the explosion the smoke had cleared, and the midday sun shone brightly, a mostly clear day for early fall. In the distance she could see the field where the Gurpies had set up camp, and just slightly beyond that the walls and buildings and amusement park rides of Ghostland were a dark haze shimmering like a mirage on the horizon.

She guessed they'd be there in less than an hour on foot.

Sweet Oblivion

LE MON AWOKE. For several moments he had no idea where he might be, though everything around him was familiar, in the same way a place visited more than once in dreams might be. There were books in the headboard above his pillow, with names and titles he recognized. The bedsheets were soft and silky, Egyptian cotton the color of red wine. A bar of warm sunlight spread across them from between the matching curtains. His feet stuck out the end of the sheet and he wiggled his toes as if to be sure they were his own. He felt them move and it felt fine. The nails were a little too long and yellowing at the ends. He ought to trim them, if only so he didn't ruin the nice sheets. He sat up and stretched, the cool waterbed mattress sloshing and rolling beneath him.

I'm home, he thought, though the notion didn't quite fit. Was this home? These weren't his sheets, this wasn't his luxurious queen-sized waterbed, and the books behind him didn't belong to him. There were flower petals, red and small, already turning brown and curling at the edges, scattered around him on the sheets.

He smelled fried food as he swung his feet over the edge. Something savory, buttery and slightly fishy, making him salivate.

Been a long time since my mouth watered.

The thought struck him as peculiar, and he froze in the process of pushing up from the edge of the bed. The waterbed sloshed beneath him, causing him to roll backward onto the sheets. For a moment it felt like he was floating, suspended in mid-air, and that sensation felt more normal than anything he'd experienced since he'd woken up in this strange yet familiar bed.

He lay there in the rippling bar of sunlight, letting the current rock him. Sweet oblivion, he thought, and though the words seemed familiar they didn't feel like his own.

"You're up, lazy bones."

Her voice—Shawna's soft, lilting voice, with a trace of humor in it—pulled him from whatever it was he'd been drifting toward. She stood before him in the high-waisted panties he remembered slipping over her hips and off her curled toes the night before, and the tank top she'd slipped on after they'd made love with the sounds of Mardi Gras drifting in through the opened window from across the river.

She licked her thumb, then wiped the corners of his lips. "You got some sleep crust." She laughed heartily. Already he loved her laugh. "Jeez, Leon, you really slept like the dead! Look what you did to my pillow!"

Le Mon looked back and saw the white stain he'd created with his drool. At least he hoped it was drool, since he'd been sleeping on it all night. "Must be the waterbed," he said sheepishly. "Not used to it."

Shawna tugged the waistband of his underpants and pulled him closer. The effect was immediate: Leon Jr. began to wake, throbbing pleasantly.

"I guess we're gonna have to fix that," she said.

She kissed him. He kissed back. It felt good and easy, like they'd been at it for years.

A sizzling sound caught his attention. For a second, he could have sworn it was coming from the two of them.

Shawna's eyes widened and she pulled away from him, her lip making a soft plip sound. "The breakfast!" she cried, and leaped out of bed, bare feet thumping on the parquet floor as she hurried out of the room.

Le Mon looked around for his clothes. He found his tie-dyed board shorts by the foot of the bed, his loose, button-front shirt and sandals near the window. He put them on and drew back the curtains. Below the streets and gutters were cluttered with trash from last night's revelry. Le Mon loved his city most days but on Mardi Gras the tourists swarmed the French Quarter and left everything they'd arrived with behind, from their morals to their trash. Throughout the day, cleanup crews would march the streets the way the bands and party floats did the day before, bagging refuse, thousands of beaded necklaces, alcohol bottles and beer cans.

Already it was hot, and not just for March. Heat shimmered off the blacktop and the roofs across the street. Tourists moved lazily through the street in shorts and straw hats, hungover from the night before. In the French Quarter, they'd be weaving in and out of psychic shops, buying baubles and trinkets from curio stores and hoodoo museums. Here in Algiers Point they just sauntered, taking their time, sipping sweet tea and nibbling beignets, the Mississippi between them and the bustle of the Big Easy.

Le Mon closed the curtains and skirted around the waterbed to the bedroom door. He stopped there, a sudden deep and pervasive fear crawling up his spine.

I'll go out there and she'll be gone. The whole place'll be empty. Thirteen-years empty.

Again, he couldn't decipher his own thoughts, so he did his best to push them aside as he stepped out into the hall. The bathroom faucet was dripping, the door left open. Framed photographs lined the hall: stark-contrast black-and-white images, various closeup views of the city he loved. He smelled slightly burnt eggs and shrimp as he stepped into the kitchenette.

Shawna was at the stove, scraping burnt food from the frying pan into the garbage bin.

"Y'oughta let that cool first," he said. "You'll melt the plastic."

She grinned back at him. "We almost did that to the bed last night." She tilted the pan to face him. "It's only a little burnt."

He grinned back and sat at the table, where she'd set a place for each of them. "Blackened shrimp scrambled eggs. My favorite."

"It was supposed to be an omelet."

He shrugged. "I prefer 'em this way."

Despite the occasional bit of grit, it really was delicious. After breakfast Shawna ushered him back to bed. As their sweat dried in the warm breeze from the window, the waterbed cooling his back, Le Mon held this new yet strangely familiar woman in his arms, stroking her hair lazily.

"I could stay like this forever," he told her.

She smiled lightly, her head rising and falling to the rhythm of his breath. "What's stopping you?"

He groaned. "At some point I'll have to get back to work."

"Maybe some naïve Angelino will agree to be your sugar mama."

He chuckled softly. He remembered her telling him she'd come out here from Los Angeles a few years back, on a freelance photo shoot for some magazine he couldn't remember, following a band whose name he couldn't recall. She'd fallen in love with the food, the architecture, the music and faces of New Orleans, and she'd packed up everything she owned to move here in less than a month.

"Lucky me," he'd said.

"Lucky both of us," she'd replied with a sly grin.

"People need me," he told her now.

Shawna tilted her head toward him, kissing him on the chin below his soul patch. "I need you."

Maybe she did, and maybe he needed her too. But his clients needed him in a more desperate way, addicts and alcoholics who depended on him to help keep them on the straight and narrow, to pick up the pieces of their damaged lives or start fresh, the way Le Mon was trying to do now. He still hurt from his brother Clem's death in Iraq. Shawna was just the medicine he needed.

"You ain't leavin town, are you?"

She gave him a quizzical look. "Not that I know of."

"Then I guess you an' me got all the time in the world."

They fell asleep soon after.

* * *

Le Mon awoke what could have been minutes or hours later. The sun was gone and red neon light shined in through the curtains. He felt no weight on his chest. His right arm, which had been wrapped over Shawna's shoulders when he'd drifted off, lay draped across what he'd already begun to think of as her side of the bed.

Waves rocked him as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge. Other than the slats of red light through the blinds, the apartment was dark.

"Shawna?" he called.

He found his underwear and pulled them on before stepping out into the hall. The bathroom sink was still dripping but the photographs on the walls looked very different in the dark. Places and things he'd seen every day—though not quite in the same way Shawna's camera captured them, with a poetry he couldn't express in words—were somehow more sinister: smears of black, alien languages and snarls for smiles.

"Shawna?"

The décor was different in here. He saw his dad's old La-Z-Boy recliner where her rattan rocker had been this morning. In the streetlight, he saw photos on the wall above the mantel of the two of them together, full-color mingled with her professional black and whites: on the beach at Grand Isle, on the deck of the Painted Lady riverboat, posing on either side an ornery old alligator, fear and excitement in their smiles. He remembered these moments as clearly as the events of this morning, as if they'd all happened within hours of each other.

Who was it said we all stuck in one moment in 50 A.D.? he thought, and was struck with a deep sense of déjà vu.

The little red light on the answering machine flashed, catching his eye. He crossed to it quickly, thinking it might be Shawna, letting him know where she was. He must have slept right through the call. He pressed the play button.

"Hi, you've reached Le Mon—" His voice. "—and Shawna—" Hers. "—leave a message at the beep," they said in unison. The beep came.

"You have—one—new message," the gurgly robot voice said. "First message."

"Leon," came a tired male voice. Hesitant. Maybe even aggrieved. "It's Dr. Stanley." Who? Le Mon thought as the doctor sighed heavily. "It's… just after one in the AM, Thursday morning. If you get this tonight, I think you'd better come to the hospital."

"Dad's doc is Bergeron, not Stanley," Le Mon muttered to himself. "And Dad's already gone."

"She's taken a turn," said the man on the machine.

She? A turn? What is this?

On the table beside the phone was a notepad and one of those desk organizer things with the big metal spike, the kind that let you impale whatever it was you had to remember, bills and such, like the victims of Vlad Dracula. It was stacked with items, some of them half crumpled. The one on top was a hospital bill. Beside this was an emptied bottle of Jack Daniels. A glass stood near them, still wet, and its sweet, antiseptic smell prickled his nose.

"Come as soon as you get this, Leon. Please."

The machine beeped again and the tape stopped, rewound to the start and clicked off.

Le Mon looked at the bottle, the glass. Had he been drinking this straight? No wonder his head felt swimmy. No wonder he couldn't think straight. No wonder time was stretching like roman candy, warm and gooey, folding in on itself.

He picked up the bill on top. The letterhead was for Pontchartrain Hospital in Metairie, its logo a pelican in flight. Under PATIENT it said SHAWNA GAINES, along with her address. This address. An itemized list of costs followed. Le Mon gripped the edge of the counter to steady himself. It was an insane amount. Fortunately, both of them had insurance. Still, there was a lot left to cover.

Thank you for choosing Pontchartrain Hospital, the letter began, as if they'd had much choice in the matter. There were several cancer centers in New Orleans, but Pontchartrain was supposed to be the best.

It all came back to him suddenly, washing over him like the Great Mississippi Flood. The cancer was in Shawna's blood. The doctors at Pontchartrain were adept at treating Hodgkin's lymphoma patients. In her early teens, Shawna had come down with mononucleosis, which had eventually come to be known as Epstein-Barr Virus. She'd been teased about it mercilessly by her schoolmates—kids her age knew all about the "kissing disease," though Shawna had been a late bloomer and had never kissed anyone other than her parents—but she'd rarely thought about it again after the month or so it had taken to recover. Her doctor, this Dr. Stanley, had said Epstein-Barr often led to Hodgkin's lymphoma, though the timeline didn't line up. It usually caught up with people within two to four years.

They'd been treating her in the out-patient clinic for the past three months. This was a relapse, two years after the first, and her second time on chemo. Shawna said the radiation made her sicker than the cancer, and it certainly looked like it to Le Mon. But she'd beaten it before, and she'd been determined to fight it again.

This time it spread: to her liver, her lungs, her bone marrow. Malignant shadows on an X-ray. Aggressive as hell. The chemo wasn't doing its job.

Yesterday, she'd told him she didn't have the strength to fight anymore.

"You have to let go of me," she'd told him, tears standing in her sunken eyes, her hollowed-out face with no eyebrows below the tie-dyed kerchief. Already he'd been able to see the outline of her skull through skin gone gray. To know what she would look like after it all rotted away, leaving only bone, more cancer than marrow.

He'd told her he couldn't.

Let go.

He'd left her in a miserable, discouraged daze, going home—though it didn't feel like home anymore, not like it had with the two of them together. It was the first time he hadn't stayed overnight with her in the past week. He'd cracked open the bottle and got blind, stinking drunk. He'd drank and wept until he blacked out and must have dragged himself to bed unconscious.

In a blink he was back at the hospital again, standing in front of her door with his right hand reaching out to the push plate. Hesitating. Not wanting to see.

She's taken a turn.

His fingers touched the cold metal, as cold as her hand had been the night before, and he pushed open the door.

Shawna lay there, asleep, a pallid, skeletal figure lost in a mountain of blankets. She alternated between cold and sweaty so often they'd kept a steady supply of extra blankets beside the bed. They'd come in handy when Le Mon stayed over, sleeping in the chair like Pop used to in the La-Z-Boy when he was still with them.

He drew the chair over, sat down beside her and took her left hand. He could have easily mistaken her for dead if not for the heart monitor, beeping weakly, and the dull pulse he could feel through the skin of her fingers.

Her eyes drew open slowly. Rather than turn—which would require more energy than she had—she rolled her eyes in his direction. He saw the cancer then, moving through her blood like a million marching black ants. He saw it again curling up from her lips, black as smoke, when she exhaled. He felt a twitch of revulsion at the sight—clearly a hallucination, a bizarre aftereffect of a hard night's drinking—and chastised himself when he noticed that Shawna had seen him flinch.

This was his wife. Not some ghoul. What the cancer hadn't ravaged, the radiation had done its best to wither away. But she wasn't dead yet. Her foot might already be in the door but she was still here, breathing. Looking at him with love and sympathy in her hollowed-out face.

"It's okay… Leon." She wheezed a breath. The dry tip of her tongue flicked out to lick her chapped, almost white lips. "I know…" Gasp. "…how I look."

"No," he said, shaking his head. He lifted her hand—so light, so cold—and kissed it tenderly. "No. It ain't that, it's…" How could he explain the last time he'd seen her she'd been healthy and young and vibrant? She wouldn't understand. He didn't understand.

Shawna smiled. Her bottom lip split and a yellowish fluid beaded there. She managed to raise her other arm and gently pat his hands. Placating him. Forgiving him, even though he didn't deserve it.

Her voice was small and brittle when she said, "You come find me, Leon."

"What?" He leaned in, unsure she'd said what he thought she had. She was right here. "Find you?"

Her fingers, brittle as bone, curled around his hands. "Find me in the light," she whispered, nodding ever so slightly.

Her eyelids fluttered closed.

In the next moment the heart monitor rang out. One long, steady beep accompanying the flat green line.

Her hands slipped from his with a papery whisper, dropping to the mattress.

"No," he said again.

Let go. Her words echoed in his mind.

"No!" he cried, beating a fist weakly against the mattress as her head fell to the side and her kerchief slid up, revealing the hairless scalp beneath.

Coughing came from the bed next to hers, behind the drawn curtain. He hadn't even known there was another patient in the room with them, and he certainly wasn't about to acknowledge the man—the coughs were deep and booming, somehow familiar—when his wife had just died right in front of him. And where in the hell were all the nurses and doctors? The crash carts? Why was nobody responding to the flatline with a code blue?

"She ain't comin back from this, son," came a growly voice from behind the curtain. "She already with us."

"Pop?" Le Mon whispered, standing so abruptly the chair toppled behind him.

"Wish I'd been around to see the two of you in your bon temps," the old man said. "Not like this. But that's how the dice roll."

"Pop, what—" He shook his head, unable to finish the thought, unable to believe his own ears. The old man was long dead. He couldn't possibly be behind the curtain. But Le Mon couldn't bring himself to cross the room. He didn't dare draw the curtain back.

As it turned out, he didn't have to.

The curtain tore open with a scrape of metal rings along the bar, and standing there, before their father's deathbed, was his big brother. Clem gripped the curtain with his one remaining hand. The other arm, a bloody, eviscerated stump, hung loose from the torn shoulder of his desert camo. He smiled from his charred mess of a face, most of his teeth shattered or missing entirely. Shrapnel protruded from his uniform in multiple places, sharp and jagged pieces of his Humvee and the roadside bomb, melting flesh and sizzling blood.

"Hey, li'l man."

Behind him, their father—a rotting corpse dressed in the suit he'd been buried in, the same suit he'd worn to church on Sundays—waved from the hospital bed. "Why don'tcha find us, son?"

"Yeah, li'l man. Find us."

"Find you? What the hell do you mean, find you?"

"Find us," Shawna repeated from the bed, a rasp from her recently deceased throat.

Le Mon staggered back in horror, bumping into the overbed table and slapping at it as if it had stung him, spilling the tray of food—just bland mush, the only thing she'd been able to keep down—onto the tiles. He slipped in it in his eagerness to get away, and fell flat on his ass.

This is penance, he thought. This is what I get for taking my own life. You go to Purgatory, just like it says in the Bible.

Shawna flipped the blankets off her spindly legs and rose from the stacked pillows. Clem shuffled toward him, his mostly toothless mouth twisted in a smile. Their father coughed and coughed, the same black smoke he'd seen in Shawna's veins and from her mouth spewing from between his lips, forming a dark cloud above his head. It poured from Clem's wounds, his gashes and burns. Each of them chanting, "Find us. Find us. Find us…"

Le Mon squeezed his eyes shut, screaming.

The voices stopped. The endless beep of the heart monitor, the shuffling of his brother's boots on the tile, the squeak of the bed. All that remained was a steady drip, drip, drip he knew as well as he knew his own name.

When he opened his eyes again, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror in the flat he'd shared with Shawna for the past however many years. He was holding the straight razor his father had taught him to shave with, and the blade was pressed into the flesh of his other wrist, between two visible tendons.

He startled. Dropped the razor in the sink and looked up at himself in the mirror.

Time had ravaged his face, as the cancer had Shawna's. He looked at least ten years older, maybe more. Lines on his forehead, between his eyebrows and surrounding his lips. He gasped, and his gaze fell on the straight razor in the basin. Was he really about to cut himself? The droplet of blood on his wrist attested to it.

Thirteen years, he thought, all of the moments between the morning he'd lost Shawna and this one flooding in like Katrina. Thirteen years without her—why now?

He knew exactly why. It was the interview he'd seen on television. Sally & Jessie in the Morning. The one with the inventor. Whatshername? Ambiance?

It was Susan & Jessie, he told himself. And the woman's name is Amblin. Sara Jane Amblin, Inventor of the Recurrence Field. She the one who proved it. Ghosts are real. The afterlife is real. Shawna's there waitin for me. Clem and Pop, too. I can find them.

He picked up the razor.

It's just like Shawna said. Nothing left to do now but let go….

Le Mon picked up the blade and drew it down, the pain excruciating but welcome, the flesh peeling apart, exposing sinew and gore. As blood pattered onto the white porcelain, tendrils of black smoke flittered up from the wound, like a fire burning in his blood. He watched as the whites of his eyes turned black and then he slumped over the sink, his vision graying, the colors dulled, the drip of the faucet plunking hollowly into the basin washing him away to sweet oblivion…

* * *

…but oblivion refused to take hold of him. He returned to consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later, awakened by a light so blinding he was sure the sun must have irreparably damaged his retinas. He—floated? drifted?—in this bright white void, no ground beneath his feet nor sky above his head.

What happened? Am I dead? Is this Heaven? Am I in the hospital? What the hell is this?

Finally, sounds came to him, muffled as though from underwater. A voice. No, not a single voice. Voices. Barely distinguishable from each other but just enough that he could tell there were multiple people here—wherever here was.

Shadows appeared in the light before him, human-shaped blurs moving sinuously back and forth. They appeared out of nowhere, grew somewhat solid, then rose or fell to the sky or ground. He had no sense of equilibrium or space and couldn't tell what was up or down, nor was he sure it made a difference.

"…ooh…ow…uh…"

A voice spoke, only the vowels audible.

Shadows formed and floated away.

I can't hear you, he tried to say. He wasn't sure if the words came out or not, if he'd just thought them or spoken them aloud. Nothing seemed quite fully formed here, like a half-imagined dream, making him wonder if he had any form himself. He couldn't see or feel his hands. It made him anxious.

Maybe it's a dream. Some kinda death dream. Maybe this the last thing you see before you slip away. First it strips away your body, then it strips away your mind.

He moved toward the shadows. The ones forming and fluttering upward—he could differentiate up from down now—remained fuzzy and indistinct but as he neared one form solidified. His heart swelled when he recognized her.

Shawna sat on the edge of a well that was barely distinguishable from the rest of the environment, made of the same glowing white as everything but herself and the shadows. She held a hand over the edge, the tips of her fingers lightly stirring the luminescent waters within.

Le Mon watched as a shadow formed in a reflection on the milky surface and rose slowly from the water like a drop in reverse, blurry and indistinct. For some reason it made him think of the sink in their old apartment, with the faucet that would never stop dripping, no matter what they'd tried to fix it.

"Shawna…" he said. The word came out as a choked sob he could tell he'd spoken aloud, because she turned from the shadow creature that had emerged from the well and looked at him.

"You found us," she said, smiling beatifically as she reached out a hand toward him.

Le Mon faltered, knowing he couldn't hold out a hand without a body of his own, but when she approached him, languidly crossing the white expanse, and stood in front of him with that slightly crooked, dimpled smile he'd fallen in love with, he felt her hand grasp his own, he'd felt the warmth in her skin, and for the first time in over a decade he felt whole again.

He felt home.

Revolt(ing)

NEVAEH WAS EXHAUSTED. Soon she would sleep, but for now there were people to corral, doubts to assuage and bargains to be struck. Everyone in camp knew all too well the consequences of what they were about to do. Many had been shot at with rubber bullets, pepper-sprayed, hosed with freezing-cold jets of water, shouted at, intimidated, pushed back by throngs of men with riot shields and batons. Nevaeh was a teen in the '60s. Her parents had been diehard revolutionists, until their anti-establishment sentiments were adopted by the establishment to sell deodorant and diet soda.

"We're all here for the same reason," she reminded a group of men and women closer to her age than most of the other Gurpies. "We want ethereals to benefit from the same rights and freedoms we all benefit from."

"I don't feel all that free right now," said a woman who seemed to feel protected and free enough to apply a liberal amount of blue eyeshadow this morning to each of her heavy eyelids.

"Well, that's just it. It's all relative, isn't it? We may be watched over by military goons at the moment, but we're not the ones being hunted down and erased."

The woman seemed to agree with a half-nod, half-shake of her head.

"So what do you need us to do?" said her husband, who had an arm draped over the woman's shoulder, a thin, crooked joint held limply in that hand, flittering fragrant smoke. He wore a Led Zeppelin T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and a motorcycle club vest over that. The patch on his lapel said PALE RIDERS M.C. On the back was a skeletal biker riding a skeleton horse.

"March with us," Nevaeh said. "Stand up to those military goons and tell them, This is not right."

The Pale Rider looked at his wife. They nodded at each other. "You can count on us," the woman with blue eyeshadow said. The others in the group agreed.

"Namaste," Nevaeh said, bowing slightly with her hands together.

"Yeah, sure, lady," the husband said, and took a pull off his joint.

Only a few more tents and trailers left to visit now, and then they would do what they'd come here to: they would speak for the voiceless and fight for those who—mostly, it still seemed—couldn't fight for themselves. A nonviolent protest to distract from the real objective. Nevaeh didn't like guns as a general rule, but she was aware that Drift might be forced to use his, if only as a prop.

In less than an hour, the Army was scheduled to start their sonic weapon, according to Drift. Nevaeh and the others would rally the protestors toward the perimeter, on the far side of Ghostland. With Dharma's blessing, Drift and Delilah would break the sequence at a second location and prevent those goons from doing any further harm to ethereals today.

* * *

The protest started well enough. By Nevaeh's unofficial count there were over seventy Gurpies trudging across the field toward Ghostland. Stragglers joined them as they reached the outbuildings on the far side of the high wall, where the Recurrence Field building was a blackened husk. By the time they reached the southern edge of the generously named Bucklebee Woods—two acres of conifers and scrub brush, at most—the group had expanded to one-hundred or more. They chanted as they marched through the trees, following the wide path along the wall, one massive voice by the time they reached the north side of the woods, where the first soldier came into view.

The first soldier was joined by four more as they approached, Nevaeh in the lead. The highest-ranking among them spoke into the radio on his uniform. They weren't close enough for her to hear what the soldier said, nor what was said back to him. Even if they were, their chants—Who are we? Ghosts Are People Too! What do we want? The rights that ghosts are due!—were far too loud.

The soldier gestured to the other men. They gripped their weapons in both hands as the protestors approached the massive speaker on its tripod stand. The next pole was fifty to a hundred feet to the southeast. Drift and Delilah would be four or five poles further down the line.

"This is a secured military area!" the higher-ranking soldier shouted, raising a hand palm-out to stop them. His shout barely penetrated the wall of voices opposing him. "Please return to your camp!"

Nevaeh turned to the others, raising the megaphone to her lips. The protestors watched her, awaiting word, a sea of faces with one voice. One mind. They would not waver. "SHUT IT DOWN!" she cried.

"SHUT IT DOWN!" they chanted.

They repeated the chant several times. The soldiers shifted anxiously, awaiting orders while the high-ranker spoke into the radio. Nevaeh read the soldier's lips: Yes, sir. Then he turned to the others and tapped his right ear.

The soldiers grabbed protective earmuffs from their belts and put them on, as if preparing themselves for a mortar attack. Nevaeh shouted "SHUT IT DOWN!" and the protestors repeated her cry, but now the soldiers couldn't hear them. They circled the tripod, weapons held at their waist, aimed at the crowd.

The sonic blast began as a low, almost imperceptible hum vibrating in the ground beneath her feet, and soon the speaker and pole themselves were jittering. Nevaeh's limbs went loose and the megaphone dropped from her fingers. She covered her ears but it wouldn't keep the sound out. Cries arose from the crowd, not chants any longer but panicked shouts, pained howls. She turned to them, dropping to her knees, feeling the cold, hardpacked earth in her arthritic knees through her loose corduroys.

The crowd fell to their hands and knees, sank to their butts in the dirt. Nevaeh's bowels felt loose. Her friends and colleagues were vomiting, tears streaming down cheeks, coughing and choking. It reminded her of the Occupy Wall Street protest when the police had pepper-sprayed the crowd.

They were too close to the sound. They had to fall back, but it was hard enough to get to her feet.

Movement from above her caught her eye. Orbs of multicolored light crisscrossed the sky not too far above their heads. As the sound persisted the orbs winked out like dying embers, one after another, the weakest of the ethereals succumbing first.

How much more could the liberated ethereals at the Temple withstand before they blinked out themselves?

Nothing had gone according to plan. She hoped Delilah and Drift would fare better three poles further down the gentle sloping hill on the other side of the woods.

* * *

Drift, Delilah and a townie kid named Billy Turner watched the soldiers from the cover of a copse of Christmas trees at the southeast edge of Bucklebee Woods. They'd split off from the main group closer to camp, running off as the straw straightened, less disturbed by the Gurpie campers, into the woods. Nobody had seen them, and as far as Drift knew, they were still undetected.

He would've liked to have had Johnny Plain Feather at his side. Plain Feather was experienced, one of a few older veterans at the Gurpie camp. He'd grown up during the tail-end of the Vietnam War but he'd been in Panama during the invasion and Iraq for Desert Storm. Shrapnel in his leg from a roadside bomb had gotten him sent home with a limp. Johnny knew his way around a weapon and probably had one or two of his own. But Johnny and Stacy had taken off on Wednesday, shortly after the explosion, so he was stuck with Billy, a former high school football star and Junior ROTC cadet, and Delilah, who'd grown up around guns because she'd lived on a farm and had to learn to shoot to protect their chickens. She'd gone vegan in her teens and left home shortly after, but even though she'd hated having to shoot animals, she still enjoyed the rush of firing guns. She and Drift had met on the Kismet app and their first date had been at a shooting range in Fort Worth, Texas.

Between the three of them they had Drift's Desert Eagle—which Billy had called a "sweet Deagle" when Drift showed it to him, to which Drift had said only gamer kids called them that—the Winchester .20-.20 Delilah carried, borrowed from a skinny guy with long gray hair who smelled like clove cigarettes, and the unregistered, homemade Glock 9mm whose owner had unironically called it his "ghost gun." Billy held this in his left hand because his right arm—which had been his throwing arm when he was all-star quarterback for the Duck Falls Widgeons—had been irreparably crushed at Ghostland. He wore a bionic prosthetic that was strong but not quite dexterous enough to handle a pistol. Still, he was a good shot, and he wasn't the type of kid to take no for an answer.

"What are we waiting for?" Billy whispered. The tall, blond-haired kid kept sticking his bony ass up in the air and Drift kept pushing him back down. He wasn't very good at maintaining cover.

"We're following the plan, Junior," Drift said, as in Junior ROTC. "Do you hear any protest chants yet?"

Billy cocked an ear. As he did, the first cry sounded, Nevaeh herself shouting "WHO ARE WE?" through the megaphone, although her voice and the protestors answering her cry were much quieter from the distance. A grin spread across the kid's pimply face.

"Okay then, wise guy," Drift said, and Delilah covered a smirk. "Now we wait to see if these grunts head for the sound of commotion or if they've been ordered to stand their ground. If they stick, we might have to get serious."

Billy nodded, though it was clear from the slump of his shoulders which option he preferred. He wanted to play grown-up soldier. He might get a chance, at that. The chanting continued up the low slanting hill. The two soldiers still made no move to join their brothers.

Drift gestured for Billy to move up the hill. The boy ran in a crouch, the crunch of his boots in the underbrush audible but quieter by the step. They were far enough the soldiers wouldn't hear over the swish of branches in the gentle breeze.

He turned to Delilah. "Looks like they ain't movin. You ready to rock n' roll, sugar?"

Delilah sighed. "I don't wanna shoot anyone."

"Neither do I. But they might force our hands and if they do, I have to know you'll take the shot."

Her eyes narrowed as she watched the soldiers. She nodded. "I'll do it for you."

"If the kid gets into trouble—"

"For him too, if I have to."

Drift nodded. He slipped a hand into her ginger dreadlocks below the kerchief tied around her head, drew her forward and kissed her, enveloped in the comforting smell of patchouli.

"I fuckin love you," he said, smiling.

She smiled back. "I fucking love you, too."

Then she turned and headed down the slope. Drift watched her butt sway in her camo cargos until she was out of sight, then popped in his foam ear plugs. He stood, unzipped his fly and turned away from the soldiers. His bladder was uncooperative, but after a moment it got over the stage fright and let loose a steaming torrent into the cold, hardpacked soil. The fart was unintentional but either it or his deliberately loud sigh did its job in alerting the soldiers.

"Hey!" one of them said, his voice muffled by the plugs in Drift's ears. "You're not supposed to be here!"

Drift held up his free hand. The other held the Desert Eagle perpendicular to the freehand stream of urine. "Gimme a sec, pal! Just drainin the lizard."

Boots thundered behind him. Weapons clattered.

"Turn around, now!" A woman's voice this time.

"Suits me," Drift said. He turned, still in midstream, swinging the pistol behind his back. G.I. Joe and Jane, the same pair of National Guard grunts who'd come through camp the night before and murdered the innocent ethereal girl, both raised their weapons while lowering their eyes to his junk, intentionally or not.

Drift's bladder clenched and the stream dribbled on his boots. "Whatsamatter? You never seen a guy takin a leak before?"

The woman scowled, eyes up. "Zip it up, asshole!"

"Both hands up front!" the guy said.

"Oh-kay." Drift shrugged.

"Drop your guns!"

The kid was early. The soldiers looked up the hill, where Billy stood with the Glock, trained on them. They turned their rifles on him.

"Don't," Drift said, aiming the Desert Eagle.

"Put 'em down!" Delilah shouted from twenty feet to their right, stepping out of the trees.

Every sound was muffled but the thrum of Drift's heart. If the soldiers didn't drop their weapons in two seconds, he'd shoot G.I. Jane. G.I. Joe looked like the protective type.

Jane lowered hers first with a groaned, "Fuck me…"

Joe followed suit.

"All right, hands on your heads," Drift said. Delilah and Billy closed in to flank the grunts. "And down on your knees."

"You're fuckin dead," G.I. Joe said as the two soldiers raised their hands behind their heads and eased down to their knees.

"That's fake news," Drift said. He stood ten feet from them now, close enough to put a bullet in their brains if they made a move, far enough away that they couldn't surprise him with a leg grab or a kick. Delilah and Junior closed in on the sides.

"You can zip up now, hon."

Drift had forgotten he was still hanging out in the open. He held on to the weapon in one hand and tucked himself back into his boxers with the other. "Thanks, sugar."

"What d'you guys want, huh?" G.I. Joe practically whined.

Drift looked at his watch. 11:02. It should have started already. A brief squall of static came over their shoulder radios. "Squadron, sound up," a commanding voice said.

The soldiers shared an anxious look.

Here it comes, Drift thought.

Barely five seconds passed before Jane dropped a hand to her side.

"Put your goddamn hands up!"

She reluctantly obliged, with another anxious look at her comrade.

Before any of them could make a move, the ground beneath their feet began to tremble and the trees shook. With the earplugs in, Drift didn't notice the sound at first, but the soldiers started groaning and then he felt it like a punch in his guts, and he saw the speaker stand vibrating against the clear sky like a tetherball pole after a good spike.

He'd expected to feel uncomfortable so close to the source of the sound. They'd gotten a small taste of it last night by the fire with these same soldiers' sonic sidearms. He'd felt an inexplicable sadness and nearly broken down in tears. Now it was more like a pain that was threatening to burst his insides. The kid had already puked down his Hawaiian shirt and fallen to his knees. Delilah held the rifle shakily, her face twisted in pain.

The soldiers reached for something on their belts.

"Put up your hands!" Drift shouted, but his voice was swallowed by the steady drone from the speaker. Jane slipped a pair of protective earmuffs over her helmet. Joe reached for his and fumbled, dropping them in the carpet of pine needles. He fell forward, scrabbling for them.

Drift's hands shook, still gripping the pistol.

Jane grabbed her rifle.

A shot rang out, barely audible over the sound. Drift was too debilitated to flinch. G.I. Jane's right cheek tore open, blood and teeth spraying. She fell forward. Joe grabbed his earmuffs. Drift steadied the Desert Eagle and put one bullet in the soldier's chest. The other went wild and pinged off the metal pole. The soldier fell backwards on the ground.

"Jesus!" the kid said, still on his knees.

Drift staggered forward. He puked between his boots, wiped his lips and moved two more steps. Delilah grabbed his shoulder to steady herself. Her eyes were bulging from their sockets. Her freckled face looked almost green, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"She was gonna shoot you!" she cried.

Drift grasped her around the waist, keeping her steady while using her to hold himself upright. "I know! Let's just get the cable cut!"

Billy was out of commission, rolling on the ground, clutching his stomach and moaning, "I shit myself! Make it stop!"

Drift and Delilah staggered and stumbled forward. Even with the earplugs and his hands pressed over them, the Desert Eagle hard against his cheekbone, the sound penetrated every orifice, every bone. His limbs felt like melting wax. Moving was like running in swampy water, sluggish, the ground beneath his feet feeling almost tacky, dragging him down.

Movement caught his eye. G.I. Jane—this close he could read the name CAESAR on her lapel—had rolled over, her jaw obliterated, dripping gore onto the forest floor. She was armed.

Reluctantly, wary of the sound, Drift lowered his right hand from his ear, swinging the pistol toward her. Despite the injury she was more focused, the sound unable to penetrate her earmuffs. She fired her sidearm, an Army-issue SIG Sauer 9mm, the pop! barely audible, and the slug caught Drift in the clavicle, whipping him around. He landed on his back, the wind propelled out of his lungs.

Momentarily stunned, he called out for Delilah. But he was too late. The second shot struck her in the chest, the third in the gut. She jerked forward and fell backwards over her calves, sprawling over the cable.

He screamed her name, his voice muffled in his own ears, and rose at the waist, firing indiscriminately. The first shot threw G.I. Jane back, the second hit her in the already obliterated jaw. The third and fourth struck her hip and ribcage. The fifth and sixth he put into G.I. Joe for good measure. When the clip was empty he fell to his side, whimpering, dragging himself in the dirt and pine needles toward the dead soldiers.

"Delilah!"

If she said anything in reply he couldn't hear it over the driving, relentless sound. The sound was everywhere. It was infinite.

He grabbed G.I. Joe's jacket and dragged the dead man over. His trembling fingers scrabbled at the earmuffs and he managed to pull them off. One of his shots had chipped the paint on the left earmuff and caught the soldier in the temple. Blood oozed out as Drift put them over his own ears.

The sound ceased. He had to look up at the pole to see if it was still being emitted. The pole trembled and pebbles rolled and bounced in the dirt and pine needles. He felt almost instantly better. Not one-hundred percent—his limbs still trembled and his guts still felt like a wrung-out sponge—but close enough to get to his feet.

He dropped down at Delilah's side and turned her over as gently as he could. She was breathing shallowly, dark blood spilling from her lips. Her eyes rolled up to take him in. The corners of her mouth trembled, forming a weak smile. She spoke his name, his given name—Tony—but he couldn't hear her.

He brushed her dreadlocks out of her face and kissed her forehead, the salt of her sweat on his lips. She reached up and touched his hand. He took her hand in his. She hitched a ragged breath. Blood poured from the wound between her breasts, the stain spreading across her shirt.

He read her lips: Finish this.

She nodded.

"I will," he said. He kissed her knuckles.

Delilah's gaze drifted toward the sky. For a moment he was sure she was gone, that her last breath had truly been the last—but then her eyes snapped toward him, wide with fear.

Something slammed into him so hard he was thrown into the air, his hands tearing free from Delilah's. He landed in the dirt and rolled, his back smashing up against the large, smooth bedrock, the breath knocked out of him for the second time in a matter of minutes. He lay facing the pole, outside the perimeter. Delilah lay among the dead on the inside. A cloud of black smoke hovered over her. It seemed almost to be looking at her, a bulbous point moving back and forth near her face as it roiled and undulated.

"Leave her alone!" he shouted as loud as he could manage, the pain in his ribs telling him they were likely broken.

The probing end of the black cloud jerked upward. Even from a distance Drift could see it had the shape of a featureless face. A face made of darkness, an abyss peering directly into his soul.

It shot toward him in an instant, hovering above the carpeted ground, churning and jerking spasmodically, as if there were several entities within the cloud fighting to escape. It stopped just shy of his face, lingering over him. This close, he didn't dare look at it. He turned away, facing Delilah. She'd had to fight so hard for everything she had in life. Now she was dead. Gone. Nothing left but a husk of meat and bone. He knew that death wasn't the end, but it brought him no comfort.

A deep cold had enveloped him below the waist. For a moment he was sure the crash against the rock had injured him far worse than he'd thought, that his legs were numb from a spinal injury he hadn't felt. When he looked down, he saw that the black cloud held him in a chilling embrace. It gazed at him without eyes, but Drift was sure it was studying him, savoring his last moments.

Billy Turner came from out of nowhere, running at him from the side with a thick tree branch grasped in both hands. He swung the branch and a black tendril shot out from the cloud, grabbing it between his clenched fists. The boy fought for the branch, his eyes wide with fear, the tendons in his neck pulled taut. The cloud wrenched it from his hands and he stood there a moment, looking at his empty hands with almost comical horror, before the tendril swung the branch and it struck him on the side of the head. He dropped like a sack of KP potatoes.

During all of this, Drift hadn't realized the smoke had crept around his arms and chest, smothering him. He felt the bones in his feet snap and looked down to see he was almost entirely enveloped. The pain might have been excruciating if not for the somewhat anesthetic cold. He was only vaguely aware of his toes and ankles popping out of joint, then his knees, then his hip sockets. The featureless face never once turned away from him, and finally Drift dared to look up, meeting its eyeless gaze.

"What… are you?"

It broke him. His spine shattered but he felt no pain, just a wrongness in his bones. His ribs splintered but he didn't moan or cry out. He'd forgotten all about the bullet wound in his clavicle, still weeping blood.

Eventually, the darkness swallowed Drift whole. His eyes remained open as the last of his life drifted away, and the Swarm left his body behind.

Sound Minds

OLLIE HEDGEWOOD APPROACHED the command post and was greeted—rather unkindly, he felt—by two military men with their rifles raised. He flashed the badge Zaydan had given him and the men scanned it, then stepped to one side, allowing him passage.

He found the general himself in his perch above the command post. As he climbed the ladder his mind began to wander to the disasters he'd witnessed over the past three days, the brunt of the blame falling on his own shoulders. He should have had more security on the Recurrence Field—a Hedgewood team, not the local yokels they'd hired. Already his team had determined foul play: C4 explosive residue was found on several remaining chunks of metal and machinery. Someone had deliberately destroyed it, and he had a solid theory on who it had been.

Then in the lab, the incident with the Laramie boy. TANDY had worked wonderfully, exactly as she had in each of their previous experiments. However, before the boy could reveal Garrote's whereabouts something had breached the facility, causing hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of damage and mass casualties.

Covering up the incident would prove challenging. The scientists, lab assistants and others who worked in the labs were all live-in employees, under strict NDAs. Many of them could disappear without causing much of a stir. They'd been chosen as much for their expertise as for their willingness to cut ties with the outside world. Weekly phone calls might be missed, an email here and there, and not much more. But there were outsourced workers from the surrounding area who'd be missed as early as this evening. Janitorial staff and maintenance workers. Even lab technicians. No amount of spin would erase their loss.

Aside from all of that, it had taken much longer to get the infrasound running than they'd projected. Snags had popped up every step of the way: cable and personnel shortage, units attacked by rogue ethereals, mechanical errors. It was a wonder they'd gotten it running at all.

Why do these things always happen to me? Ollie thought glumly as he reached for the last rung on the ladder. A calloused hand reached out from above and he took it. He could smell the general's English Leather before he saw the man himself. While Ollie brushed dirt off of his baby blue suit, General Zaydan wiped his hand on his uniform. The man was accommodating but fastidious in nature. Ollie was surprised he didn't carry a small bottle of Purell for such moments.

"What's the good word, Ollie?" Zaydan shouted at him over the infrasound. They both wore noise-canceling earmuffs. For all the trouble it had been, the infrasonic fence was doing its job quite well.

"Is cock-up one word, or two?" Ollie asked.

"No word on your bogeyman then?"

"Nothing. He's a ghost." The wealthy man scowled, and added, "Literally."

"That's a shame." The general nodded toward town. "My men, if he's out there, they'll find him and neutralize him."

"I doubt he'll make it so easy."

Zaydan rubbed the scar on the back of his head in thought, ruffling the dark, bristly hairs around it. The general had allegedly taken a bullet to the skull in Afghanistan some years ago. The surgeon had been able to remove most of it, but it had left him with aphasia for several months and a metal plate in his skull. He'd returned to duty a year later, tougher than ever.

"Your fence works like a charm," he said.

"Yes," Ollie replied. He refused to celebrate another of his many failures. If the TANDY had worked as well as his scientists had projected, General Zaydan wouldn't need to send his thugs out into the streets to round up stragglers. There shouldn't have been any dead energy left in that town to "neutralize," as Zaydan put it… unless the Petralia woman had taken his advice.

"It's hyphenated," Zaydan said, glowering at him.

"Beg pardon?"

"Cock-up. I believe it's hyphenated."

"Ah," Ollie said.

A squawk came over the coms. "General Zaydan, sir," Colonel Martin said.

"Go ahead, Colonel," Zaydan barked back.

"Sir, some 'journalist' snuck a drone camera into the quarantine zone," Martin said, with obvious disdain for the media. "My men tried to shoot it down but whoever was operating it was good. It's lost."

"Find the operator and confiscate the footage."

"General, there are a dozen news vans out there, not to mention citizen journalists."

General Zaydan peered down over the railing. Ollie followed his gaze. A massive crowd had formed just outside the command post over the past two days. Several remote news vans, white with satellites mounted on their roofs, stood out among the gatherers.

"Get it done, Colonel! Over and out." Zaydan pulled down his microphone, grimacing. "Ever since Vietnam we've been under a microscope at home and abroad. It's an absolute nightmare."

Ollie knew all about nightmares. He'd had them every night since he was a boy, since the summer he'd lived at his ancestral home in Seattle. The very house that lay in pieces in a pit at the northeast edge of the park.

"A witch hunt is what it is," the general went on.

"Indeed," Ollie said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was a patient man but could find no further use for Zaydan's self-pity. "I'll be in my car."

The general saluted him. "We'll find your bogeyman, Oliver. Mark my words. This'll all be over in an hour. Two, tops."

Ollie wasn't quite so optimistic. After all that had happened, despite the weaponry and trained personnel he'd amassed against a man who was already dead, Ollie began to wonder if Garrote hadn't been one step ahead of them from the very beginning.

* * *

The boy came running through the crowd, weaving his way between chanting bodies. They had managed to fall back after the first few minutes of infrasound, and Nevaeh and the others had mostly recovered since. They were disheveled, tear-streaked and vomit-spattered but still strong, still fighting. Nevaeh spotted blood on Billy Turner's face as he neared. She lowered the megaphone. The chant continued without her.

"What happened, Billy?"

"They're dead!" he cried, lifting one side of the earmuffs he'd likely stolen from one of the soldiers. Tears cut trails through the blood on his cheeks. He wiped them away with his living arm, streaking the blood. "Delilah and Drift. Something got him… some kind of black smoke…"

Nevaeh put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"I'm…" He looked off, his gaze unfocused. "I'm not good, Nevaeh."

She nodded, gently squeezing his shoulder. "Get back to camp. There's tea in a mason jar on my kitchen counter. The door's open. Brew two heaping spoonfuls and have a lie down."

The boy nodded. She'd known Drift had been wrong to include him. Billy was one of the most capable and eager people in the camp, but he was still only a boy. No one his age should see what he had. The CBD in her weed tea would calm him, fuzzy the edges of his post-traumatic stress. After that, if they lived through this day, time and meditation would heal his wounds.

The boy nodded and left. She raised the megaphone to her lips but found she no longer had the energy to speak. Billy's news had knocked the wind out of her sails. How many more innocent people had to die before these monsters would leave them in peace? How many more ethereals did they intend to "neutralize"?

Her head swam and she staggered, dropping again to her knees. The world went gray. She felt herself caught under the shoulders and lifted to her feet. They moved her and sat her down in the stiff grass.

"Are you all right, Nevaeh?" A woman's voice.

"Give her some water." A man this time. She recognized their voices but couldn't place them.

Cool metal touched her dry lips. She hadn't realized how parched she was until the cold water hit the back of her throat, and she choked and spat it up. A hand rubbed her back in concentric circles.

"Give her some space," the man grunted.

Nevaeh got hold of her coughing. "I'm fine," she said. "I'll be fine."

The world swam back into focus. The protestors chanting, the army men holding them back. The man hunkered down beside her was the Pale Rider she'd spoken to that morning. The woman was his girlfriend or wife or "old lady," as he likely called her, the woman with the heavy blue eyeshadow. She was the one rubbing Nevaeh's back.

Nevaeh took the thermos from the man and drank. The cold water invigorated her. She breathed deeply the pine smell of the woods and the biker's sandalwood cologne, his girlfriend's heady perfume. The infrasound still permeated everything but she thought she could bear it now. They helped her to stand.

She looked around. "Where's my megaphone?"

The woman picked it up, wiped dirt and pine needles from it and handed it back. Nevaeh thanked her and brought it to her lips. "SHUT IT DOWN!"

The Pale Rider and his wife joined in with the others, pumping their fists. "SHUT IT DOWN!"

The soldiers were more than a dozen strong now, in a defensive stance with their batons and riot shields. Nevaeh didn't think they would attack if her side remained civil. As much as she wanted the infrasound stopped, she desired peace even more. She had counseled the protestors not to act out of line. Not to throw rocks or swing sticks or make their group an easy target. If these goons wanted a fight, they would have to be the first to strike. And with multiple phone cameras directed at the line, it would be difficult to shift the blame to the good guys.

As she thought this, something sailed over her head.

No, she thought.

The crack of the rock against one of the soldier's shields was loud enough to pierce the infrasound. The soldiers responded as a single unit, raising their batons, trudging toward the protestors.

"DON'T ENGAGE!" Nevaeh shouted into the megaphone. "FALL BACK!"

An elbow struck her. Someone shouldered her to the side. The ranks met in the middle, protestors shouting, screaming, soldiers pushing, striking with their batons. For the most part her people remained peaceful, despite the odds stacked against them. Only a few picked up rocks, bottles, anything at their disposal and hurled them at the soldiers. A bottle shattered against a shield. The pieces flew back like shrapnel and slashed the face of a young woman with neon-green hair. The soldier pushed her aside with his shield, callous to her injuries.

The soldiers pressed forward, pushing them back.

All was lost.

"Let them go!" a woman cried over the sounds of violence.

"LET THEM GO!" a mass of voices on the opposite side of the skirmish responded.

Nevaeh got to her feet. Dozens of people had met them on the other side of the barricade. Some held cell phones up to the clash. Others had professional cameras. News reporters. Several in the crowd wore black T-shirts with GRP2 printed on them in white block letters. It looked like unofficial merch, not the logos she'd made, but Nevaeh could have kissed them all regardless.

The soldiers stopped fighting and fell back. The protestors on Nevaeh's side took up their chant.

"SHUT IT DOWN!"

Nevaeh raised the megaphone. "SHUT IT DOWN!" she cried.

Both groups flanking the soldiers responded in kind.

* * *

General Zaydan pounded a fist against his desk, scattering pages of briefings across the map of Duck Falls. His perch rocked with the force of it. Colonel Martin gripped the railing precariously. The man was apparently nervous of heights. "Goddamn it, we were so close, Colonel! Who made the first move?"

Martin nodded. "The protestors, General. My men said one of them threw a rock. But it won't matter. Even if we manage to contain the media, those citizen journalists, that drone—"

"GodDAMNit!"

Zaydan thought quickly. Control had slipped right through his fingers. First the drone camera, then the dead soldiers, and now this. It was a shitshow. An absolute shitshow. And of course, he would shoulder the brunt of the blame. "All right. Shut it down."

"Sir?"

"Have your men shut the goddamn infrasound off!" Zaydan barked. "Now, Colonel!"

The colonel looked like he was biting back a retort.

"Have you got something to say to me?"

"No, sir!"

"Then get moving."

"Yes, sir!"

Martin saluted. Zaydan saluted back. The colonel stepped onto the ladder and descended, out of sight. This operation was over. Dead in the water. They would stay to contain whatever bogies they could within the quarantine zone, but the offensive was finished. Cooler heads, saner heads, had not prevailed today. Once again, the useful idiots had won.

Whatever happened now, the people of Duck Falls would have to fend for themselves.

"May God have mercy on their souls," Zaydan muttered, as the sonic fence fell silent.

Death Trips

FOLLOWING THE END of the infrasound, people all over town reacted with joy and disquiet, every soul from corporeal to ethereal wondering roughly the same thing in the same moment: Is it really over?

Are we safe?

Can we go outside again? See our friends again? Check in on our families?

At the protest, a cheer arose. Nevaeh and the others hugged each other and jumped for joy. Despite the cost, they'd won. Drift and Delilah hadn't died in vain. The people who'd gathered in solidarity over the past three days from elsewhere in Maryland and beyond, joined the protestors with the line of soldiers still separating them. Couples separated by the quarantine reunited. Long-lost relatives met again. Long-distance relationships were rekindled. Friends and family across the political divide began to mend fences.

* * *

A similar cheer arose from the Temple at just about the same time, give or take a few seconds to compensate for the speed of sound. Ben rushed over to Sam, Andy and Lamb, still huddled beneath the stained-glass window of the patron saint of lost causes. St. Jude had smiled upon them today. Their cause was no longer lost, merely temporarily waylaid. It was time to go.

Thea shut off the Recurrence Field to a sigh of relief from nearly everyone in the church.

"This is it," Ben said. "You're all still ready to leave?"

"I don't know about you all, but I've been ready since we got here," Lamb said, holding the back of a pew to stand and shake out her shapely legs.

Ben watched her a moment before realizing Andy likely thought he was ogling her. If he was alive his cheeks would have burned in embarrassment. But Andy was watching her himself with a slight smile. It was easy to see the man worshipped her. Ben turned to see Sam had been watching the three of them with a knowing smirk.

"Don't mind me," she said.

"I'm just gonna check in on Lilian real quick," Ben told them. "Make sure they don't decide to leave the bunker before we get there." He noticed their discomfort. "Don't worry. I'll be right back."

Andy gave him a look.

"Not 'I'll be right back' like in horror movies. Seriously. Two minutes."

With that, Ben winked out.

* * *

Crossing the shallow ditch into Ghostland's front lot, Bram Merritt picked up his stride. With the infrasound gone he was able to concentrate better on the task ahead. He'd need to find somewhere safe enough to transverse, though he knew no place within earshot of Ghostland would be entirely safe. Soon he would no longer have a need for his body. When the Dark Rift opened, the bodiless would be at an advantage.

Tucked away inside Bram's head, Lilian worked on a subconscious level to plan her escape, while talking aloud to her captor, asking him questions about astral projection under the guise of trying to maintain a hold on her fragile consciousness. Bram answered her less and less enthusiastically as they neared their destination. But he would have to let her out of his head again soon.

The moment she saw an opportunity she would make a break for it.

* * *

At Ben's house, ten feet below ground, Lilian's body lay peacefully, her breath slow and steady, while Blake and the others watched over her. Once again Blake tilted the bottle of Windex below her nose as she inhaled. He took it away quickly, not wanting her to breathe in too much. She was already unconscious. He didn't need her to get high as well.

She didn't wake.

"It's been too long," he said. "We need a doctor."

Maddie picked up the landline phone, depressing the switch several times. "Phones are still out."

"I'll go," Michael said.

"I'll go with you," Maddie replied.

Blake shook his head. "You should stay with Lilian, Mrs. Roth."

"But I want to help."

"You'll be helping me. I might need you whether she wakes up or not."

"I'll go," Wendy said, holding up a hand.

Michael gave her a look as if to say, Are you sure?

"Blake's right, Maddie should stay with her daughter. And he's the only one of us who might know what to do if she wakes up. Or if something bad happens, God forbid." She nodded toward the hatch. "I'm coming with you."

Michael nodded thoughtfully. "All right, then." He crossed the room to his mother, who sat at the table in the kitchenette, busily working on her crochet. She looked up when he kissed her cheek. "Mom, if Wendy and I don't make it back, I love you very much and hopefully we'll see you again real soon."

She seemed confused. "I love you too, Mikey, dear. Where are you going?"

"On an errand."

"Could you pick me up a bottle of Kaopectate at the pharmacy? I think I've picked up a bug."

Michael smiled softly. "I'll do that." He turned to Wendy. She was lacing up her running shoes.

"Are you wearing those?" Wendy nodded at his work boots.

"My runners are in the foyer."

"You're gonna get welts."

"Well, we can get my runners if you don't mind going into the house."

"You'll be glad we did." She stood. "Are you ready?"

Michael shrugged. He approached the door, gripping the wheel with both hands. "I guess we'll find out."

Wendy gave them all a tight smile. "We'll be back as soon as we can."

"Don't forget the password," Blake said.

"How could we?"

Michael turned the wheel.

* * *

Lilian stopped talking the moment Bram leaped the turnstile, bringing the two of them into the park. It was strange being back here after so long. She felt no nostalgia, only fear. What would happen if Bram died while she was still trapped inside his head? Would she wake up back in her own body or be set adrift, like an abandoned cosmonaut? Or worse: would her own energy be swallowed up by Bram's, a corrupt hybrid of two disparate ethereals?

She still had no idea why he'd brought her here, and he'd never elaborated on why he believed Rex Garrote intended to help ethereals. But at least the awful sound had stopped. Whether that was Garrote's doing or someone else's, she hoped it had been in time to prevent other ethereals from disappearing the way Ben had.

Something's coming, Bram said, speaking to her in his mind. He hurried to the small security station just inside the gates, where she'd watched Leonard—before she'd known his name—bring the guy in the No Fear T-shirt to fill out paperwork for his tiny gun.

The door was open. His eyes adjusted to the dimness as he stepped in and closed the door behind them. There was a desk with two rolling chairs and a wall of monitors, though it was much smaller than the monitor wall Lilian had seen at the control room. They were all turned off. The desk had equipment to switch through the feeds and record, a clipboard, an intercom system and a computer. There was a door to a back room but Bram tried the handle and found it locked.

"This is no good," he said.

No good for what?

"To transverse." He opened the door and peered out into the sunshine.

Does that mean you're letting me go?

Bram said nothing for nearly a minute. Then he stepped out of the station. "I'm not letting you go, Lilian. Rex needs you."

But why?

He looked around cautiously, then headed for the Visitor Center, sunshine shimmering on the glass and chrome building. "That's not my business."

He hasn't told you?

"I'm not concerned with the why."

Of course not. Garrote tells you to jump, you say jawohl, mein Führer!

He exhaled sharply through his nostrils. "Mr. G is nothing like Hitler."

Lilian chortled. You know what people said about Hitler, huh? 'He's nothing like King Leopold.' And you know what they said about him? 'He's no Attila the Hun.'

Bram uttered a single laugh.

You think Garrote's a good man, but you'll see. He's just another tin-pot dictator with a god complex.

Bram ignored her, running in a crouch toward the building and up the steps. He pushed when he should have pulled and slammed his shoulder into the glass.

Lilian laughed.

"Shut up in there."

It says 'pull' right on the handle.

"Trying to concentrate on survival at the moment," Bram said. "Hope you don't mind."

Like the security station, the doors were open. He pulled this time and stepped inside. The last time Lilian had been in here it was full of people, so many sounds and voices filling the large space from its tiled floor to its high, vaulted ceilings she'd barely been able to breathe. The air of desertion was palpable.

Bram scanned the defunct displays and dioramas, the once-interactive exhibit labels and the blank monitors that had shown the timelapse completion of the park. Finally, his gaze settled on the two-story Victorian home Lilian had noticed on her first visit but hadn't bothered pointing out to Ben. If she remembered correctly, Legion House was supposed to be an Augmented Reality "ghost-hunting" experience, the so-called "tu-tour-ial" featuring the Ghost Brothers' holograms.

"This might do," Bram said.

He led them through the Spiritualism exhibition, past the Victorian séance display, which merely consisted of a table and chairs in an otherwise empty room with all of the holograms turned off.

As they passed Robert the Doll's exhibit, the poor little sailor monkey slapped its lifeless limbs against the glass case. It startled Bram, who took an anxious step back before peering at the doll.

"Stupid monkey," he said, and continued on.

They moved swiftly through Photographic Hoaxes. Bram had no interest in any of it, and Lilian had seen it all before. He turned before the Mediums & Skeptics displays and headed for the house, which dwarfed the other exhibits in the building. Lilian was surprised Ben hadn't mentioned it when they were here together, begging her and Allison to join him.

The familiar rumble of an antique engine arose from somewhere within the exhibits, echoing within the empty building. The last time she'd heard it had been in the Museum of Haunted Vehicles, driving full-speed at the trailer where Detective Beadle had handcuffed serial killer Alex Fischer to the steps. It was the Jazz Age gangster, Joe "Schmo" Russo.

"Someone's in here," Bram said.

For all he'd done, as badly as she wanted to watch the car roll over Bram until he was raspberry jam on the cement floor, she couldn't risk losing herself. She needed to warn him.

You need to move, Bram. NOW.

Bram took the cue and hurried across the aisle to the foot of the steps at Legion House. Tires peeled very nearby. Bram didn't stop to look. He reached the front door and wrenched it open. Only when he was inside, hidden behind the door, did he dare to look out. The antique car was tearing toward them at a clip, black smoke spewing from the muffler. Bram slammed the door and fell back on his ass as the car hit the steps. It struck a porch post and the engine roared, the wheels spinning.

It was practically pitch dark in here, very little of the light from the dim interior of the Visitor Center filtering in through the curtained front windows.

Bram exhaled sharply. "That was a Model-T."

Does the T stand for Terror? she said.

He chuckled nervously and got to his feet, turning to get a better look at their surroundings. His eyes had adjusted somewhat, revealing a midsized foyer with antique-looking furnishings, an end table with flowers in a porcelain vase, a chaise lounge, a footstool, and a few other items. Lilian remembered Legion House from an early episode of Ghost Brothers. It had belonged to Ellen Cavendish, sole heir to the Legion Textile Company. In later years, before it fell into abandon, the house had been used as a brothel.

"We should be safer in here," Bram said.

Cackling laughter reached them from outside. Lilian recalled the phantom bullets Joe Schmo had fired at the crowd.

You better get us out of this hall…

"Why?"

Because he's got a machine gun!

Bram didn't need a second warning. He took to the stairs, bounding up them two at a time as machine gun fire erupted outside. Bullets pummeled the front of the house, spraying glass, splintered wood and clouds of plaster dust, little puffs of stuffing and upholstery, shattered china and fake flower petals. The curtains billowed and the dust settled as the gunfire died down.

At the top of the stairs, Bram said, "Thanks for the warning."

Happy to help, she grumbled.

"You know, if it's any consolation, Rex hasn't singled you out. When he opens the Dark Rift, every single one of us will die together. It's almost poetic, when you think about it."

What kind of psycho finds that comforting?

"Don't you see?" Bram gripped the railing on the second-floor landing, looking down at the remains of the furniture, brightened by pinprick spotlights from the holes in the door and walls. "He's leveling the playing field. We'll all start over at nothing. No more disparities, no more hunger, no more poverty, no religion or war. It's the Grand Unifier."

Okay, Thanos.

"I don't know what that means."

Thanos? From Avengers: Endgame? It literally came out a couple of days after Ghostland opened.

Bram shrugged. "I don't watch a lot of movies."

I guess they didn't give you much TV time in the nuthouse, did they?

"Much as I appreciate your sharp wit," Bram said, opening the door at the top of the stairs and stepping into the hall, "I'd really like to get you out of my head."

Finally, she groaned.

It was even darker in the upstairs hall. Lilian could vaguely make out doors and paintings under unlit light sconces on either side. Bram opened the closest door on the left. She could see the white outline of a pull-handle toilet, a small sink and a clawfoot tub. He moved on to the following door.

What exactly are we looking for?

"A bed," he said. The next door was locked.

You shouldn't have a problem finding a bed in here. This used to be a brothel.

"Then I hope they washed the sheets," he said. The next door opened easily, with a small groan of rusty hinges. Dim light from the window illuminated a four-poster bed with lace curtains, a dressing table with an oval mirror, and a hope chest at the foot of the bed.

Bram stepped in and closed the door behind them. He stopped at the vanity briefly, looking at his silhouette in the mirror—an unsettling moment for Lilian, unable to see her own reflection—before crossing to the bed. He pushed aside one of the curtains and yanked the top sheet out from under the duvet. They returned to the dressing table, where he draped the sheet over the mirror.

"Don't need any unwanted guests, do we?"

Imagoes, she thought.

"Exactly."

He returned to the bed, sat down on the edge and removed his shoes.

Taking a nap?

"I'm going to need quiet for this," he said, laying back against the pillows and closing his eyes.

Why would I cooperate with you?

"Because you want out of my head as much as I want you out."

She shut up.

After a moment, she heard Bram breathing deeply. The inside of his eyelids were a Rorschach of pink and red splotches. As his breathing slowed, Lilian cautiously turned toward the back of his head again, hoping to get another peek at her captor's memories.

The dark murk opened and she saw Bram in a straitjacket again, fighting off hospital orderlies. Watery smoke smothered the image, and another took its place: she was looking at a beautiful woman with dark, piercing eyes, deep brown hair streaked with gold in a horsetail over her shoulder. The woman stared directly at Lilian. Lilian stared back.

A slit opened in the center of the woman's forehead suddenly, revealing itself to be eyelids. The eye staring out was a pure, shimmering black like polished onyx, and Lilian found herself being drawn into it. With a dark flash (a blink, she realized), she was now looking out of the woman's third eye at a much younger Bram. No tattoo on his neck, thicker hair and a bristled jaw and cheeks.

Another flash of dark and the image was pulled away. She was looking out through Bram's eyes again—not in the past but in Legion House. He blinked up at the stucco ceiling through the bed's ornate wooden columns.

"I told you not to look back there," Bram said.

I didn't see anything.

"No? So that wasn't you, looking at me through Evelina's eyes?"

She sensed a softness in his mind for this woman. You loved her, didn't you?

"You saw her. How could I not? Now please, let me focus."

This time when Bram's breathing slowed Lilian didn't interrupt, and she didn't go snooping. She filed away the woman's name and face, committing it to memory.

A plan for escape had begun to shape itself when Bram had looked in the mirror. As soon as she let him go, she'd get to work on it.

* * *

Ben reappeared in his backyard at the foot of the stairs leading down into the bunker. He picked up the baseball bat he'd dropped earlier in the day and banged it against the door.

"Lilian!"

She didn't respond. He slammed the bat against the door again.

"What's the password?" Maddy called behind the door.

"Password?" Ben said aloud, hoping someone would hear him. "I don't know the password. Lilian, are you in there?"

No one said anything.

He struck the bat against the door again.

"Don't answer it," Maddy whispered hoarsely.

"If someone needs help, we can't just leave them out there," Blake said.

"If they needed help, they'd say so! What if it's that thing that killed Hiram?"

Ben ran a hand through his hair. Where was Lilian? Had she gone looking for her dad? If only his own father hadn't lined the bunker with salt, he'd be able to check on them without this secret password nonsense. Then again, if it wasn't salt-lined the Behemoth or the Swarm would have gotten to them by now. They'd likely all be dead.

At least then someone would hear me, he thought.

Having a password was smart, he had to admit, considering possessor ghosts like Dr. Death were likely roaming the streets right now, but he couldn't help but feel the same sort of desperation he had while they searched for the maintenance guy in the sanitarium, hoping to find the hatch code. Nobody could hear him. Lilian must have left.

He winked back to the Temple.

"That was longer than two minutes," Andy said. He and Lamb were wearing keeper suits and ReOss glasses. Sam was the only one who didn't look like she was on a mission to Mars.

"Something's wrong," Ben said. "I think Lilian left the bunker."

Lamb looked anxious. "You mean she's out there by herself?"

"I don't know. All I know is she's not there. We need to find her. We'll have to check her apartment."

Thea followed the four of them to the front of the church, Andy and Lamb's keeper suits making crinkly sounds with every step. Ben turned back as they reached the doors. Everyone in the Temple was absorbed in distributing and donning their own keeper suits, something they should have done days ago, in his opinion, even though he doubted the suits would protect them outside of Ghostland.

"Good luck, Thea."

"We won't need luck. We have destiny on our side."

Ben nodded and said, "Kismet."

"Kismet," Thea repeated, smiling softly.

"See you later," he said. He hoped it would be under good circumstances.

Andy held the door for them and they all headed out into the vestibule. Ben opened the outer doors using telepathy. The others startled.

"Sorry. That was me."

Sam gave him an impressed nod. "You'll have to teach me that one."

He smiled. "I will."

They left the church. The sky had brightened since they'd last been outside, and while the others marveled at the destruction that had befallen this small corner of Duck Falls, Ben descended the steps to the sidewalk. He paused there to read the dedication on the memorial— For Benjamin Laramie, who gave his life to hold the door—once again feeling a deep sense of shame for his part in letting Garrote free. For the destruction it had caused, and the worst yet to come.

"Let's go," he said. "We don't have much—"

A percussive boom cut him off, far louder than the infrasound. Whatever it was it shook the ground, Andy and Lamb stumbling and staggering on the steps, holding their ears, the old wooden church rattling and groaning on the hill. Frightened cries arose from inside.

Ben turned, ready to wink out and check on the Gurpies inside, but what he saw stopped him cold.

"Oh my God," he breathed.

The others followed his gaze, reacting in horror to the sight before them. In the northwest, a pillar of pitch black rose from the horizon to the sky, a roiling darkness as empty and infinite as the void of space evaporating scattered clouds as it spread out across the sky. It looked something like an inverse atomic explosion, Ben thought—and as the thought came to him, he understood exactly what he was seeing.

As they all looked skyward the percussive thump of an invisible shockwave passed through them, riffling Andy and Lamb's hair, stirring the trees and shattering windows in a widening eastward circle. On the wind came the foul stench Ben had smelled during the infrasound experiment, only far worse. At the corner of Kubler and Main, the four-way flashing light swung wildly. The red light facing this end of Kubler winked out.

"What is that?" Lamb gasped, her blue eyes wide with fear, reflecting the blackness in the sky.

"We're too late," Ben said. "Garrote's opened the Dark Rift."

Interlude:

The Last Seance

Seattle—1985

REX GARROTE SAT behind his vintage Remington Noiseless Portable typewriter pounding out the final pages in his latest screenplay, due to the studio in a mere three days. His editor, Artie Best, often told him he'd get a lot more work done on a computer, but Rex preferred the Remington. Many of the greats had written on one: Twain, London, Hemingway, Christie. He reveled in the clatter of keys, the ding of the carriage lever and grind of the platen knob. A typewriter made writing feel and sound more like real work, like a loud, bustling factory of the imagination. Clattering away on delicate little computer keys was for schoolchildren and Silicon Valley dweebs. Let them have it.

He lit a Tareyton and poured another glass of scotch, savoring them while pulling out the page he'd just written and looking it over. Ten or so more and he'd have himself a decent draft. Barring any unforeseen interruptions, he expected to have it done by midnight.

Dinggg-dongggggg!

The beastly doorbell spoiled the flow of his reading. He ignored it, chuckling at his own wit in the last few dialogue blocks he'd written. This movie was going to make audiences scream, make them laugh, make them leave the lights on long after they returned home from the theater. As long as it wasn't doomed to Development Hell, like the others he'd written. Still, each script, even at Guild minimum—much less than he'd received—was a decent payday for a few weeks of labor.

Dinggg-dongggggg!

"The doorbell, the doorbell, the goddamn doorbell. That'll teach me for having the butler killed," Rex joked.

He picked up the lowball glass, stuck the cigarette between his teeth, and got up from behind his desk. He spun the Lennox globe as he passed, patted the Shogun helmet like a friendly dog, and stepped out into the hall, closing the door and locking it behind himself. He'd had it painted black, an homage to the Stones—whose music he'd been listening to a short while ago to get himself into the right mood—but also to his soul.

The office was his sanctuary. He spent most of his time there, when he wasn't eating, on the crapper, or reading in front of the fireplace in the foyer. As the dark heart of his home, it was only fitting that its entrance be black.

Ding-dong-ding-dong-dinggg-dongggggg!

He glanced at his watch as he hurried down the hall, past the bathroom where the tarred and feathered ghost washed himself in the tub—Rex called the gruesome tableau "Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Dead Man in a Tub"—and into the east wing.

"It's goddamn ten o'clock," he muttered. "What kind of sociopath makes house calls after nine?"

Rex ignored the Victorian nanny rocking the dead Hedgewood children in the nursery—"The Hand that Rocks the Casket"—and the Odell family—" Death Imitates Art"—staring out from the master bedroom, where Rex himself slept. His House was filled to the rafters with ghosts, and though it hadn't been printed in the listing—the realtor hadn't even briefly mentioned the many deaths under the old Hedgewood Estate's roofs and gables—it was just how Rex liked it.

He'd bought it for a song several years earlier, paying cash from the movie options on his first two novels, A Roller-Coaster Ride Thru Hell and Manic. The movies themselves had yet to materialize, but the ghosts of the House had revealed themselves to him over the first several months, and promised him all of that and more. Many were the subject of the new novel series he was tinkering with when he wasn't working on this damned script, tentatively titled Ravage House (though Artie Best insisted he call it The House Feeds, and according to his long-suffering agent, "Artie knows best").

Ding-dong-ding-dongggggg!

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Rex grumbled, gripping the railing as he descended the stairs. "Christ on the Ritz."

In the foyer below, a knot popped in the fireplace. He'd forgotten he'd lit a fire after supper and the damn thing nearly made him jump out of his skin.

Ghosts I'm used to. Fire makes me shit myself.

The bells rang once more.

"If you push that bell one more time, I'll bite off your goddamn finger!" he called.

The doorbell remained silent. He drew the bolt and opened the door just far enough to peer out. Lamplight illuminated the porch and gravel drive, curving away on a slope toward the road. The porch appeared empty. The trees surrounding the house stood black and motionless against the midnight blue sky.

"For fuck's—" He began to close the door.

"Please don't be so hasty, my dear sir," a small, withered voice said from behind the door. An elderly woman appeared in the doorway, looking in. Her face was sallow and pale, powdered and rouged beneath a black lace veil. She wore a black dress with a high collar, the sort of thing widows wore to their husband's funerals in the nineteenth century.

"Love the getup," Rex said. "Très chic. Everything old is new again, I guess."

"Mr. Garrote," the woman said, "my name is Speer. Missus Speer. I'm a medium."

He looked her over. "I'm a large, myself. Now that we've compared dress sizes, what can I do for you?"

The old woman chuckled. "Were you aware this… home of yours… is quite haunted?"

Rex squinted, smoke from the cigarette between his lips making his eyes burn. "You don't say."

The old woman grinned. "May I come in?"

He peered back into the house. "I'd prefer you didn't. I'm on a tight deadline—"

"I really must insist, my dear sir. I must come inside and it must be tonight."

Rex chuckled, annoyed but curious. "Well then, you must stand back so I can unlatch the door."

Mrs. Speer stepped back. He closed the door, briefly considered leaving her out there, then drew the latch, opening it wide enough for the woman to enter. She swept in immediately as if she owned the place, heading straight for the Persian rug close to the fire.

"Make yourself at home, I guess," he said, closing and locking the door.

"Quite a chill in the air tonight," Mrs. Speer said, warming herself by the waning fire. "Straight through to the bones."

Rex approached her. He sat in his giltwood Louis XV reading chair, closest the fire, crossed his legs at the knee and sipped his scotch. "So," he said, tapping his cigarette in the overstuffed ashtray, a large dish made from jade, shaped like a dragon's claw. "You're a psychic, correct?"

Her lips curled in a secretive smile. "Indeed. I've been called to this house before. Many, many times."

"And you had to return tonight. You had to disturb me in the middle of my writing. I suppose you'll be kind enough to tell me why at some point?"

"I'd expected a call, Mr. Garrote. I've been awaiting your call. But you never did. Surely you must have seen things in this house that would cause a man to question his sanity. Surely you've seen the spirits."

"Seen them. Bought the T-shirt."

Mrs. Speer seemed confused.

"It's an expression. You're not from around here, are you? Anyway, if you're here about the ghosts, there's no need. I'm good."

"You're… good?"

"I'm good. We've made a sort of Faustian bargain, you could say. They leave me be and in exchange I tell their tales. With a little… creative license, let's say." He grinned darkly. "To protect the innocent."

"A…" She blinked rapidly. "I beg your pardon?"

"No need to beg. The ghosts and I, we hang out. We chill, as the kids say." The ash fell off his cigarette. He wiped it from his cardigan, leaving a gray smudge. "At least I think they do. The kids, I mean. Not the ghosts. I know what they say."

"Mr. Garrote—"

"Mrs. Speer." He sipped his scotch, amused by her anxiousness. "Now… why did you disturb me?"

She crossed to him, clasping her withered, almost birdlike hands together. "We must perform a séance. Tonight. In your library."

"I have no interest in that. You see, Mrs. Speer, I'm afraid I just don't believe in psychics."

The old woman uttered a nervous laugh. The laugh turned into a fit of it. "Excuse me," she said once she'd calmed. "You don't believe in psychics, yet you live among spirits. You've made a—what did you call it? A bargain with them."

Rex pursed his lips. "I don't see your point."

"My dear sir, psychic phenomena arises from the very same place as the spirits in your home. They are inexorably intertwined. One cannot exist without the other."

Rex blinked at her, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. "And just what place is that, exactly?"

"It is known by many names in many cultures. I call it the Dark Rift."

Rex bellowed laughter.

The old woman frowned, rearing back from him with an aggrieved look. "What, might I ask, do you find so humorous?" she asked once he'd settled.

"I'm sorry, it just sounds like something I would have made up." He shrugged and stood, smoothing out the creases in his slacks. Then he gestured toward the library. "Since you've apparently been here many times before, why don't you lead the way?"

* * *

"Tell me… how do you know so much about my house?"

Mrs. Speer gave him a knowing smile, removing the objects from her satchel: candles, sage, an extension cord, and finally, a plasma globe.

Rex grinned. "Any sea monkeys in there? Grow monsters and black snakes?"

She gave him an inquisitive look as she plugged in the globe. It sparked to life, pink and blue lighting buzzing against the glass. "As I said, I've been here many times throughout the years. The first time I crossed the threshold of this house it was still being fashioned by the late Oliver Hedgewood in 1901, shortly after the passing of his first wife and children. I was sixty-three years old at the time."

Rex blinked at her. "That was eighty-four years ago."

"Indeed."

He tried to count back, but his mind was addled by the scotch. Math had never been his strong suit, anyhow.

Mrs. Speer smiled patiently. "I am one-hundred and forty-seven years old, my dear sir."

"Really? You don't look a day over one-hundred."

Mrs. Speer chuckled softly.

"So how does one stay so sprightly at your, dare I say, stately age?"

"I carry an acorn in my pocket," the ancient woman said with a faint smile. An old superstition, Rex knew, for good luck and longevity. "Now please, if you would take my hands so we may begin."

No harm in playing along, Rex thought. He'd already let her come this far. To kick the old bat out on her ass now would be sadistic. Not that he didn't delight in such antics, if only for his own amusement. But he had to admit he was curious about what she had to show him.

He took her hands, certain he could feel the brittle bones beneath her skin. As if they might crumble if he decided to squeeze a little too hard. He thought he might want to, and resisted the urge.

The old woman began to babble then, about opening a passage to the "astral plane" and communing with the spirits within—just the sort of vaguely metaphysical gobbledygook he might have written for one of his own characters. If he wasn't already half in the bag, he might have taken notes. This Mrs. Speer was the real deal, a genuine flim-flam artist, with her older-than-Moses backstory and her ridiculously excessive accoutrements: the globe, the burning sage and candles, the Victorian mourning gown, veil and gloves.

He laughed at the grandiosity, the outlandishness of her performance, and the old woman opened one eye to peer at him vexingly.

"Please, my dear sir. You must take this seriously if we're to continue."

He nodded for her to go on, holding back a smirk.

She closed the eye and got right back to it, calling out to the spirits who'd already gathered in the room, and whom she apparently could not see. The charlatan. The con artist. The House's spirits had circled the small table, and now their heads tilted back, their mouths—those who still possessed them—falling open in silent screams, their eyes filled with abject terror.

Well, I'll be damned, he thought.

In spite of her antics, the woman appeared to be reaching them. Was she an authentic medium after all? Did she truly possess "the gift"? If ghosts existed—as he'd known since his encounter with what the village shaman had called a ma đói, a "hungry ghost," in a Vietnamese jungle—didn't it stand to reason the other crap might be true, as well?

Forked plasma shot out from the top of the globe, striking a point in the air a few feet above the table, at eye level. The energy appeared to coalesce there, the air swirling until reality itself peeled away, presenting them with a moving darkness, hungry and alive. Amorphous shapes, completely devoid of color, climbed and slithered and squirmed over each other, all struggling to reach the passage between worlds. The opening—this Dark Rift—itself widening, seeming to draw energy from the gathered spirits, bright wisps and tendrils of them swirling into the opening like stars being swallowed by a black hole.

"My God…"

The spell broke as Rex spoke the words and the living dark swirled away, revealing three men seated at the table with him, their hands joined to his. The man to his left he recognized as the House's previous owner, not counting the brief return of the Hedgewood family: Clayton Odell. The sculptor's shock was plain in the creases in his high forehead and his deep brown eyes. To his right sat the first Hedgewood, Oliver: a stodgy looking fellow with his thinning hair slicked to one side, dressed in a tight black suit.

Both men eyed the fourth man in astonishment. He sat directly across from Rex, and could have been his mirror image, thirty-some-odd years older. He was the only man present who appeared to be unsurprised by the appearance of the others.

"Who are you?" Hedgewood demanded. "How did you get inside my house?"

"Did you see it?" the other Rex Garrote said. His eyes narrowed in a smile, an expression Rex had seen every day in the mirror, though with far more lines and creases. "You did see it, didn't you? You saw into the Dark Rift…"

As Clayton Odell opened his mouth to speak he and Hedgewood both vanished, leaving only Rex's aged doppelganger, staring at him from across time.

"It's been a long while, my friend," the older man said. "You look good."

"You look like death," Rex told himself.

"Who are you speaking to?"

Mrs. Speer's voice seemed to travel to him from very far away, as if the Dark Rift—if that was what he was seeing—now separated the two of them more than Rex from himself.

"I should," the other man replied with a smirk. "I'm dead."

Before Rex could inquire, his older self reached through the passage and grabbed him by the shoulders, yanking him out of his chair and into the passage with surprising strength.

No table existed on this side of the passage. No Mrs. Speer, either—though he could see her hands on the other side of the passage, holding his own. The ghosts here fed the passage with their energy as the ghosts in his House had. Rex even recognized one of them from TV: a young Caribbean lady with a colorful headwrap and dashiki. He believed her name was Miss Delicious. Miss D-List? Something like that. The important thing was that she was a psychic. He'd seen ads for her hotline late at night during cable movies, though she looked much older here.

Four others stood around Rex and his older self, completing a circle: two men and two women. Other than the fact that all five were clearly spirits, they didn't seem to share any physical similarities. One of the men looked like he'd just stepped off of a yacht, with dock shoes worn sockless, a light-colored fedora and blazer. One of the women wore a headwrap like the TV psychic, violet like her gauzy gown, her wrists and fingers heavy with jewelry. Perhaps they were psychic as well?

"Where are we?" Rex asked.

The question amused his counterpart. "You don't recognize it? This is our House."

He looked around himself. The room was of a similar hexagonal shape to the library from which he'd just been abducted, but there appeared to be no ceiling. The inset bookshelves stretched so high he couldn't see the end of them, hundreds, thousands of rows leading up and up and up into infinity. Tomes floated from one wall to another, constantly reshelved, flipped through, mixed and matched, as if moved by ghostly librarians or some inexorable cosmic force for a purpose Rex could scarcely fathom. It left him speechless, and he didn't like to be speechless, so he filled the silence with words.

"What's going on here?"

"Our House is feeding."

The answer tickled him. "Ha! Like the book?"

"In a sense. Right now, she's feeding on knowledge. A thousand years of history. Philosophy. Art."

"You expect me to believe—"

"I don't expect you to believe in anything. But you will believe, in time."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I am you and you are me." He grinned, and for the first time Rex saw the malice in his own smile. "I am I."

"This is ridiculous."

"Is it? A moment ago, you were in the upstairs office happily tapping away at a screenplay—which, I'm sorry to tell you, will never be filmed—and now you're here, in a House outside of time and space." He seemed to consider it. "I suppose it does sound a touch absurd now that I've said it aloud."

"But this isn't my House, is it?"

"Not quite. The House you know was destroyed. With the unwitting help of my Psychic Friends Network, I've raised its crumbled brick and mortar dust from a vast pit in the theme park you'll one day take part in creating."

"Ghostland?" Rex said. He'd told no one of the idea, not even Artie Best. Either he truly had lost his mind or this place—this House Outside of Time and Space—was real.

"Our House was never constructed," his older self said. "Even as a young Oliver Hedgewood the First laid its foundation, he was merely filling in what was already here. Transcribing it, in a sense, from the imaginary world. Hence why he'd never felt as though the house was finished, and why he'd constantly changed the arrangement of rooms. Think of it…" His counterpart grasped for the right word. "…like a sculpture, hewn from living rock. The rock has always been and will continue to be, long after each of us is gone. It merely changes shape through the passing of time."

"The psychic, Mrs. Speer… what she said was true? She isn't a fraud?"

The older man's eyes narrowed. "Far from it. It was she who opened the Rift the first time, nearly a hundred years ago, in the very spot your corporeal self sits. Whether intentionally or not I'm still not sure, but I do believe this makes her very dangerous to us and our grand scheme." He raised an eyebrow. "If we allow her to meddle, that is."

"What are you planning to do? Murder her?"

"Not me." He frowned, correcting himself. "Well, not me now, me then. You."

"I haven't killed anyone—"

"—since the shaman warned you about the ma đói you saw. The hungry ghost," he said, affecting a droll caricature of the shaman's accent. "Yes, I do remember all of that being quite traumatic. But don't worry. You won't be killing her, per se. You'll just be… cutting her character, so to speak. Killing her would only make her a more formidable opponent."

"How do you know all of this?"

Again, that smile. He tapped the bridge of his nose. "The House whispered it to me."

Rex was very familiar with the House's whisperings. Its ghosts, its hauntings, had fueled half a dozen novels and filled twice as many notebooks with ideas for more. The House book trilogy, the first volume of which was set to be published by Penguin early next year, had been written in a frenzy over a single year in his then-new home. The House's spirits had whispered secrets they couldn't possibly have known, lacking the phenomena he'd only moments ago been dismissing.

"What year are we in?"

"For you… the year is 2019."

"That would make us…"

"Seventy-eight."

"You don't look a day—"

"—over one-hundred," they finished together. Both men smiled their dark smile at each other.

"Today, I'm seventy-eight," the older man said after a moment. "But tomorrow…" His eyes gleamed. "Tomorrow, we become Infinite."

"How—?"

His counterpart raised a hand. "In due time, my dear boy. When I've stepped into the Spring, you will suffer the most intense pain you've ever felt. The Hiroshima of headaches. You'll want to drive a knife through your skull but you'll deny yourself the pleasure because you'll remember my words. Your words. And once the pain dissipates you will share my knowledge of your future, and my past."

What he was talking about was impossible. Shared knowledge of the future and past. "And then what?"

"You'll bide your time. You'll experience déjà vu quite frequently, but aside from what you might call the 'major plot points' of your life, most things you do and say will feel like free will. Meanwhile, I, future you—although of course we know that time is merely a vile conspiracy of the flesh and mind—I will decimate the world's population."

Rex found himself less shocked by the admission than he thought he ought to be. Still, he felt he should voice his objection. "To what end?"

The eyebrow rose again, crinkling his older self's forehead. "You wrote Shōki. You already know to what end."

"'The end of all life,'" he replied, quoting the main character, Samson, from his own novel, "'is an end to all strife.'"

"Yes," said his counterpart. "It's all very John Lennon imagine-all-the-people, isn't it?"

"But why would we do that? This, right now, you and me standing here, this is what those nebbish science-fiction writers would call a 'causal loop.' You couldn't possibly know what comes after this moment for you. And I won't know what would lead to me becoming you until this headache you say I'll get tomorrow when you reach this Spring…."

His doppelganger smiled with a genuine sympathy Rex had never witnessed in his own reflection. "I remember me posing this exact argument to myself. I remember thinking, I am not this man and I refuse to become him. But we will, my dear Rex. The End is inevitable. Now…"

The older man reached out with the index finger of his right hand. Rex winced as the finger pressed against his forehead, slightly above and between the eyes.

"Arise," said his counterpart.

When Rex opened his eyes he sat at the small table across from Mrs. Speer, the plasma globe switched off between them. She was smothering the candles and sage. The Dark Rift was gone. The spirits had vanished. His older self, as well. They were alone.

He sucked in a hurried breath.

"Ah, you're awake," the old woman said, peering sidelong at him as she returned the coiled extension cord to her bag. "I was beginning to think I'd lost you to the astral plane."

"I'm fine," he said, sitting up and cracking his joints. In truth he felt very far from fine. "No thanks to you."

"I did what I could to rouse you. Ofttimes the spirit world calls us on a journey. Did you experience such a journey, Mr. Garrote?"

Rex exhaled sharply through his nostrils. Already the conversation in the Rift was leaving him. He recalled speaking to himself, the sympathetic smile and the dead psychics feeding the Rift on the far side as the ghosts had fed it on this side… but it all felt like the memories of a dream upon waking.

What if that was all it was? Not a real conversation. Not even a premonition. Just a very strange, disturbing dream or hallucination. He certainly couldn't prove it hadn't been. He supposed he might never know.

If it was all a dream, a hallucination, then he had nothing at all to fear but his own apparently loosening grip on sanity.

Still, he was afraid. More so than he'd ever been in his life.

The man he'd met on the other side of the Rift or the shadow self he'd conjured during his inadvertent drug trip was not a man he recognized. He was as much a monster as the things he'd seen skulking and shifting in the darkness.

"It was a hell of a trip, I'll give you that," he told the old woman, rubbing the back of his head. "What did you lace those sticks with? I haven't been that high since Vietnam."

Mrs. Speer eyed him curiously as she finished packing her things into the bag. Once she'd zipped it up, Rex led her across the foyer to the door. She turned there with a light smile. "I'm very sorry I wasn't able to help you."

Rex's eyes narrowed. "I never asked for your help. Now, if you'd kindly get the hell out of my House, I have a screenplay to finish."

He opened the front door.

Pure and deep black night met them, framed by the doorway. No porchlight, no streetlamps, no headlights illuminated the darkness. No moon, no stars, nor atmospheric haze. Just dark, from the edge of the porch steps to as far as the eye could see. As if the House drifted at the outer edge of the universe, cold, lifeless and forgotten.

No, that wasn't quite true. Within the dark were the same unformed things he'd seen in the passage between worlds, slithering, clambering and writhing, consuming each other. The sky was alive with them, a constantly shifting sphere held by the gravitational pull of the House.

Mrs. Speer turned back with a look of sheer panic. She'd already stepped partway through the door and snatched out to grip the jamb, her other arm flailing. The bag slipped off her shoulder and hurtled out into the void. Her left shoe fell off and followed. She was losing her balance, losing her grip. At any moment she would fall into the abyss, if he didn't reach out and spare her.

Without a thought, he snatched out and peeled her brittle fingers from the doorjamb. For a moment, he held them, squeezed tightly, her bones like twigs. He looked at their entwined hands.

"Mr. Garrote, please—"

He let go.

The old woman shrieked as she lost her footing and dropped into the endless void, following her bag and shoe into the living atmosphere.

Rex slammed the door, breathing heavily.

He'd done exactly what his older self—future or hallucination, he still didn't know—had told him he'd do. He didn't know if he'd done it on purpose or if the feeling had just taken hold of him. It certainly could have constituted a 'major plot point,' as his doppelganger had said. Meaning it hadn't been him. Or at least, not him now. It had been the him he'd become.

However it had happened, there was no longer any point in denying the truth. He hadn't murdered the old woman. Not specifically. What he'd done, whether of his own accord or forced, was doom Mrs. Speer to a fate far worse than death, to be torn apart and consumed within the Dark Rift infinitely.

He stared at the door, willing himself to open it. To prove that the worst he'd done was push the old woman out onto the porch. That the most she'd suffered was a break in one of her many fragile bones.

Finally, he grasped the handle and jerked it open.

The night was thick and sticky but it was only night. The scent of evergreens prickled his nostrils. Crickets chirped. The porchlight illuminated the familiar circle of porch and steps, grass, walkway and gravel drive. Beyond that, the tops of trees jagged against the hazy city lights. A car drove by, headlights slashing through the heavy branches, making jigsaw shapes on the driveway.

Mrs. Speer was not on the porch.

He called her name.

Somewhere in the night, a dog barked.

Rex stepped out and called her name again. She didn't respond. She couldn't respond.

She'd opened the passageway and he'd pushed her through it. Mrs. Speer was gone.

He was right, Rex thought. I do believe. Every word he told me was true. Already I feel myself becoming him.

Rex shuddered despite the sticky heat and peered back into the House, gripped by the dreadful allure of a sudden inescapable thought:

This is the beginning. The beginning of The End.

* * *

And it had been, at least to Rex's admittedly vague recollection. At a little past eight the following evening he'd spilled out of his armchair, doubled over by the most intense migraine he'd ever experienced. He'd fallen to his knees on the Persian rug, his cigarette smoldering on the hardwood floor, scorching a black circle in the varnish.

It was just as he'd told himself. Blinding agony, so intense he'd seriously contemplated throwing himself in the fire to end it all… but when the red-hot spikes finally slipped free of his temples he'd known that everything his older self had told him was true.

In the future, he'd just stepped into this place he'd called the Spring.

With his future godlike powers, he'd imbued his past self with all of the knowledge he'd need to get him there. Faces and voices he'd never seen nor heard before filled his mind, flashes of future events so brief he could barely make them out before they were smothered by the next, like a slideshow on methamphetamines.

One thing stood out among all of this: death.

But with death came the opportunity for rebirth.

From that night on his life had taken on a heightened sense of focus. Decisions which had once been difficult and achievements which should have been momentous rarely seemed to faze him. He'd blown through a dozen more novels in a haze of Scotch and cigarette smoke, produced, written and starred in a television series, murdered a man to fake his own death with the help of his new agent—Artie Best had unfortunately died of a heart attack in the mid-'90s, and was sorely missed—and participated in the creation of the most infamous theme park ever made.

Much of this he'd done on autopilot, like a man in a dream. As his future counterpart had said, the mundanity of life was left to him. But during the big moments, the "major plot points," as he'd told himself, memory took over. Memories which had yet to occur.

Rex was aware this could be considered a deflection of blame, of his personal responsibility in the events that followed. None of it mattered though, in the end. All that mattered was that these moments had led him here, to the ruins of his House beneath the grounds of Ghostland.

Sarte once wrote, One is still what one will cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, and dies one's life. Never had this passage been truer than in the life and death—and subsequent afterlife—of Rex Garrote, son of Dr. Everton and Judith Garrote, a gynecologist and a librarian respectively.

Here he stood at the top of the heap of rubble smothering the servers and tech controlling his now-defunct park, its brick and wood and furnishings all in ruin, his possessions pulverized beneath it all, but he did not mourn its loss. The House, like himself, would soon be Infinite.

It just needed a little gussying up was all.

Surrounding him in a tight circle were his psychics: Sonya Curtis, Regina Delyse, Drew Agnew, Heinrich Jung and Annika Levanka. He'd of course wanted more—the more the merrier—but Harrison Greely had been foiled by another young man with an uncanny ability to harness ethereals. And as the dear departed Mrs. Speer had once said, We must always commune in even numbers.

Rex summoned up every ounce of power he'd accumulated since his death, drawing on the psychic energy of the ethereals surrounding him, and of those who'd pledged their allegiance to him when he'd freed them from bondage during what the news erroneously called a "tragedy." Yes, there had been a great loss of life. But life would soon cease to matter. Matter itself would no longer matter.

Rex sucked it all into him like space detritus spiraling into a black hole and projected it into his psychics, a feedback loop of dead energy—a thousand scenes of death and destruction and utter chaos he'd caused and borne witness to replaying before him, the screams of terror and panic, the vomit, the blood, all in service of his ultimate goal of freeing humanity from the burden of choice and pain and responsibility—he replayed and absorbed it all.

He would shoulder humanity's burden himself, once he stepped out of the Infinite, as the only entity—human or otherwise—to possess the powers of a god in a godless universe.

The forms of the psychics juddered, and from them spewed a bright white light, which rose above their heads, coiling and twisting around each other, forming what at first looked like a beanstalk made of pure energy. Then darkness spread out from its center, growing like a cancer until it swallowed all the light within, leaving only a corona so bright it was like staring straight into an eclipse.

This is it, he thought. I've done it.

The light emanating from the dead psychics finally dissipated and the ethereals began to wither, curling and blackening like burnt match ends, shriveling, becoming gnarled and twisted creatures devoid of any recognizable characteristics. They were denizens of the Dark Rift now, drained of the very life force that made them human.

With a boom as loud as a hundred thunderclaps, the blazing pillar of darklight propelled itself through the gaping hole in the earth above, instantly vaporizing the firmament, the gathered clouds disintegrating, tearing a new hole in the sky. Rex watched, delighted, as the pile of rubble beneath his feet rose from the ground, swirling into the void, brick and mortar cobbling together, shards of glass fusing, splintered lath reforming, dust returning to plaster.

"Arise!" he cried, throwing his arms wide in pure ecstasy. "ARISE!"

He laughed madly.

It was not over yet. There was still much work to do, and the exact location of the Spring continued to elude him, even with so much power and knowledge coursing through him. He suspected someone or something, perhaps even the Rift itself, were deliberately obscuring it from him.

But soon, very soon now, he would find what he needed and venture into the beating heart of the Spring.

When he emerged, he would be Infinite.

Part 3

Lost Souls

"Death is like one of your riddles," Samson told the dying boy, squeezing cool water from the washcloth onto the boy's forehead. "Once it's solved, you see it was never just a question. It's also the answer."

— Rex Garrote, Shōki

I believe through that schism I peered beyond the veil of what we collectively choose to call reality. I fear Mrs. Speer and I may have begun something during that séance which might never be undone; Pandora's jar comes to mind. Its contents, once spilled, cannot ever be returned.

— Oliver Hedgewood's journal entry,
August 8th, 1901

The Beginning Of The End

NOTHING HAPPENED FOR several minutes after the shockwave, while Ben and the others stood watching darkness spew up from the Dark Rift and flood the sky. Elsewhere the sky was still midday bright. The effect on the eye was unsettling, like looking at a hole in reality—which Ben supposed it must be.

"What now?" Andy said. "We're not just gonna give up, are we?"

"We still need to find Lilian," Ben said, peering up at the darkening sky. "Only now we'll have to watch out for evil ethereals and Dark Rift entities."

Lamb shook her head. "So what you're sayin is, we're screwed."

"We were pretty much screwed from the beginning. On the bright side, with the Dark Rift open, we might have a better chance to get back the people we lost."

Lamb looked hopeful. "You really think we could?"

"It might be possible. I don't wanna get anyone's hopes up, though."

Sam looked eager to move. "Well? Should we get to it?"

Ben nodded. He took one last look at the old church on Kubler Road, then started off toward Main Street. The others followed him, a not-so-merry band of travelers.

The sidewalk was clear from Kubler Road along Main Street to the Roths' apartment above the bulk food store. While Sam, Andy and Lamb marveled at the damage that had befallen Duck Falls, lamenting the dead in the street, Ben forged on ahead. He'd already absorbed it all that morning. Besides, they'd been given a second chance. Now was not the time to mourn.

"Why didn't anybody bury these poor people?" Lamb asked.

"Too busy trying to save themselves, I guess," Andy said. "Like we were," he reminded her.

Once they reached the Roths' building all four of them crammed into the vestibule. Ben recognized his old bikes, on their kickstands in front of the steps. Ben ascended quickly, stopping on the third floor. Lilian's apartment door was wide open, splintered at the latch. Someone—or something—had smashed it in. He hadn't noticed it before, in his rush to find her. He entered cautiously, Lamb, Sam and Andy right behind him. Lamb and Andy had removed the helmets of their keeper suits and held them at their sides.

The living room and kitchenette were left the same as Ben had seen them this morning, relatively clean aside from dishes and a mixing bowl stacked in the sink, a few splotches of pancake batter on the stove and counter. He called out Lilian's name. No one answered.

Andy sniffed the air. "Smells good in here. Who wants pancakes?"

"Grab whatever you want from the kitchen," Ben said, "but we have to keep moving."

Andy said, "Bummer," but headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. "Ohmigod, there's steak in here."

"Punkin, you're gonna get intestinal worms eatin cold steak."

Andy ignored her, picking up the steak by the bone and taking a big bite.

Ben laughed to himself as he headed down the hall, entering Lilian's bedroom. Lamb and Sam followed him. The suitcase and duffel still lay opened on the bed. He called out her name again, sidling past Lamb back into the hall, heading for Hiram and Maddy's bedroom. The duvet and pillows were still on the floor. He hadn't noticed the rotting banana peel on the bedside table this morning, nor the faint odor of urine.

"Yuck!" Lamb wafted away the smell. "Who pissed the bed?"

Ben spotted something on the floor beneath his feet. A white piece of fluff. He picked it up. It was springy, more like stuffing than fluff. There were bits of it on the duvet and more on the bare sheet.

Then he saw it. A shiny, round object almost hidden against the headboard. He recognized it immediately. It jingled as he picked it up.

"What's that?" Lamb said behind him.

"Whatsit," Ben said.

"Did you just answer my question with a question?"

"No. These are pieces of Whatsit."

"What's a whatsit?"

"Laurel and Hardy, ladies and gentlemen," Sam said. "Try the veal."

Ben and Lamb gave her a perplexed look. "It's Lilian's old teddy bear," Ben explained. "It used to have this bell around its neck." He looked under the bed and around the other side.

"And… what does that mean?"

"I'm not sure. Can you hold this for me?"

Lamb took the bell from him. "Whoa, this thing's giving me vibes."

"Vibes? What kind of vibes?"

"Like the heebie-jeebies. Feels like my hair's standin on end."

"That's weird. I'm not sure how it got here or why it's all torn apart." He found one of Whatsit's legs in the space between the wall and the nightstand on the far side.

Andy stepped into the room, eating a bowl of cereal. "What's up?" he said, his mouth full. Then his expression soured. "Aww, gross. Who pissed the bed?" He left the room to the clink of his spoon in the bowl. The smell clearly hadn't ruined his appetite.

"We should go," Ben said. "You and Andy should pack up some food and water. No idea how long we'll be gone but there's no point in the two of you dying of thirst."

"Good idea."

They gathered up some nonperishables and a few cold bottles of water from the fridge, and tucked them into Lilian's old school backpack that Lamb found in the front closet. Andy hoisted the bag over one shoulder and the four of them left the apartment. Ben took one last look, knowing he would likely never be back here again. Then he pulled the door shut.

Across the hall a door opened with a small squeak of its hinges. "Hello?" a man said, in a gravelly whisper.

Lamb waved cheerily. "Hiya."

A lined, dark-skinned face peered out from apartment 3C. Ben recognized the man from his eyepatch, but he'd never known his name. He'd always just called him Pirate Guy, though now that they were face to face he realized it was rude, not much better than when people called him the Dead Kid. The apartment smelled of cat hair and a pungent cologne.

"You two exterminators?" the man asked.

Andy and Lamb looked at each other, dressed in their keeper suits with the helmets at their sides. "Yeah," Andy said, peering around the corner from the top of the stairs. "Somebody saw a cockroach up on twelve."

Ben chuckled, recognizing Ray Stanz's joke from Ghostbusters.

The man with the eyepatch frowned. "This building doesn't have a twelve."

"Guess that explains why we didn't find the roach."

Lamb swatted Andy's shoulder. "We're not really exterminators, sir. We were looking for the Roths."

The man opened the door fully. "Well, that's good to know. Thought you were that man again."

"Ask him what man?" Ben said. Andy did.

"Big guy come around the other day. Right after the big to-do. Muscular fella. Sort of a crewcut. Tattoo on his neck. Looked real mean. He went inside the Roths' place and didn't come out 'til this morning. Figured they must've known him, but I never seen him before, and far as I know Hiram and Maddy weren't home."

"That's Bram," Ben said. "What was he doing here?"

"Any idea what he was doing?" Lamb asked.

"Nope. Heard a couple knocks, then saw the big fella shoulder in the door when I looked out the peephole. I almost said something but I didn't want any trouble."

"Probably for the best," Andy said. A cat mewled inside the apartment. "You all right in there? You need any food or anything?"

The man shrugged. "I've got a chest freezer and running water, and if I run out of people food I've got Satchmo's Fancy Feast. But thank you for asking."

"No problem."

"Wait, wait." His visible eye narrowed with concern. "You're not actually going out there, are you? With all those ghosts?"

"Don't worry," Andy said. He tapped the switch on his keeper suit. "We're professionals."

The man raised his visible eyebrow. "I bet. Just don't get yourself killed. Got enough ghosts out there already, don't need you two addin to it."

"Thanks," Lamb said. "You stay safe yourself."

"Mm-hmm." The cat meowed again as the man closed the door behind him.

Ben heard the locks latch as they headed downstairs. "Why would Bram hide out in Lilian's apartment?" he wondered aloud.

"Who the heck is Bram?" Lamb asked.

They followed Andy as he headed down the stairs. "Twenty bucks says he's the guy who pissed the bed."

* * *

Lilian would have breathed a sigh of relief the moment she separated from Bram if she'd still possessed her lungs. She did have her astral form back, though she appeared delicate and translucent, like spun silk. For a while there, she'd been worried she'd never see herself again. That she'd be trapped inside Bram's head forever, or worse—that she really was a figment of his imagination, and had never been a living person at all. Now that she looked like herself again, she was just glad she hadn't worn her TNA joggers and Blake's hoodie this morning. The outfit she'd put on from Wendy Laramie's wardrobe clothed her astral body. The comfy black sweater and faded blue jeans, along with her own scuffed Chuck Taylors, were a far more desirable ensemble for the rest of eternity.

Bram still lay on the four-poster bed. His astral wasn't visible, which she hoped meant he hadn't yet left his body. She didn't dare believe she was strong enough to fight him off if he caught her again, not after everything she'd been through since he'd pulled her from her own body. But she had to at least try to escape.

She ran.

Except she didn't. Her mind willed herself to run but her feet moved sluggishly, like in nightmares when she was little, trying to get away from the boogeyman.

"Where do you think you're going?"

She stopped herself, though she'd barely moved an inch. Bram stood over himself by the side of the bed, watching her.

"I was just, uh… going to check the mirror." She held up her arms. "Just wanna make sure I'm all here."

"You won't see yourself. But if you're looking to get devoured by imagoes, be my guest." He gestured toward the vanity, still covered by the sheet.

"No thanks."

"Good. We should go." Bram ushered her toward the door. "And please don't think about running away. I drew you out of your body. I'm the only one who can put you back in it."

Lilian didn't know if it was true but she did know she wouldn't escape without some sort of distraction to keep Bram occupied. Talking had done her no good. She'd need to take action soon. Once Garrote got his hands on her, it would be too late.

As she stepped out into the hall, a low growl startled her. She turned to her right, looking down at an English bulldog with a blue collar, staring up at her, its underbite bared. A matching sound came from her left, where a slightly stockier bulldog with a pink collar stood, its baleful brown eyes watching her. Both dogs were faint, more like holograms than the ethereals Lilian was used to, as if they'd been drained of most of their energy.

What next? she thought.

"I guess someone was home, after all," Bram said behind her.

"What now?"

"I don't suppose you have any ethereal dog cookies in your pockets?"

"Fresh out."

"Well, then let's hope their bark is worse than their bite."

Bram headed to the right. The blue-collared dog stood and barked as he approached. "Nice doggy," he said calmly. "Good doggy."

Bram reached out with his palm up for the dog to sniff him. It snarled and snapped at his finger, but its teeth went right through him. The second dog ran at him with a wet snarl and tried to bite his thigh. The dog stumbled back, puzzled. Both dogs cocked their heads at an angle, mirroring each other.

"Nasty little shits."

The dogs whimpered up at Lilian. She bent down and scratched the boy dog behind the ear. His leg thumped against the floor in pleasure. "They're just protecting their house."

"Then we're lucky they've been weakened by the infrasound." He peered in at his unconscious body. "Still, I'm not about to give them the chance to use me as a chew toy while we're transversing." He closed the bedroom door and ushered her toward the stairs. "Shall we?"

She turned begrudgingly and headed down the steps. The dogs whined after her.

In the foyer, Bram peered out through one of the bullet holes in the door. "Looks like the coast is clear. Let's move."

Again, he ushered her forward, pushing her like a bumper in a pinball machine. She reached for the doorknob, but her fingers slipped right through.

"Walk through it," he said.

"Like I'm just supposed to guess I can walk through walls?"

His jaw clenched. Lilian stepped forward, hesitantly passing through the door. The world went briefly dark, then she was standing on the porch. She looked over her shoulder, surprised to see the front of the door. She had to admit, it was pretty cool. But she wasn't about to admit it to Bram.

He stepped out after her. "We should be able to get there faster now that we don't need to walk."

"What do you mean?"

"We can supernate in our astral forms." She gave him a blank look. "Float," he explained. He raised his arms and hovered a foot above the ground, toes dangling. He hovered down the steps and turned around at the bottom. "See?"

Lilian tried it. Her feet lifted off the doormat a good inch before she got too excited and dropped back down.

"Relax," he said. "Don't think about it. You don't think about walking, right? You just do it."

"I didn't learn to walk today," she grumbled, and tried again. This time she hovered a good five seconds, about two inches off the porch boards. She moved forward a foot before losing her balance, and dropped again. "Ugh, I can't do it!"

"You can. You just have to stop thinking about it like something that shouldn't be possible and think of it as something that is possible."

"That's easy for you to say."

"I didn't have anybody to teach me. I had to learn it on my own."

"Good for you." She rose off the floor. Chill, she thought. This is possible. This is something that happens. Like petting ghost dogs and zapping your friends with stun guns. An hour ago, you were floating down your old street. All you have to do is float a little bit longer and he'll leave you alone. Then you can figure out how to get away from him. Now… DO IT.

She moved forward slowly, her height and pitch wavering. Even without her inner ears for equilibrium it was difficult to stay fully upright. She put out her arms like Bram had when he'd floated down the stairs and her wobbling decreased.

"There you go," he said. "I knew you could do it."

"I'm doing it," she said excitedly. She lowered herself incrementally as she hovered over the steps. Then she floated a few inches above the cement floor of the Visitor Center. She paused, and spun around in a tight circle. "I did it!"

"I told you."

Lilian looked at Bram's smiling face and frowned. She lowered herself to the floor. "Whatever. Let's go."

"Lead the way," Bram said with a sly grin, gesturing toward the back exit.

Lilian hovered—supernated? Was that the word he'd used?—down the aisles, cautious of the exhibits and display cases they passed on their right.

<squeak>

The sound was barely audible but it caught Lilian's full attention. She paused, looking around the dim building for its source.

"What is it?" Bram asked.

"I don't—"

<squeak squeak>

It sounded like wheels.

"Oh, goodie!" came a little girl's voice from behind the barnacled yacht. "More friends!"

Lilian recognized the voice, and now the squeaks fell into place.

The little girl doll in the Victorian dress from the Museum of Haunted Vehicles pedaled around a display case on its red tricycle. It turned its rosy-cheeked, cracked-porcelain head mechanically toward them. Lilian remembered her name was Pollyanna, from what they'd read in the doll's exhibit sign.

"Will you be my friend?" said the ghostly recorded voice.

"We don't have time for this," Bram said, and kicked the doll. It flew off the bike and hit the back of the Sea Dream's display stand, landing on its face.

"Aw, not fair!" Pollyanna said, her voice sluggish and deep. Then she fell silent.

Bram looked down at the doll.

"What happened to Mr. I Care About Ethereals?"

He sneered. "That's no ethereal."

The back doors stood on broken hinges, safety glass scattered on the floor surrounding them, marred by multiple skid marks. Lilian suspected the gangster car—the Model-T, T for Terror—had come and gone through this way. They left the building, hovering over the shards of broken glass.

From here Lilian could see the Ghost Tram station, which she and the others had used to shave off some distance to Garrote House. She doubted the tram was still running, nor that they could even use it in their astral state. Either way, she had no intention of running into Morton Welles, who could easily still be hanging around up there, murdering that Old Navy family over and over for his own sadistic pleasure.

The maps they'd given out here hadn't been quite accurate. The pirate ship, the Gentleman of the Sea, was actually between the Visitor Center and the midway, not to the northwest of it. They would also have to pass the Apache Theater, Guest Services, an amphitheater and several smaller exhibits. Ben being as big of a map dork as he was, Lilian had expected him to mention the error at some point when they were here, but he never had.

As they passed under the pylon where the trams turned back toward Garrote House, a thunderous boom caused the ground to shake and the tram cars above them to sway. The giant pylon vibrated like a door stopper and the tramline snapped with a reverberating twang of coiled metal.

The closest car swung at them in a downward arc. Lilian sidestepped out of its path and it slammed down in the space she'd just left, cracking the asphalt, metal frame crunching, windows shattering.

Bram was nowhere in sight.

Lilian made a mad dash for the auditorium, desperate to lose him. This was her chance. She'd barely made it ten feet when a chilling darkness descended over her with a percussive sound, stopping her in her tracks by the foot of the tram station. She turned and looked up to find the sky had turned black as far as she could see.

"There's no escape, Lilian," Bram said from behind her. "Not anymore."

She ignored him, staring at the flow of black liquid—Or is it smoke?—pouring up toward the sky. As it swept the clouds away Lilian thought it almost looked like an enormous tree, though its surface appeared to be in constant movement, as if covered in black shimmering sap. Or insects, she thought in disgust. It looked like it was growing from the place where Garrote House had dropped into the ground.

"What is that?" she all but whispered.

"Rex has opened the Dark Rift. It won't be long now."

"What won't?"

"The end of everything," he said simply.

Nobody's Home

ANDY HAD DRIVEN them halfway up the hill in Thea's Chevy Volt—Ben was amused to find the vanity plate said K1SMET, with a one taking place of the "I"—before they hit their first roadblock, and the way became impassible.

They ditched the car at the corner of Main and Hammond, and Ben took up the lead toward his house. Allison's office would be coming up on the right very soon, in the medical center. It had been some time since he'd last thought of them: Allison and Stan, Niko and Leonard, Harrison and Sara Jane Amblin. Probably since Thea had told him they were sending a team into Ghostland. He'd strongly disagreed with her decision then. Now he was on his way there himself, leading people toward it. People who had no real concept of the dangers facing them on the road ahead, and on the other side of the wall.

Unfortunately, every ethereal he'd wanted at his side had been whisked away into the Dark Rift. If Allison and the others who'd died on opening day were still trapped in Ghostland, Ben hoped to find them. They would've likely had to deal with many evil entities in the park at some point. If they'd survived this long, they might be helpful to have around.

If they didn't already get sucked into the Dark Rift themselves, he thought.

As they continued up Main Street, he was surprised he didn't sense many ethereals. It made for a quicker trip up the hill, but he had to remember that every step further up the road brought them one step closer to Garrote and the Dark Rift. One step closer to certain death and annihilation.

Just past the medical center was the Blind Duck Pub, which looked something like an English cottage aside from the alcohol signs and the signboard promoting upcoming shows. As Ben led Sam and the others past the doors, a familiar voice called out from its darkened vestibule: "Fancy meetin you here."

He turned to see Jeremy Cruikshank floating just outside the tavern's old oak door.

"Jeremy!"

"How are ya, lad?" the bodiless man said.

"We're surviving. It's good to see you."

Cruikshank smiled. "Aye, same."

"That's a severed head," Andy said, pointing at him. "A severed head is talking to us right now."

Cruikshank favored Ben with a smirk. "Who's the intellect?"

Ben introduced everyone. Lamb made to shake hands with Cruikshank, but lowered it in embarrassment when she realized her error. "Sorry," she said.

"No bother, hen. If I had hands I'd be likely to get myself into trouble." Everyone laughed. Jeremy smiled. "So… where's this motley bunch headin to this fine mornin? Off to see the Wizard, are ye?"

Ben told him. Cruikshank tilted his head up and down in a nod. "Eager to get back then. I see you lost the Carrot fella."

Andy frowned. "Who's the Carrot fella?"

"He means Rex Garrote," Sam said.

"Oh. Right. I thought it was Gar-rawt."

"He's why we're going back," Ben told Cruikshank, ignoring the mispronunciation. "The Dark Rift—" He nodded toward the pitch blackness slowly stretching across the horizon. "—we're going in to close it."

"Is that what that is? I was calling it the gaping arsehole in the sky, simply from the smell. I don't suspect shutting it'll be as easy as switchin off a bar tap, will it?"

"Probably not."

"Aye. Well, I've just been havin a pissup with my new mates in ye olde watering hole." He nodded behind himself. "That is, I was, whilst that bloody low rumble was blowin like the pipes of the Black Watch. The looks on those lads' faces when they saw my gob suckin from the Guinness spigot like a mother cow's teat." He chuckled. "Care to join us for a pint?"

"We should actually get going," Ben said.

"Aye. Some other time then."

"Yeah. Hey, why don't you come with us? It probably won't be as fun as playing poltergeist at the Blind Duck but we could really use your help."

He looked reluctant. "I'd just get in the way."

Ben shrugged it off, though he was disappointed. After surviving the Hedgewood Facility together he'd felt a kinship with the man. He'd thought he would never see Jeremy again. It couldn't have just been dumb luck they'd stumbled across him on their way back to Ghostland.

"Okay," he said. "Well, if you change your mind…"

"I know where you'll be." He looked toward the northeast. "Halfway up the smelly arsehole in the sky."

Ben laughed. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Good luck then. Pleasure meetin you fine folks."

They all said their goodbyes and Jeremy Cruikshank returned to the bar. "Fellas," he called out. "Somethin's wrong with my stout. It's all head!"

"It's all head," Andy said, grinning. "Because he's a head."

"Yeah, we got it," Lamb groaned.

They headed off again. By the time they reached the crux of the vehicle pileup just below Duck Bill Park, both Andy and Lamb were breathing heavily. "Air here must be thicker or somethin," Lamb said.

"I was just thinking…" Andy gasped, squeezing his calves. "…the same thing."

"I dunno, I'm doing fine," Sam said. Andy and Lamb glared back at her, and she grinned. "Hey, I gotta take these wins where I can get em."

They resumed their climb. Ben moved at pace with Sam, slightly behind her. "Your dad. He was a good man," he said.

She smiled slightly. "So I've come to understand."

"He really did his best to save us in the tunnels. If he's still there—"

"I saw him out there after the explosion. We actually spoke. He said, The monsters are coming. I guess that must be what I hit with the car. Some kind of monster."

"You didn't see it?"

She shook her head. "Whatever it was, it was strong enough to stop my car dead…" She let out a sputtering laugh. "Stopped me dead too, didn't it?"

"It does get better," Ben said. "Being an ethereal."

"I guess you've had a while to get used to it."

"A while, yup. I mean, I'd rather be back there grunting and gasping like those two." He nodded over his shoulder. Lamb and Andy were several paces behind them, in the midst of a dispute over who should carry the backpack. Andy wanted to keep it. Lamb asserted it was her turn. "As cool as it can be sometimes, the afterlife doesn't come close to living. There's a lot of stuff I never got to do the first time around."

"You and me both."

He nodded. "But being an ethereal has it's perks."

Sam smiled. "I'm beginning to see that. Thanks for the pep talk."

"Any time."

Ben took a right onto Nagel Road, and the others followed. Like before, the devastation caused to his old neighborhood was troubling, though he was less worried now that he knew his parents and Lilian's mother had survived, wherever Lilian had ended up. He did feel for his neighbors, but he didn't know any of them very well. Hopefully most of them were safe and sound in their homes, riding this out until it was over, one way or the other.

"Hope this kid got away safe," Andy said, nodding at the tricycle left in the road.

Ben thought it was likely Ava D'Addario's trike. He'd seen her riding it around the neighborhood last spring, ringing its little bell with a big smile on her face, a child enjoying her first real taste of freedom. He couldn't be sure if she and her mother had survived, nor if Old Man Babbage and his wife, Mrs. D'Addario's neighbors, had made it, either. He sensed ethereals here and there as they passed the damaged houses, battered cars and torn-up lawns, but their presence felt diminished. Hollow. He couldn't say whether they were newly woke or former inhabitants of Ghostland.

The infrasound had done its job. Hedgewood would be pleased.

Eventually, he turned the group onto Ryle Avenue, approaching a hedge where several people had been cocooned by vines, rotted and withered along with their bodies. Among them was a woman in a frilly, flowery hoop skirt and fancy hat, weeping into her silk-gloved hands. She was practically drained of all color. Ben could see the cedar hedge right through her.

"Should we help her?" Lamb asked as they neared.

"I think that's Mrs. Crane," he said, remembering her exhibit description from the park map, the hedge maze they'd passed on their way back to the front gate. "She probably killed those people wrapped in the vines."

"That's a no, I guess."

"They're like human gimbap," Andy said. When the others looked at him, he explained: "Korean sushi."

Sam pulled a face. "Well, that's appetizing."

Andy shrugged. "Sorry."

Ben continued onward, turning from Ryle onto Koestler. The others lagged behind. "Here's my street," he called back to them. The damage here was similar to elsewhere in the neighborhood, if not slightly worse.

"We were just here," Lamb said, marveling at the destruction. "It's like we're on a different planet."

"In a way, we kind of are," Ben said. While the others absorbed this thought, he continued on toward his house. They all met out front, the drive still caked with muddy tire tracks that had long dried.

"Nice house," Sam said.

Ben led them up his driveway and past his mother's overturned BMW.

Andy winced at the damage. "Damn, that's a real bummer. Nice car like that…."

His mom loved that car, but she was likely just glad she'd survived. If they got through this, she could buy another car, though Ben suspected her business might never bounce back to make another BMW a justifiable expense. He doubted anyone would be wanting to buy a house in Duck Falls for quite some time after today. If there was a tomorrow.

They crossed the lawn. The checkerboard squares of sod still hadn't taken yet. Some patches had turned yellow. Others had shifted or flipped over on themselves. At the bunker they all descended the steps, crowding into the entry.

"One of you is gonna have to knock."

Andy beat his fist against the door three times. Like before, voices whispered from within. He'd reached out to knock again when Blake said, "What's the password?"

Andy turned to Ben, who shrugged. "We don't know the password. It's Andy and Lamb. Ben and Sam are with us."

Blake spoke with Lilian's mom, though Ben couldn't tell what they were saying. "All right, hang on," Blake said finally.

The wheel squeaked. The door opened an inch and Blake peered out cautiously. "Ben is with you?" he said.

Lamb nodded, pointing at Ben. "He's right here."

"Wait, you guys can see him?"

She tapped her glasses. "With these," she said. "Can we come in or are you gonna let us die out here? Lilian?" she called out. "You in there?"

Blake peered back into the bunker with a look Ben couldn't decipher. Disappointment? Whatever it was he opened the door all the way, and the four of them entered the bunker. He closed the door behind them and turned the wheel.

Lilian's mother sat in a chair beside the sofa, where Lilian lay sleeping. She was holding her daughter's hands, looking devoid of hope. Grandma Laramie was crocheting something at the kitchen table, her favorite pastime.

"What happened?" Ben said, moving past Blake toward the couch. "What's going on with Lilian?"

"Ben wants to know—" Lamb started, then said, "Oh, shoot, I forgot." She slipped the backpack off her shoulders and took out two pairs of ReOss glasses from the handful they'd brought for Lilian and the others, and held a pair out to Blake.

He took them cautiously and put them on. His eyes widened and he blinked comically. "Holy shit!" He glanced back over his shoulder with a hangdog expression. "Sorry, Maddie, but…" He looked directly at Ben and gave him a small, uncomfortable wave. "Hey, man. Can I—can I hear you with these?"

"What happened to Lilian, Blake?" Ben asked, more curtly than he'd intended.

"It was right after you disappeared this morning." Blake came over and the two of them looked down at Lilian. She was breathing, which came as a relief. "She just kind of collapsed—fainted, we thought. But she hasn't woken up no matter what we've tried. Your parents just left an hour or so ago to find a doctor."

"They went out there by themselves?"

"I'm sorry, man. We needed to stay and make sure Lilian was okay." He nodded toward the kitchen table. "And your grandma."

Maddie had put on her glasses and smiled sadly as she looked up at them. "Hi, Ben," she said. She turned to Sam and the others and held up a hand in greeting. "Hello."

"Hi, Maddie," Ben said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. But Lilian… I'm so worried, Ben. We're all so worried. Nothing like this has ever happened to her before. But her grandmother, my mother, she used to get spells almost like this… syncope, they called it. Because of her schizophrenia."

Blake frowned. "You didn't tell me that."

"It's been so long since my mother passed it didn't even occur to me. And I guess I didn't want to believe it could be happening to Lilian… I hoped maybe it skipped a generation. My mother was just about her age when she started seeing symptoms."

"You think it could be that?" Ben asked.

"I don't know, but… she said something right before it happened."

Blake looked away.

"What did she say?"

"A name. She said Bram," Maddie said. "We thought Bram Storker, but that didn't make much sense, although your mom was clinging on to that Dracula figure of yours."

"Stoker," Ben said. "But she probably meant Bram Merritt. He's a Gurpie."

"That nice cult in the church?"

"It's not a cult. But yeah, with them. Why would she say his name before she passed out?"

"I don't know," Blake said. "If what Maddie said is true, it might have just been a random outburst. Like when someone with autism responds to a question with repetition."

Ben's brow furrowed as he peered down at Lilian's unconscious body. He supposed it was possible, but what if there was another explanation? What if Lilian's last word was a clue to what had happened to her?

"She's not in there," Lamb said, standing beside him. She'd approached the sofa while he and the others were talking.

"What do you mean, not in there?" Blake said with a scowl.

"I mean, nobody's home in there. She's not with us."

"She's… what do you mean? That she's dead?"

"She's not dead. You see her breathin, right?"

"Then what?" Ben asked.

"You 'member I said I sense ethereals? Well, I can also sense them in people around me. I only sense six of us in this room right now. Wherever Lilian is, she's not in that body."

Maddie parsed this, holding her daughter's hands. "What does that mean?" she asked finally.

"Wait," Blake said. "Lilian told me Bram can leave his body. Like, he can astral travel."

Everyone gave him a confused look, aside from Ben, who was already piecing together what might have happened.

"Like Project MKUltra," Blake said excitedly, as if that explained everything, as he worked out the problem in real time. "So maybe she saw Bram's astral projection or whatever… and somehow he… took her somewhere. Somehow."

"Into the astral plane," Ben said.

Blake nodded. "Yeah. I mean, if he really can astral project, maybe he taught Lilian how."

"Or he took her," Ben said.

Blake shook his head. "This is all so crazy. I don't like that word, but nothing else fits, does it? Lilian's lying right here, but her soul—her ethereal, I guess—is out there somewhere." He gestured toward the door.

"But where?" Maddie said, desperation in her tone.

"Well, he didn't take her back to Thea at the church," Ben said. "And she's not at her apartment. I guess there must be more to Bram than we know."

He thought again about the shed full of explosives. What did any of them know about Bram? Did Thea even know her second in command?

Maddie let one of Lilian's hands go to reach out to Ben. She couldn't feel him, but she grasped at his hand anyhow. He lifted it to give her the illusion she was actually holding it.

"You have to find her, honey," she pleaded. "Please, find her. And find her father. Promise me you will."

Ben thought, I can't promise her that. He shared a heavy look with Blake and told Lilian's mother, "We'll find them, Maddie. I promise."

Rules Of The Rift

BRAM SWEPT LILIAN along in his wake, and just like when he'd pulled her away from her body in the bunker, she was unable to stop him. They blew past exhibits she'd barely paid attention to the first time around on her eagerness to get through the park: the Roanoke Clock Tower shooting, the Buttermilk Falls "hanging" bridge, the Merchant Brothers big top. Bram dragged her ever closer toward the Dark Rift, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't seem to move much further than a few feet's radius from him. It was as if he had some sort of physical hold on her, like his own personal Recurrence Field. Escape would be nearly impossible now, but the fact that he was drawing her toward what he'd said would be the end of everything, of life as she knew it, made it all the more imperative for her to get away.

They entered a thin, slate-gray miasma just beyond the Dollop farmhouse, where Allison had helped the dead man who'd been impaled on a pole leave his body. She remembered what he'd told them in his weird, stilted way of speaking—He sees through their eyes—and wondered if it was still true, if the Garrote Virus still controlled the ghosts that remained here.

"What's this fog?" she wondered aloud.

"I'm not sure," Bram said, regarding it.

She studied his face as he led her onward through the mist. He'd reacted to the exhibits they'd passed, wincing and grimacing at several hollowed-out ethereals still acting out their deaths, even though the Recurrence Field was gone. A young Vietnam veteran peering up at the now missing top of the clock tower, was shot in the head from above and sprawling on the ground, only to reset, look up at the same flash of light from the rifle scope, and get shot in the head all over again. The hanging victims stared out from the dark of the covered bridge with haunted eyes. Circus performers and audience members ran in flames from the collapsed circus tent, voicing soundless screams.

Their agony, seemingly undiminished by the sound that made Ben disappear, seemed to cause Bram physical pain.

"What's your deal?" she asked.

"My deal?"

"Yeah. Why do you care so much about ethereals? Why did you join Thea and the Gurpies in the first place? Couldn't you and your Great Leader just blow up the Recurrence Field yourselves? Or did you just need someone to blame it on?"

His jaw tightened.

"Ooh, did I hit a nerve?"

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me. We've still got like a mile to go. I'm sick of supernating or whatever in silence."

Bram allowed himself a small chuckle. "First, Rex doesn't make people do things they don't want to do."

Lilian gestured around herself. "Uh, let the record show the witness is pointing to exhibit A."

"If you mean when he temporarily commandeered these ethereals on opening day, it was a necessary evil to break them out of the program. If there'd been any other way, believe me, he would have gone that route."

"Then why did he let Sara Jane and Hedgewood's brother capture them all in the first place? Why would he spend a gazillion dollars to build this place if he's so concerned with protecting ethereals?"

"He has his reasons."

"Right. You're not concerned with the why."

Bram sighed in aggravation. "Along with a great deal of psychic energy, he also needed trauma to open the Dark Rift. The bigger the better. He could have gone to Warsaw or Fort Mystic or the 9/11 Memorial or the site of any massacre around the world. But he needed his House. That was where they first opened the Rift. That's where he opened it now. He couldn't exactly ship his house to Sichuan, China or Cyprus or someplace like that."

Lilian let him think he'd made his point. "You know," she said after a moment, "all the people who led those massacres had what they thought were good reasons to do what they did. Except we know from history, they were wrong."

"History is written by the winners. You're a political science student, you should know that."

"But facts are facts, no matter how you twist them."

Bram's jaw clenched again. "Rex has taken personal responsibility for every single death that occurred here. It weighs heavily on his conscience."

"Oh, like he has a conscience."

"You want to talk conscience? Hedgewood and his military goons just casually wiped out most of the ethereals in town, hundreds of them, with zero remorse. He tried to do the same to Ben. If Rex Garrote didn't have a conscience, you'd never have seen Ben this morning."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Rex is the one who rescued him from Hedgewood. Didn't Ben tell you?"

Lilian considered it. If Garrote really had saved Ben, she supposed he probably had an ulterior motive. He wouldn't have done it out of kindness.

"You really think killing everyone on the planet is the answer?"

"Have you got any better ideas?"

"Yeah. Not killing everybody would be a good start. Closing the fucking Dark Rift, maybe? Sending Rex Garrote to the moon?"

"Hedgewood brought a war to your town, not Rex."

"Because you and Thea blew up the fucking Recurrence Field!"

Bram gave her an amused smirk. "Do you really think he had those infrasound generators waiting in tractor trailers because he wasn't prepared for war? He would have used them regardless of whether or not we took down the Recurrence Field. Which we did because we wanted to set those ethereals free, so they wouldn't be here when he fired up that machine!"

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

The metallic shriek caused them both to raise their hands to their ears, though it didn't block out the sound. It came again and again, like a train skidding on its tracks. They both searched the area madly, looking for the cause of the painful noise.

"What is that?"

"It sounds like—" Bram didn't finish his thought. His jaw dropped and his eyes went wide, his typically hard face suddenly defenseless.

"Wanna ride with me?" a deep, booming voice echoed over the nearby buildings. "C'mon! Let's be friends!"

The ugly-ass psycho doll, if it could still be called a doll at over thirty-feet tall, rolled around from the back of the Apache Theater on its massive, squeaky-wheeled tricycle.

"What. The. Fuck?" Lilian said.

Bram was already backing away, pulling her along beside him. He shot a wary glance behind them. "Well, at least we can agree on that."

He pulled her along toward the closest exhibit. The doors to the Starlight Arcade were locked and chained—which Lilian thought was a strange touch, considering the park had been closed since April—but Bram passed through them easily and pulled her in along with him.

Once they were safely inside the darkened building, the painful squeal of Pollyanna's giant tricycle wheels lessened. Her massive shadow fell over them through the window as the doll's cracked, pale-moon face peered in. The face remained vacant, with its soft Mona Lisa smile. Her eyes neither blinked nor moved as the giant moonface surveyed the inside of the arcade, sweeping over Bram and Lilian's crouching astral forms.

Lilian didn't dare move. Bram could have beaten the doll in a staring contest.

"NO FAIR!" the monster doll boomed finally, and the porcelain face rose out of sight from the window. A tense moment passed—Lilian had an image of a giant doll hand reaching through the windows and grabbing her up like King Kong—before the tires squealed away and the giant shadow retreated.

"Remind me never to piss off a sentient doll," Bram whispered after a moment, rising to his feet.

"Why is it so big?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I think we must have crossed into the Dark Rift when we passed through that mist. Physics doesn't work the same here as it does in our world."

"What do you mean, physics doesn't work the same?"

Again, he shrugged. "No one knows very much about the Dark Rift. Ancient mystics and metaphysicians tried to map its interior, entering the Rift in their astral forms, tethered to partners in the physical world, but most of them returned to their physical selves insane, either talking absolute gibberish or catatonic. Only one person was able to recount what he'd experienced, a yogi named Udarsh in Fifth-Century India. He said the physical properties of the Dark Rift are inconstant. He told his followers he'd held a star in the palm of his hand as it was being formed, that a solid could spontaneously become a gas, and thoughts themselves can take shape. The dead could be reincarnated or born again. Garrote House, because the Rift first opened there, can change its shape. That's why some people called it the Moving House. Because the rooms literally shift within its walls."

"So ethereals can grow a hundred times their size?"

"Doll possessions are usually imagoes—tulpas— especially dolls owned by kids with vivid imaginations. I guess now that we're in their domain… they can be all that they can be, yeah."

"Great," she groaned, thinking how awful it would be to encounter a fifty-foot version of Morton Welles. "So what do we do now? If we're already in the Rift, why isn't Garrote here waiting for us?"

"He told me to meet him at his House."

"The house that's in pieces fifty feet underground."

Bram grinned again. "He said he'd be… how did he put it? Gussying it up."

Lilian rolled her eyes. "Okay then." An electric buzz caught her attention. The track lights came on one by one above their heads. "What now?"

"The arcade is waking up," Bram said.

One by one the game machines came on, flickering multicolored light over the large room with a cacophony of sound. Half a dozen young boys in vintage outfits materialized in front of the games, short striped Adidas shorts, fuzzy beige Polos and sneakers with socks pulled up high above their ankles. They chewed bubble gum and slapped the sides of pinball machines, smashed buttons and jerked joysticks. One boy studied a claw machine as he lowered the claw toward the toys piled at the bottom.

At the center of all this was a circular counter, where patrons could trade in their tickets for one of the toys hanging from the ceiling. An impossibly large, toadlike man with straggly hair and greasy skin slumped behind the counter, a stained singlet stretched to its maximum, barely covering his dimpled belly. He reminded Lilian of a human Jabba the Hutt as his lizard tongue slithered out and licked his pimpled, greasy chin.

"No way," was all Lilian could think to say.

The toadman's tongue flicked out and caught the closest ethereal boy, pulling him away from a Mrs. Pac-Man machine. The boy cried out and struggled, but his fingers slipped on the thick, slimy tongue as it lashed around him, squeezing him like a boa constrictor. He punched and kicked and screamed but the tongue didn't stop reeling him in. The other boys conspicuously kept their eyes on their games, desperate to not be its next victim. The boy using the claw machine dropped a stuffed bear back into the pile.

"We should go," Bram said. He drifted toward the doors, yanking her along behind him.

"We need to help them!" she cried, and the toadman's beady black eyes flicked toward her as it slurped the poor boy into its spit-slicked mouth, smothering his screams.

Bram yanked her through the doors. "It's not our business."

"I thought you cared about ethereals!"

"I do care," he said, pausing just outside the doors. "But those boys have to learn the rules. If we help them now, they'll just end up getting eaten by imagoes, or run over by that giant doll. This is the Dark Rift, Lilian. Whatever that thing is in there, it's learned the rules. Until Rex sets things right, it's every man, woman and toad for themselves. The quicker those kids learn that, the quicker you do, the better."

He held her gaze with his hard, piercing eyes until he seemed satisfied that she'd gotten the point, then he turned and swept her along behind him, toward the hedge maze up ahead.

For a moment Lilian sulked, thinking she didn't have it much better than the boys in the arcade. Bram was the toad reeling her to her death. Even so, she understood he was right.

The pedo in the arcade had somehow used the power of the Dark Rift, whether intentionally or not, to make himself a living, breathing manifestation of the monster inside of him. The imago in the Pollyanna doll had made itself into a giant to take revenge on the unfair bullies who wouldn't be its friends.

Lilian allowed herself a small smile.

It was time to play by the rules.

One For The Reaper

BEN KNEW HE shouldn't have promised Maddie he would find Lilian or her husband. As badly as he wanted to, he couldn't guarantee it. Still, he doubted any of them would survive long enough for it to matter. As they left Blake and Maddie behind Ben wondered again if it would be the last time he'd see them… or at least, the last time he'd see them alive.

They moved along in relative silence, heading up the old bike path through the sparse woods to Duck Bill Park. While Ben and Sam took the lead, ascending the hill with ease, Andy and Lamb sweated and huffed. They'd long since discarded the keeper suits (Ben had assured them they would be just as safe with them as without, and had risked touching them both to prove it), and now they removed their shirts and tied them around their waists. Lamb wore a lowcut AC/DC tank top underneath. Andy wore a sweat-stained Polo and knee-length shorts.

Ben worried for his parents, somewhere out there, searching for a doctor. They would have likely gone straight down the hill to the medical center, and Ben and the others could've passed right by them twenty minutes earlier without even noticing. Wherever they were, he hoped they were safe. The Swarm and the Behemoth were probably still out there somewhere. Ben didn't suspect they would be gotten rid of that easily, but he hadn't encountered them, and the few ghosts they had seen had been almost entirely drained of energy, aside from Cruikshank, who appeared to exist solely on Guinness and good cheer.

He hadn't told Maddie and Blake he doubted a doctor would be able help Lilian, that his parents had likely risked their lives for nothing. If she was in her "astral form," as Blake had suggested, their best hope was that Bram would let her return to her body soon. With no clue what he'd needed from her, Ben couldn't begin to guess when that would be, if ever.

Once they reached the top of the hill, he turned and faced Ghostland. It was hard to believe it was the same place he'd just left this morning, after he'd rejected Garrote's offer to fight at his side. The darkness from the opening—spewing up from the hole Garrote House had fallen into, just as he'd suspected—had stretched across the sky, as wide as the park itself. A dense, dark smoke had spread out in a widening circle around the opening, enshrouding the exhibits and buildings and rides within its radius. The Rift's shadow stretched well over the park's outer walls, as far as the Gurpie camp at the old farm, and the military base camp to the southwest, at the county road barricade, where a convoy of green and desert-camo vehicles circled before lining up in the road. From this distance they were no bigger than toys, the soldiers marching in formation like ants, but with their sonic weapons they were still very deadly.

Duck Falls didn't look much like the last time he'd been up here, either. Several houses had burned down in the new subdivision his mom had been trying to sell, and from here it was easier to see how badly the traffic jams had closed people in even without the military roadblocks. Downtown Duck Falls was a ghost town. Andy driving them partway up the hill in Thea's car had probably been the last vehicle to drive its streets. There was no sign of movement anywhere in town as far as he could see.

Whatever happened today, whether they were meant to stop Garrote and close the Rift or fail, the people down there, this whole town, it would never be the same.

"I guess we might as well take a break," he sighed.

"Thought you'd never ask," Lamb said, practically gasping. She flopped down at the picnic table, brushing away a few twigs and pine needles. She grimaced as Andy sat beside her. "This thing's covered in bird crap."

"Hey, I'm just glad to get off my feet for a minute," Andy said, slinging Lilian's backpack off his shoulder and opening it on the table.

"How are you guys holding up?" Sam asked.

"I'm good. It's a bit of a workout, but I ran the Vegas marathon last week to get to Lamb's door, didn't I?"

Lamb smiled at him. Ben didn't get the joke but he smiled along.

"How about you?"

"I'll live," Lamb said with a shrug.

The two of them took out some food and bottled water they'd packed and began divvying it up and eating in silence. The scene reminded Ben of a quiet moment at Ghostland, when he and Lilian had shared a snack at the food court after she'd escaped Morton Welles in the funhouse. He remembered Lilian telling him he didn't have to be her rock, that he could let himself be scared. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"You okay?" Andy asked Lamb, chewing one of the sandwiches Maddie had slapped together for them.

"I'm just sad, is all. Mom's funeral was s'posed to be today."

"Oh, crap. With everything that's happened I forgot."

"So did I. I only just remembered it was Saturday on the way up the hill." She turned to Ben, squinting up at him against the bright blue sky surrounding the Dark Rift. "What's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"Being a ghost. An ethereal."

Sam turned back from the hill's edge, where she'd been looking off toward Ghostland, and regarded him. Ben shrugged.

"I guess it depends on how you end up," he said, as Sam returned to the group. He told them about a few of the ethereals he and Lilian and Le Mon had freed from their death loops: the Chesterfield Theater Ghost, the Woman in White, and Professor Hermann from the old tenement museum in New York City. He said he'd never looped himself, and he suspected not everyone did.

"But what about my mom? You think she's aware, wherever she is?"

He didn't know how to answer her. Lamb seemed to sense that, before he opened his mouth.

"What'll happen when he's done with her?"

"It's probably better not to think about that," Ben told her.

Lamb looked down at the table, nodding.

Ben turned back to Ghostland. He couldn't be sure but it looked like the Rift had widened in the few minutes they'd been sitting here. When he'd last looked, the dark miasma had just reached the northmost edge of the asylum. Now the first floor of Bright Falls Sanitarium was entirely lost to the dense fog.

"We should get going."

They all nodded. Andy and Lamb started packing up their food. Andy brought their garbage to the bins and returned to the table as Lamb hiked the backpack onto her shoulders.

"Which way?" Andy asked.

Ben nodded toward the narrow road among the trees. "This'll take us back down to Main Street." They followed him to the road. The shoes of the living scuffed on the macadam as they descended the Duck Bill.

* * *

At the bottom of the hill, where the road intersected with Main Street and the vehicle jam was at its thickest, Andy let out a low whistle. "Jeez, what a mess."

Sam moved on ahead, past a white van whose roof had been caved in by a dead person, picked apart by carrion feeders.

"This is where it happened," she said, looking down at a spot on the road marked by a dark stain, surrounded by broken glass. Ben followed her gaze to the silver hatchback ten feet further up the road, its front end crumpled, a hole punched through the windshield. A brutal death, her body hurtling through the window, skidding across the asphalt. After seeing what the Behemoth had done to his mother's car, Ben thought it could easily have stopped Sam dead, as she'd said.

More death surrounded the accident, people who'd been too frightened or injured to leave their vehicles. A gaunt, chalk-faced woman lay draped across the front seats of a hatchback, palm prints stamped on the inside of the front passenger window. In a pickup truck, a man with a broken neck sat behind the wheel, gripping a bible, maggots spilling from his mouth. From the look of him, he'd been dead several days.

How many new ethereals did the infrasound send into the Rift? Ben wondered. What if we can find them? Could we save them? Is it even possible to bring them back?

He had to hope they could. Le Mon and the O'Neals were there, along with all the others who'd disappeared from the Temple. Likely Allison, Niko and Leonard, too. Lilian and Sam's fathers. Everyone they'd lost.

Had Bram taken Lilian into the Rift? Ben had always been wary of Bram Merritt, though he'd suspected it was partly out of plain jealousy, that he'd felt himself more worthy to be Thea's second. Was it possible he'd been working with Rex Garrote the whole time? Playing both sides?

"What's that sound?" Lamb said, looking up the road, away from town.

The others listened. After a moment, Ben heard it too: rumbling growls in the distance. Trucks.

He remembered the circling convoy at the Army camp. From the sound of it, they were heading this way.

"Let's keep moving," he said hastily. "But keep to the ditch. The second you see anyone, head into the trees."

Andy and Lamb nodded as they got moving, the pack bouncing on Andy's back, the glasses jostling on their noses. Ben didn't want to encounter the Army on the road but this tree cover wouldn't last. In less than half a mile or so, the woods thinned and ended completely at Burt Bucklebee's old farm.

The trucks would likely pass before then. If they didn't, he'd have to lead them into the field.

They passed the town sign. NOW LEAVING DUCK FALLS COME BACK SOON!

"Yeah, probably not," Andy said.

The other side of the sign, on the way into town, read: WELCOME TO DUCK FALLS HAVE A QUACKING GOOD STAY! The town council loved their duck puns, much to the chagrin of Ben's mom. Both the council and his mother would have been horrified to see some wit had crossed out the name of the town with spray-paint and written "FUCK ALL" above it. Printed below was the population—twenty-six-hundred, now likely less—and icons for local amenities.

A resounding crash came from up ahead. Sam and the others threw anxious looks back at Ben. He felt it himself. Two more crashes came, one immediately after the other. It sounded like a freight train coming off the tracks, one car at a time.

Ben rose up off the road, getting a better vantage point.

"Dude, how come I never knew you could fly?" Andy said.

Ben ignored him. Up ahead, he saw vehicles cast aside like used toys into the ditch. A station wagon, a minivan, a school bus. CRASH! CRASH! CRASHHH! One after another.

Something massive was pushing them out of the way. He could only see the top of it from here: it just looked like a large vehicle of some kind, slamming into cars and trucks, clearing a path.

CRASH! CRASH!

"Into the trees!" Ben cried over the ruckus.

Andy and Lamb scrambled up the side of the ditch, running for cover in the woods. Sam followed. Ben winked in and out, finding cover behind a thick bush and waving them over. Andy winced as the brambles pricked his forearms. Lamb said, "This bush smells like gin."

They crouched. The crashes grew louder the closer the convoy came to their hiding place in the woods.

If the soldiers had any sort of ethereal-sensing gear, he and Sam were done for. He just had to hope that if they did, their frequencies or signatures were too weak to be spotted.

"I'm gonna try something," Ben told her. "Clear your head. Can you do that?"

Sam nodded brusquely. "I think so."

"We might disappear for a minute," he told the others. "Don't freak out. We're still right here."

Ben took her hand and winked the both of them out, but only half the way. Their surroundings remained visible, but hazy and shimmery, like looking at the world with tears in his eyes. Sounds were muffled, as if they were underwater. He'd never remained in this state for very long, and wondered how long he'd be able to keep it up.

Sam peered around with wide eyes. Andy and Lamb stared in their direction for a moment but it was clear they couldn't see them. He and Lamb shared an awestruck look. "Awesome," Andy whispered. They returned their gaze to the scene below.

"They can't see us, can they?" Sam said. "Not even with the glasses."

Ben shook his head. "Hopefully, the soldiers down there won't either."

With a final explosive clash of glass and metal, the massive vehicle came into sight, plowing through the blockage ten or twelve car lengths away. It reminded Ben of the Dead Reckoning from Romero's Land of the Dead, spanning nearly the entire width of the county road, with an armored bumper angled like the cowcatcher on the front of a train. The military convoy was right on this vehicle's heels. Transports and Humvees, even a tank. A contingent of soldiers marched alongside and behind them, weapons at the ready.

"These guys don't mess around," Andy muttered.

Lamb smacked his shoulder. "Shush."

The roadblock-breaker pressed on ahead, rolling a pickup over in the ditch, slamming a hatchback into a van, both of them crashing into the stream on the other side of the road. Soldiers shouted to each other, small groups of them running ahead of the convoy, some in camo, others in full black. They wore the same glasses as Andy and Lamb and carried things that looked something like the Behemoth's bullhorn crossed with handguns along with their rifles. The tank turret swiveled, the long gun barrel sweeping from left to right.

Another sound rose above all of this: a mosquito-like whine Ben at first mistook for one of the machines. As it got closer to them, he realized it was a human scream—a familiar scream. After a moment the screamer came into view, zig-zagging through the roadblock maybe twenty feet ahead of the car-smasher.

"I know that guy," Ben said. "He was at Ghostland."

It was the wailing man from the Dollop farmhouse, the guy in the striped tracksuit, impaled on a pole, that Allison had helped leave his body. Somehow, he'd survived Niko and Leonard's stun gun attack, only to be hunted down by more soldiers. Ben doubted he'd bounce back from this one.

A soldier in the road shouted, "There it is!"

"We've got him cornered!"

The troops raised their strange-looking weapons and fired at the man simultaneously. A low hum erupted from the bullhorn barrels. The ethereal held up his hands, terror twisting his features. The scream became a wail as he flickered in and out of existence.

"They're killin him," Lamb whispered.

"He's already dead," Andy reminded her. "Whatever they're doing to him, I think it might be worse."

Ben could attest to that. He was just glad the weapons weren't aimed at him. The infrasound waves were strictly focused, otherwise they would've taken both him and Sam to the Dark Rift along with the man in the tracksuit.

Sam had gone deathly still, watching this grim business through narrowed eyes. If the soldiers did somehow still spot them, Ben intended to wink Sam and himself back to the Temple before the inevitable blast.

What if they did use them on us? That's where we're going anyway, right? Into the Rift? What's a little pain if it gets us there faster?

He didn't consider it long. There was no guarantee anyone sucked into the Rift that way would survive. And he could just as easily wink his way there, if they hadn't needed Andy and Lamb. Lamb could sense ethereals, and her mother was held captive by Garrote, used as a human battery. Andy, Ben had been told, had been a conduit for two ethereals since he was a kid. Ben had to believe the four of them had been brought together for a reason.

Hope was the only thing holding him together.

Eventually, the man in the tracksuit's screams ended. He was gone.

The soldier who'd spotted him barked into the radio on his shoulder: "Another one neutralized."

Neutralized, Ben thought bitterly. Did they have any idea what they were doing to these ethereals? Would they even care if they did?

"What happened to him?" Sam asked quietly.

"He's gone," Ben said.

CRASH!

The car-smasher had reached the vehicles directly below them. The trucks and soldiers followed. The convoy rumbled past, smashing metal and glass, engines roaring, boots stomping.

Behind it all, like a barracuda swimming with sharks, a limousine with tinted windows cruised along. The rear window on their side was open. Ben recognized the leering face of his tormentor peering out from it.

"Hedgewood," he said.

"That's Hedgewood?" Sam asked.

Andy frowned. "Who's the bald guy?"

Lamb shushed him with a finger pressed to her lips.

Four black vans, with HEDGEWOOD printed on their sides in gold, trailed behind the limo. Seeing the man himself smiling sickly out the window while the soldiers eliminated ethereals made Ben think of a rich man on safari, waiting for his turn to fire the rifle while his guides softened up the animals for him, got them good and scared.

Was that all it was to him, a bit of sport hunting? Or was there more to it than that?

As the sound of smashing metal and glass and the shouts of soldiers receded down the hill, Ben winked Sam and himself back to the hiding place.

Andy startled. "Jeez! I almost forgot you guys were there."

"Dork," Lamb said, grinning and shaking her head.

"I think we'll be okay now," Ben told them. Without awaiting a response he started down the hill, out of the woods, to the road. The others followed.

The road ahead was clear. Vehicles that hadn't been pushed into the ditch or rolled had been smashed up pretty badly. Even the school bus had a long, jagged gouge torn through its chassis, sagging on the driver's side where both tires were shredded.

"That thing sure left a mess," Andy said, peering into a sedan whose entire front drive shaft had been torn out from under it. "We could probably drive the rest of the way if these cars weren't so bashed up."

"It's not too far from here anyway," Ben said. "And I'd rather not risk hitting any military checkpoints." He nodded toward the long stretch of farmland where the trees thinned out to their right. "Let's cut through here."

The four of them crossed the road, down into the ditch. Andy and Lamb held hands as they leaped across the stream, and ascended on the other side. They climbed the old wooden fence and headed into the sweet-smelling straw, at least a foot taller than any of them. Ben thought it would provide them good cover, hopefully all the way to Ghostland.

They pushed through the first two rows until they reached a wider plowed section. Andy spat and sputtered as he stepped out. "Bug flew in my mouth," he said.

"Aww." Lamb gave him a faux pout.

They headed down the patch of dark earth for a few minutes, the only sound the trudging of Andy and Lamb's shoes in the soil and the wheat rustling in the breeze.

"Hey, you guys ever see that movie Children of the Corn?" Andy asked.

"This is wheat, punkin."

"Yeah." He sounded deflated. "I was just thinking it's pretty creepy how you can't really see through to the next row, but when you get there it's exactly the same as the one you just left."

None of the others seemed particularly interested in the observation.

Ben said, "Let's cut through here."

They crossed from one row to another. He wondered how far they were from the Gurpie camp right now. They would probably have to pass through it before reaching the parking lot. He was thinking about Thea and the others they'd left back at the church when it suddenly struck him.

"He's going to the Temple!"

"Who is?" Sam asked.

"Hedgewood. I have to warn them!"

Lamb scowled. "Warn 'em? They're like a mile and a half back that way."

Ben ignored her. "I'll be back in two minutes. Stay right here."

Before they could argue any further, he winked out.

Thea was rushing from one group of ethereals and the living to the next when Ben reached the Temple. People were eating lunch, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if the Dark Rift wasn't expanding, spreading slowly but surely in the direction of town.

"Ben," she said, surprised to see him. "Why are you back? Where are the others? Did you find Lilian?"

"You need to be ready," he said, ignoring her litany of questions. "Hedgewood is on his way."

"Hedgewood? Ready for what?"

"He's got a whole army with him. Dozens of soldiers. He's got a tank, Thea. I think they're coming for you."

"My God…" She squinted off at her people. "Are the others okay?"

"They're fine. I need to get back to them."

"Okay." She nodded. "Thank you for the warning."

"Stay safe," he said.

She gave him a small smile. "You too. Good luck."

Ben left the Temple hastily, winking back to the others in the field. "Okay, I'm—"

"Slimer!"

He didn't recognize the man's voice, and it took a split second to realize he'd found himself in the middle of a standoff amid the wheat field: Andy and Lamb on one side, a young, scared-looking soldier on the other. Sam was nowhere in sight.

The soldier reached for his right hip.

Lamb cried out, "No!" leaping between Ben and the soldier. In the same moment, the soldier fired. The weapon made a horribly loud pop, nothing like the hum the sonic weapons had made when they blasted the man in the tracksuit. Ben thought this sounded more like a real pistol, though he'd never heard one fired outside of a movie.

"Lamb!" Andy cried, reaching for her hand.

The soldier's eyes went wide. He'd obviously meant to draw the sonic weapon but, in his excitement or fear, he'd pulled the gun. He looked at the smoking barrel and dropped the pistol in horror. It landed in the dirt with a muted thud.

Lamb looked down at her chest. A dribble of blood spilled out from her ribs above the neck of her tank top. She turned to Andy, who'd taken her hands. She blinked, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. "Andy…?"

Her eyelids fluttered and she collapsed in the dirt. Andy dropped with her, moaning.

"Oh, God," the soldier said, taking a step toward them. "Oh, God, I'm so—"

"Shut up and help us!" Andy cried.

Ben went to his side, still wary of the soldier. Lamb coughed. Blood sputtered from her lips. "Andy…" she whimpered. Her breath hitched. "Andy…"

"I've got you," he said, cradling her in his lap.

Sam emerged from her hiding place within the whispering wheat, her round face grim. "You've got to stem the bleeding," she said.

The soldier, jittery and pale-faced, knelt in front of them. He reached out with gloved hands and tried to press them against Lamb's chest, blood pouring from the wound.

Andy swatted the soldier's hands away. "Get your hands off her!" He hugged her, rocking her between his legs, pressing his hands over the hole in her chest. Blood oozed through his fingers. The front of her tank top and the crotch of her jeans were already soaked.

"I can't stop it," he said. "She won't stop bleeding!"

"Andy, it's…" Her chest heaved as she spoke, her voice little more than a croak. "…it's…"

Andy leaned his ear close to her lips. "It's what? It's what?"

"…it's…" She gasped again. Then her bright blue eyes suddenly widened and went vacant, staring up at the sky. "…oh…" she breathed, and her body slumped to the side, her blood-streaked left hand falling off her lap, into the dirt.

Andy shook her limp body, tears streaming down his face. "Why did it have to be you? Goddammit, why you?"

The soldier stood abruptly, his pimple-studded face ashen. He noticed Ben and took a fearful step back. He reached for his left hip, seemed to think better of it, then turned and dashed away through the wheat, panting.

"I'm so sorry, Andy," Sam said.

"This is all my fault," Ben said. "I shouldn't have asked you to—"

"Would you stop?" Andy glared at him. He wiped tears from his eyes with the heel of his palm.

"But if I hadn't left—"

"Not now, Ben! Give me a…" He sniffled. "Gimme a fucking minute with her, okay?"

Ben nodded. He slipped away to the neighboring row as Andy rocked Lamb in his arms, moaning softly. The soldier had run through here but all that was left of him were bootprints in the dirt.

"It wasn't your fault," Sam said.

"If I hadn't left—"

"You did what you had to do to protect the people you care about. So did Lamb."

Ben shook his head. He never should have left them alone. Not even two minutes and this was what happened. Death and grief had followed him like a curse. Andy's soft weeping reached them from the next row. Lamb was dead. Ben shook his head again, more forcefully this time.

"Yes," Sam assured him, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. "She only wanted to protect you. I spoke with her, back at the church. While you were with Thea. She believed in what you're doing, Ben. She wanted to see her mother as badly as you want to see your friends again, and I really think she believed it's possible. That we could go in there and bring them all back. You still believe that, don't you?"

Ben gave the question thought before replying. "It doesn't matter what I believe," he said finally. "We have to go into the Rift and we have to bring them all back. We have to. Now more than ever."

Sam nodded. "Let's get Andy. We've got to keep going. For Lamb. For my dad. And for everyone else those bastards took away from us."

"For Lamb and Stan," Ben said, nodding.

With nothing left to say, they passed through the straw to the next row to join their grieving friend.

Subtle Bodies

LEAVING THE ARCADE, Lilian and Bram saw the dark mist had gathered around the building. Bram had remarked that it was likely why the arcade had "come to life." Up ahead, the perches and towers of Bright Falls Sanitarium loomed. Lilian tried to resist Bram's pull but he was too powerful. As they drew nearer, she recalled clasping the bracelet her parents had given her around Allison's wrist, hoping it would act as a totem, helping to guide the therapist's ethereal toward whatever came next. The next time she'd seen Allison, her "dead energy" had already been absorbed by the Garrote Virus. The gesture hadn't helped, and Ben had blasted her into oblivion with Leonard's stun gun.

Is it possible they're all still here? she wondered. Even if the stun gun scrambled all of Allison's dead energy or whatever it did, what if she's still here, piecing herself back together? What if she's looping somewhere inside the asylum?

If it was possible, helping Allison would be her priority. She wouldn't let Bram pull her away like she had just now. She would struggle against him as desperately as she was able. She wouldn't leave Allison alone again.

Except Morton Welles might be in there, too, she reminded herself. Who knows what a monster like that could become in the Dark Rift?

"I'm not going in there."

Bram seemed to sense her fear, despite her attempt to keep it from reaching her expression, and his own face softened. "Believe me, I've got less interest in that place than you do."

He swept her along beneath the imposing brick walls and gables, in what would have been its shadow during daylight. It had looked like twilight when they'd left the arcade. It was fully dark by the time they reached the northeast edge of the sanitarium. The bright blue sky she'd seen on the outer edges of the Rift had disappeared from sight.

They paused a moment, hovering at the west entrance to the midway. What looked like a psychic booth stood out from the others. Lilian hadn't seen it on opening day but she had been distracted, fleeing from Morton Welles, and they'd entered the midway from the south. The sign had a cartoon image of an elderly white woman wearing a turban, holding her gnarled hands over a smoky crystal ball. The booth itself was decorated with occult symbols and rich purple velvet curtains draped over its entrance.

As they neared, she was able to read the name of the booth. If she'd still been in possession of her heart, it might have skipped a beat at what she saw.

"We have to go in there," she said, scared and excited all at once.

Bram gave the booth a dismissive look, passing by a Ghost Your Selfie! photo station. "I doubt anyone's there to read your palm."

"Please," she begged. "I need to go in there, Bram!"

He squinted at the booth. For a moment, she thought he might give in. Then his face hardened, his jaw clenching. "We don't have time. Rex is waiting."

He went on ahead, dragging her along behind him.

Lilian looked back longingly at the psychic booth, somehow bearing the same name as the place from the strange rhyme her mentally ill grandmother had repeated on her deathbed: The spirits are meeting at All Hallows' Close. They're going to decide who stays and who goes.

It's a real place, she thought, as the cartoon psychic receded in the distance, blocked from view by game booths and carnival rides. How did Nana know about this place?

She supposed now she might never find out.

She turned to their right as they entered the main thoroughfare. The Magnificent Quentin's stage was bare aside from the water tank illusion, with its chains and old-fashioned handcuffs. The exhibit's banner hung limp from one pole.

Bram turned them left and let out a startled gasp.

The illusionist stood before them, dumping a bucket of clear liquid over his head. Like the other ethereals they'd seen since entering the park, he was barely there, a mere wisp, but it didn't prevent them from experiencing the horror of his grisly death as the acid poured over his head and shoulders, eating away the flesh and hair, clothes dissolving, skin bubbling, bone frothing. Each eyeball popped and oozed down his melting cheeks. His jawbone opened in a gurgling scream as his tongue became liquid and his teeth fell out one by one.

Then he vanished.

"People actually paid to see this stuff?" Bram said, looking ill.

Lilian shrugged. "We didn't actually think it might be hurting them until it was too late. The inventor called ethereals 'dead energy.' She told us they weren't actually conscious. She actually said they were like blind fish bumping around in a tank without her computer program. I guess 'cause they only captured ethereals from their hauntings, still in their loops. They never met ethereals like Ben and Le Mon."

"Blissful ignorance."

She shrugged again. "What you don't know can't hurt you, right? If people knew ghosts were floating around all over the place, they'd probably lose their shit."

"That'd sure help Hedgewood's cause."

"Hasn't it already? He locked down the entire town. He got the U.S. Army to blast infrasound on us and wipe out most of the ethereals."

Bram considered this in silence as they passed a children's roller coaster on the left and the Ferris wheel towering over them to their right. Game booths ran down the middle—a ring toss, a fishing pond, a horse-racing game powered by water guns—though they looked strange without the stuffed animals and other prizes hanging from the roofs, as if the carnival was in the midst of tearing down and moving to another town with different rubes.

Just beyond the north end of the midway, the shattered dome and guard towers set against the moving darkness of the Rift made Fontaine County Correctional look like a creepy castle from an old horror movie. The image was surreal, almost as though the prison had been superimposed over a black curtain writhing in a torrential wind.

Eventually they reached Rocky's Fun World. The last time she'd stood here was right after Ben and Allison had rescued her from the heart of the maze. She remembered the terror and confusion she'd felt while running through the hall of mirrors, turning back to find the lobotomized zombie gaining on her, slashing at her with his cleaver, chasing her toward the room that looked like the inside of a giant, beating heart.

She'd stumbled and fallen there, and Morton Welles reached out to touch her forehead… and the rest was a haze, lost behind a dark, gauzy curtain in her memory.

She shuddered.

They continued onward, passing below the legs of the giant, furry gorilla on the façade of the structure. Without power the mechanized beast lay dormant, no longer endlessly beating his chest. No lights flashed from within. No circus music irritated her as they passed.

In fact, the promenade was deathly silent.

A lonely tumbleweed rolled out from behind the ice cream stand, carving a trail through the mist. They both followed it with their gaze as it vanished at the foot of the funhouse.

Bram said, "Was that a tumbleweed?"

Lilian looked ahead. A skeletal sheriff pulled straight out of an old Western stood at the edge of the midway in a wide stance, hands at his sides, fingerbones twitching over the pistol at his hip. The skeleton was dressed in black from his boots and spurs to his cowboy hat. Lilian could see the prison gates right through his clothes and bones.

She turned back, expecting to see the sheriff's enemy. But the promenade was empty.

She was right in his line of fire.

"Bram…?"

In a blink, the skeleton snatched the pistol from its holster and fired. White fire exploded from the barrel and the phantom bullet whizzed right at Lilian. There was no time to move. The bullet hit her right in the sternum. She felt no pain, but the hole in the top she wore flittered away from her astral body like it was made of smoke.

"Bram!" she called out.

Bram had been squinting toward the surrounding structures. Now he snapped into action, pulling her away as the sheriff fired again, dragging her toward the funhouse. They ascended the stairs to the entrance of the maze as the midway erupted in sudden gunfire.

Pausing in the doorway, Lilian watched as ghostly rifles appeared behind the carousel, in the trams high above and the booths across the promenade. Mangled and ragged ethereals appeared behind the sheriff, outlaws and Civil War soldiers in blue and gray and Native Americans perched on rotting horse corpses, firing rifles and pistols and arrows. A cannon blasted from the foot of the Ferris wheel, where more cowboys, Confederates and Blues, Vietnam soldiers and Freemen fired antique single-shot rifles and modern machine guns. The explosive shell struck the ground behind the sheriff and soldiers and horses went flying, asphalt and mist thrust upward in a violent burst.

"Why are they fighting?" Lilian cried over the noise.

They appeared to be caught in the middle of an ethereal war she couldn't comprehend. There seemed to be no logic to how the sides were united, as many of the presumed "good" and "bad" people appeared to be on either side of the divide.

This is Garrote's war, she thought to say, but Bram gave her no chance, jerking her roughly her into the maze as men from the south end of the midway pushed forward.

"He shot me," Lilian said. In all the commotion she'd forgotten. It seemed odd to forget having been shot but there'd been no pain accompanying it. The only evidence it had happened was the singed hole the size of a quarter in the right shoulder of Mrs. Laramie's top.

"Just think happy thoughts," Bram said, not turning back, taking them down another corridor framed by sleek glass. Mirror, window or empty space, it was difficult to tell in the dim light, with no reflections of their own. Passing through in her astral form, empty space felt the same as physical material.

But Bram kept pulling her further into the maze, twisting and turning—left, right, left—with seemingly no logic to his movements, and she began to wonder why they didn't just cut right down the middle instead.

"They went in here!" an urgent voice called from outside, echoing through the maze. Behind them, two men in green camouflage entered the maze.

"Why aren't we going through the walls?"

"You try it," Bram shot back.

Lilian reached out to the wall on her right as they passed. Her fingers grazed cool glass. She could feel it.

"Why can I feel that?"

"It's the Rift," he said, turning them down a passage to the left. "Either we've become fully corporeal or the maze is somehow reacting to our astral forms. Either way, we need to get away from those men."

He pulled her left. Left again. Right.

The Rift, she thought, trying to ignore the madness of his choices. Think happy thoughts.

Then it struck her.

Happy thoughts. This was her only chance. What better place to attempt her escape than inside the Hall of Mirrors? She remembered Bram draping the sheet over the mirror in the Legion House bedroom. He could no longer hear her thoughts, that much she'd noticed in the time since she'd left his body. But he was still able to pull her along. He was currently distracted, but not distracted enough.

They reached another dead end. Through the glass and mirrors she saw the soldiers, their faces streaked with mud, and they saw her.

"There!" one of them shouted.

She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on a single image as Bram swept her around and brought her back the way they'd come. Those dazzling, inquisitive eyes she'd seen for a brief moment before the eye in the woman's forehead had swallowed her whole. The deep brown hair in a horsetail spilling over one shoulder, a streak of gold running through it. The sharp chin. The high angle of her cheekbones. The pout of her full lips.

"Evangeline…?"

Bram's voice startled Lilian. She hadn't thought it would work, let alone so quickly.

"Eva, how did you…?"

Lilian opened her eyes and watched the imago she'd manifested step out of the mirror ahead of them. Before Bram could finish his query, Evangeline—a somewhat hazy version of the image Lilian had seen in Bram's mind, lit like an aging actress in an old black and white movie—reached out and touched his face. She thought the tulpa's imperfection could easily be passed off as the dimness of the light within the maze.

Bram leaned his cheek into her open palm with a small sigh.

With Bram distracted, Lilian pulled away from him with every ounce of strength she had.

No sensation accompanied their separation. She raced down the corridor and turned right into the next. Right, mirror, turn back, right, right, glass, return. Only once she'd reached the foot of the moving staircase, now dormant, did she look back. Bram was nowhere in sight.

It worked! she thought, crying out ecstatically in her mind.

The stairs remained motionless and she ascended quickly, leaving Bram further and further behind, fooled by her less-than-perfect recreation of someone else's memory.

She bounded onto the balcony, the funhouse mirrors distorting her reflection as she passed. She could see herself again, and the revelation came as a shock. In the midway below the firefight was still in full force, bullets whining, cannons bursting, men shouting, crying out in agony—and she pushed through the black curtains at the end of the metal grating, into the gorilla's giant, mechanized heart, which throbbed with light and sound.

Beep.

Only the entrance to the heart didn't take her where she'd expected. She noticed the dramatic change in light a split second before she took in her new surroundings. Instead of the red, pulsating interior of the gorilla's heart she stood just inside the doorway of a white, sterile hospital room, a place she remembered very clearly.

Is this a memory? How did I get here?

The Dark Rift, she reminded herself. Memories, thoughts, dreams, they're all real here. Bram was right.

The bed closest the door was empty, as it had been on that day. The patient was in X-rays, she remembered. The TV on its swivel arm between the two beds played some old black and white movie. The last time she'd been here, she'd caught enough snippets of it to know it was about scientists who'd revived a rich man's brain after an accident.

Beep.

The curtain was drawn between the two beds. She couldn't see the other patient but she knew who it was.

Lilian turned around, expecting to see the inside of the funhouse curtain. But there was only the hospital room door. Through the window she saw a nurse pass by, pushing an old man in a wheelchair with an IV stand.

Beep.

The insistent beep of the heart monitor pushed her to move forward. She had to know what was happening, if this was real or a memory or something in between. She had to find out who was behind the curtain.

She reached out… hesitating as her fingers grasped it, feeling the fabric against her skin… and pulled.

Ben looked up from his hospital bed. He was deathly pale and skinny, his hair messy, shiny brownish bags under his eyes. "Lilian?" he said, clearly surprised.

He called her Lilian, not Lil. This wasn't likely a memory, but it might have been formed from one.

"When did you get here?" he asked.

"Ben…" She swallowed hard, finding it difficult to speak. "Ben, what year is this?"

He scowled. "Uh… 2015? What, did you get hit on the head or something?"

"Ben, I don't know what this is or how you're here, but I'm trapped in the Dark Rift."

"Dark Rift? Is that a new video game? You better not be playing without me."

"I'm serious. Bram pulled me into the Rift. He was trying to bring me to Garrote."

"Rex Garrote?" Ben's scowl deepened. "Lilian, is this a prank? Did Skylar put you up to this?"

Gunfire erupted in the hallway. A woman screamed.

"What's going on out there?"

Lilian clasped her hands together. "Just please, if you can hear me, come and find me."

"What do you mean if I can hear you? What's all that noise out there?"

The door burst open. Ben sat up carefully, looking past Lilian as she wheeled around, coming face to face with a mud-streaked, bullet-riddled soldier in jungle camo. His greasy, muscular biceps rippled as he dropped the machine gun from his shoulder and gripped it in both hands, aiming the barrel at her.

"Whoa! Badass!" Ben said.

A mighty animal roar came from the hall. The G.I. whipped around, boots squeaking on tile, as a black-and-white shape leaped through the doorway. The gunfire was painfully loud in the small room, but the black-and-white shape easily swatted the weapon out of the soldier's hand. Bullets thunked into the ceiling, loosing plaster dust.

Lilian recognized the old-fashioned sailor suit the hulking gorilla wore, replete with skipper hat. It was Robert the Doll, the stuffed monkey from the Visitor Center. Only he'd grown quite a bit since the last time she'd seen him.

"What the heck?" Ben said from his bed. "Is that a real gun?"

Robert the Gorilla stood up, stretching to his full height and slapping his chest. The soldier yelped and ran for the door, but the grunting animal easily closed the distance between them and leaped on the soldier with a massive roar, teeth bared.

The soldier screamed as the gorilla tore his uniform, clawing his arms and face, pounding on his chest. Lilian heard bones snap. The gorilla lifted the soldier off the floor and quickly slammed him back down, silencing his whimpers.

Perched on the soldier's chest, Robert looked up at her thoughtfully, an eyebrow raised. He climbed off the soldier's corpse on its hands and feet and waved a hand toward her, gesturing for her to follow.

"Lilian, what's going on?" Ben said behind her. "Seriously, this is weird as hell."

"Just come find me, Ben."

"Where?"

The television hissed. In a burst of static, she saw the psychic's booth, with its cartoon, turbaned woman and esoteric symbols. Then the movie returned, the scientists staring at the brain in the jar.

"Go to All Hallows' Close," she said.

"Okay," Ben said. "But like, I'll probably be here for a couple more days at least."

He didn't sound convinced. She had no idea whether she'd been able to communicate with him in the present or the past, or if all of this was just a figment of her imagination. She only knew that she had to leave this part of her life behind. She followed the gorilla-sized doll as he knuckle-walked into the hall.

The light changed again the moment she stepped out. Robert the Gorilla had vanished. She was alone again, in a dismal corridor with black-and-white checkered tile floors, hanging overhead lights and drab gray walls. To her left was a lime green metal door with a wired-mesh window. At her feet, tram tracks led down the hall from the double doors behind her. The ceiling groaned and the overhead lights swayed.

"No," she said.

Somehow, she was standing just inside the west hallway on the second floor of Bright Falls Sanitarium. She'd fled one maze only to find herself in another, far more deadly one: a labyrinth of the mind, a demented amalgam of memory, imagination and reality.

Or was all of this an extremely lucid nightmare? It was impossible to tell.

As she lamented her predicament, a door near the far end of the hall creaked open on an uncanny howl of wind, flecks of white dancing and eddying out into the corridor.

She recognized the high, throaty laugh that peeled out from the room, echoing in the abandoned asylum.

It was the same evil ethereal that had bitten off the maintenance guy's junk and had likely sexually assaulted Ben. The same Lilian herself had blasted into oblivion, uttering her favorite taunt phrase, and who would likely enjoy the opportunity for revenge.

Emma-Lou Whatsername, she thought. The Nun.

Without a moment's hesitation, Lilian pushed through the lime-green door still bearing Leonard's bloody handprint and wriggled into the passthrough to the nurse's station, wondering how in the hell she'd ever escape the asylum, let alone the Dark Rift.

The Temple Falls

OLLIE HEDGEWOOD WATCHED from the back of the limo as General Zaydan's hulking machine plowed through vehicle after vehicle ahead of the convoy, pushing them out of their path. Earlier, he'd overheard a handful of Zaydan's men calling it the "Fifth Horseman." How appropriately biblical, he'd thought, watching as the massive vehicle rolled into position.

Despite the subtle wonders of modern technological advancements, Ollie found something poetic about the brute force of industrial age machines like the Horseman. Sometimes he felt like the last of the old machines himself, a remnant of a dying age. As a billionaire, his every move was scrutinized, his every venture critiqued by people who in days past would have had no right nor recourse with which to challenge him. Even the charitable foundation he'd created to protect his family's endeavors had been nitpicked to death, publicly—and crassly, in Ollie's opinion—dismissed as yet another "tax shelter" of the über-rich Elite. Never mind the fact that the Hedgewood Foundation strove to rid the oceans of plastic waste, to eliminate poverty in desert areas by innovating terraforming techniques, and various other philanthropic contributions most of his detractors might have appreciated if they'd bothered to do a little research for themselves.

The average person didn't want to see that. They only saw a man with far too much money in a world of vast inequality. They looked at his myriad military contracts and saw only blood, not peace. Such was the burden of wealth, he supposed, though he couldn't take issue with their current complaints—the Ghostland Incident was his cross to bear, after all. Still, it was difficult not to feel unhappy while being constantly disparaged for trying to make an honest buck in the course of making the world a better, safer place to live.

Fortunately, Ollie was nothing if not patient. He was certain public opinion would sway once he'd saved the world from Rex Garrote and what General Zaydan called the "Ethereal Menace."

He'd bidden his time while his men installed the sonic fence, and he'd waited while the TANDY system worked her magic, neutralizing—to use the general's vulgar yet precise term—the ethereals within its radius. Sadly, Zaydan and his "optics" had put an abrupt end to the greatest technological advantage they'd possessed, the bleating of the herd had yet again interfered with the stratagems of superior minds.

The time for patience was over. With the arrival of what Ollie's science team had provisionally dubbed an "anomalous weather phenomenon" (though anyone with half a brain could see the darkness belching into the sky like a blown-out oil well wasn't natural but supernatural, at least in Ollie's opinion), it was clear that swift, decisive action would be necessary to contain the threat within Duck Falls.

Zaydan, who'd seemed almost fatalistically reluctant to continue his mission after the protestors had thrown a wrench in their plans, had finally come around. And here they were, crashing through the congestion like one of his great-great-grandfather's icebreaker vessels to the very epicenter of the ethereal threat: Thea Petralia's so-called "Temple."

The roadblock grew more difficult to clear once they reached the outer limits of Duck Falls but the Fifth Horseman pressed through regardless, vehicles jamming on either side, crashing into utility poles and porches and storefronts. The block cleared as they neared downtown, and finally the convoy turned onto Kubler Road, the rumble and roar of their engines—Sound and fury, Ollie thought jokingly—announcing the arrival of the cavalry.

Manny parked the limo and Ollie leaped out the back door without waiting for his driver to open it for him, recalling the first time he'd arrived at Garrote House as a child. He'd been so terribly naïve back then. The summer of 1980 had been a rude awakening. He'd learned the hard way there were people in this world who wished him harm simply because of his esteemed lineage.

General Zaydan climbed down from the tank directly ahead of the limousine. He smoothed his uniform and met Ollie in the street to the steady rapping of hard-soled boots as soldiers got into formation at the foot of the steps, sonic weapons at the ready. The two men approached the memorial. Ollie surveyed the names of the fallen, innocent lives whose blood stained his hands, while Zaydan frowned up at the plain white church.

"Feels somewhat sacrilegious, doesn't it, Oliver?"

"Unholy ghosts in the church," Ollie said, turning to squint up at the battened doors and windows. "That's the true sacrilege."

"That's why they sent us in." Zaydan's wink looked grotesque in the half-light, his face in partial shadow. "Nothing like a mass exorcism on Uncle Sam's dime."

"Indeed."

The general regarded him for a moment. "No one would blame you if you stayed out here."

Ollie nodded. "I'd like to join you, if it's all the same."

Zaydan clapped him on the shoulder. "Of course. You've got yards of guts for a civilian, Oliver."

"Thank you, Franklin. I appreciate everything you've done here. You're a true hero, despite what the press might say about you."

"Fuck the press." Zaydan nodded curtly and slipped on his ReOss glasses. "You ready?"

Ollie donned his own, and nodded.

"On my order," Zaydan barked, facing his men. "Remember to minimize civilian casualties, if possible, but not at the risk of your own lives."

Two men ascended the steps with battering rams and held them poised before the doors. Meanwhile the strange darkness no one could quite identify—though from brief arial surveillance it appeared to be emanating from the hole above his own former home—still roiled high above the church. It was as if God Himself couldn't bear to look at what was happening in this insignificant little town and had blocked it from His holy sight.

"Now!" the general ordered.

Troops charged up the steps. The battering rams smashed both doors inward, and the two men stepped out of the way of the assault.

Zaydan marched in on the heels of his men. After a deep, calming breath, Ollie followed.

The sound of screams already reached him from within, the shouting of soldiers, boots thundering on the floorboards. Ollie heard quick blasts of infrasound before stepping through the knave. Once inside the sanctuary, he could hardly believe his eyes. Ethereals of all sorts unleashed a violent attack on the troops, while the men defended themselves as best they could with their sonic weapons.

He hadn't expected much of a fight. Nor had Zaydan and his men. They'd been certain Thea would resort to using the Recurrence Field, confining the ethereals safely within. He'd expected them entirely unaware. But these ethereals were giving Zaydan's men a run for their money. They'd been training for a fight, by the look. A little girl with pigtails fired some sort of blue plasma ball at an advancing soldier. It struck the man in the chest and he spun in midair, landing on one of the pews, his uniform singed. Danica dropped to a crouch behind the stone font. It cracked against the impact of an ethereal mime who'd launched himself at it. She ducked under the falling debris, alive but shaken.

For the most part, the living Gurpies cowered, diving behind pews, huddling in small groups or running for the back of the building. One incredibly brave or stupid man with ridiculous blond dreadlocks and round Steve Jobs spectacles—the same man who'd led Ollie to Thea's office the other day, he noted—leaped out of the pews to shield two terrified ethereals from two of Zaydan's men. The soldier to Ollie's left backhanded the fool, who sprawled across a pew. The ethereal woman he'd tried to protect cried out "Coop!" Both soldiers took aim at the huddled ethereals and neutralized them with a rapid, concerted blast. The man—Coop—watched them vanish with evident horror.

Danica rose from the rubble of the font and aimed her weapon at the mime. The mime raised both hands, as if performing a glass box act, and promptly flickered out of existence. Another soldier leaped out of the way of hurled sandbags and blasted the funny little man with the mustache, who'd apparently thrown them, into oblivion.

Pews tipped. Civilians were trampled, soldiers kicking bibles and placards and paint cans out of their path. With a warning cry, Zaydan pointed to a ghostly pirate flying down from the rafters. His men caught it in the crossfire.

Finally, Zaydan had gained the advantage. The little girl firing plasma balls began to vanish in the path of another wave of infrasound. Her plasma disappeared with her, gone before it could reach its target.

Ollie's stride became more confident, following the advancing soldiers. He felt like Zaydan's car-crushing machine, cutting a swath through marauding ethereals toward his quarry. The witch herself stood gripping the pulpit in fear and horror, watching as her people fell in his path, disintegrating into nothingness, erased from the world.

Which Horseman am I? Ollie wondered idly. Am I War? Death? Or both?

An ethereal woman in a flowing white gown shot out in front of them with an intense high-pitched scream. Ollie ducked and covered his ears, his headset whining feedback. The soldier to his left spun on the heels of his boots and fired his weapon, silencing the ethereal's ear-shattering scream. The dead woman flickered in and out, her war cry becoming a shriek of terror, until she finally dematerialized.

Nothing stood in Ollie's way now. He strode toward the pulpit, his grin widening the closer he came, screams, cries for help and bursts of infrasound from all sides.

Thea Petralia, sole heir to the Kismet fortune, stared him down as he reached the foot of the stairs.

"You," she said.

"Me," he countered.

Walk Through Walls

AS BAD AS Ben felt about leaving anyone behind, he and Sam left Andy to bury Lamb in the field where she'd passed away. The last time he looked back Andy had been clawing at the earth with his bare hands, tears shining on his cheeks. It would take him hours to dig a big enough grave like that, but he was nothing if not determined. His love for her, still so new, would be more than enough motivation.

With no corporeals to slow them down, Ben decided it would be easier to swift the two of them directly into Ghostland. Unfortunately, he found himself unable to even wink himself out. "Must be something about the Dark Rift," he said, to which Sam had shrugged. They did the next best thing: cutting diagonally across the field, heading directly toward the Rift, hoping whatever had prevented him from winking out wouldn't stop them from passing through the park wall. If it did, it would be a long trek back to the front gates, and Ben would've preferred not to double back.

Eventually, their path led to the edge of the Gurpie camp. Trucks, trailers, campers and tents sprawled over probably a half mile of trampled straw, buzzing with hectic movement. Gurpies loaded vehicles, packed up tents and supplies, closed camper awnings, jammed guitars and cases of craft beer into trunks and truck beds, secured bicycles to car roofs. They hugged each other, wept, shook hands and promised to see each other again "real soon," without much hope evident in their faces.

It took a little bit of walking before somebody spotted Ben and Sam. The man seemed to be as shocked to see them as they were that he could see them at all, his eyes practically bulging out of his head as he stuffed a camo duffel bag into the cargo trailer attached to the back of his Harley.

"Ben fuckin' Laramie?"

Ben didn't recognize him, but the man in the Led Zeppelin T-shirt and motorcycle vest seemed genuinely excited to see him—so much that he started waving his arms to anyone in his vicinity.

"Hey, everyone! It's Ben!"

Sam scratched her head and Ben thought, not for the first time, how much she reminded him of her father. Not that they looked anything alike, aside from their stature. Just their mannerisms, and the way she spoke sometimes.

"Well, this is an interesting twist," she said.

"So much for passing through unnoticed," Ben agreed. "Maybe it's how close we are to the Rift."

Sam grinned. "Whatever it is, it looks like they're about to roll out the red carpet for you."

Half a dozen people swarmed around them, boxes or bags in hands and slung over shoulders, smiles on their faces as they approached the two ethereals in their midst. Ben greeted them somewhat shyly. He'd gotten so used to being unseen, a force of good without a face, and he'd never interacted with any of these people with their eyes directly on him, smiling and praising him. It was a level of celebrity he didn't feel at all comfortable with, so he put on a fake smile and false confidence the way he had at the prison in Ghostland, when he'd been the living one and it was the ethereals looking at him like these people were now.

As if he'd come to save them all.

That is what we're doing, isn't it? Otherwise, what's the point?

"This is my friend, Sam," he said, deflecting some of their attention as they introduced themselves to his companion.

"Any friend of Ben Laramie's is a friend of ours," the man in the Pale Riders vest said, a tanned arm around the shoulders of a woman with blue mascara and a fringe hairdo she'd likely had since the '90s. The crowd had doubled since he'd first been spotted, more Gurpies eager to greet the ethereal they'd never seen, who'd been their mascot—and to many of them, even a hero—for the past several months.

"Ben," a soft voice said from behind him.

He turned to see a woman with curly silver hair atop her head and deeply lined, olive-toned skin. She smiled at him with cracked lips.

He waved. "Hello."

"I'm Nevaeh."

"Good to meet you."

"It's good to meet you. I sure am glad my friends and I were able to spare some of you from that awful noise."

"You got them to turn off the infrasound? How?"

She smiled. "By doing what we do best: protesting."

People in the crowd nodded and cheered at this. The guy in the motorcycle vest said, "Hell yeah!"

"Well, Sam and I are sure glad you did," Ben said, not bothering to tell her about the Recurrence Field in the Temple. Regardless, if Nevaeh and her friends hadn't gotten the infrasound shut off, he and Sam would still be trapped there. They would've been sitting ducks when Hedgewood and his army came for them.

"Thank you kindly, Nevaeh," Sam said.

The older woman smiled benevolently. "You're welcome. And you're also welcome to join us, but as you can see many of us have decided it's time to move on." She nodded toward the black sky. "Your sleepy little town doesn't feel quite so welcoming anymore, sadly."

Ben nodded. "Sam and I hope to do something about that. But it's smart to get as far away from here as soon as possible. Just in case we aren't able to stop it."

Nevaeh's golden eyes dazzled, and she tapped her nose secretively. "Stop him, you mean."

The remark surprised Ben. "How do you know about Rex Garrote?"

"Your friend Le Mon warned me something like this might happen—" She looked up at the sky, her brow clouding. "Well, not quite like this, but something quite dangerous. I was so enamored with Thea's rhetoric at the time I couldn't imagine anything short of a peaceful coexistence with ethereals."

Ben gave her a sad smile. "Hope is a good thing to have."

She returned the smile. "If we didn't have hope, we'd have left after the Army took over our little enclave. But we've done all we can here, I think. We lost good people today. Friends. And I'm getting too long in the tooth to keep up with it all."

Another voice in the crowd interjected before Ben could offer condolences for their loss: "Hey, Ben."

A lanky, broad-shouldered kid with shaggy blond hair waved at him from the crowd with his prosthetic right arm. Ben recognized him. Aside from the pimples, the new arm and a foot or more of growth spurt, he still looked like the same kid he'd known from ninth-grade math.

"Billy?"

The crowd parted for Billy Turner, valedictorian for what would have been Ben's year if his parents had let him stay in school.

"Hey, man. I just wanted to say, if you need another pair of hands, I can help." To prove it, he easily crushed a pop can lengthwise between the thumb and forefinger of his bionic hand, which Ben had to admit was pretty impressive.

He shared a look with Sam, hoping she'd say no so he wouldn't have to be the bad guy. But she considered the offer with a shrug and a nod.

"Thanks," Ben said reluctantly. "But I don't think it's a good idea. We don't know what might happen to a living person going in there."

Billy frowned and nodded, looking off toward the pillar of darkness. "You know, I just watched my friends die to shut that sound off. I put my own life at risk, too. Lilian probably didn't tell you but I was at Ghostland on opening day…" He twiddled his bionic fingers. "I lost my football scholarship saving a five-year-old kid's life."

"Jeez," Ben said, feeling guilty. "I'm real sorry."

"I'm not. That kid's still alive because of me."

Ben gave the offer more thought. He had to admit they could use all the help they could get, though more bodies allowed for the possibility of more death. Then again, they'd been comfortable enough to bring Andy and Lamb along, so discriminating now would hardly be fair. They were so much closer to the hatch than the entrance though, which meant they'd have to go back a mile or so to get inside the park.

He shrugged. "Screw it. Get some food and water and you can tag along."

A crooked smile spread across Billy's pockmarked face. "Right on!" he said, and ran off to wherever he'd been staying while he was here with the Gurpies.

After he left, the crowd began to wander back to their vehicles. Nevaeh smiled amiably, hands clasped behind her back, rocking slightly on the soles of her leather sandals. Her wrinkled toes were painted neon green. "Have you seen Thea?" she asked after a moment.

"I was just with her ten, fifteen minutes ago."

"She's good then? The others?"

"Last I saw." He remembered the convoy, the fear in Thea's eyes when he told her Hedgewood was on his way. Despite what she'd done to him, he hoped she'd be all right. He hoped the ethereals there had fled or fought the onslaught off for as long as they'd been able. "I'm sure they're fine," he added, though he didn't know if he believed it.

"That's good to hear." She nodded as Billy returned across the trampled field with a denim bag slung over his shoulder, weaving through collapsing tents and reversing vehicles. "Billy's a good boy. Take care of him, please."

"Will do," Sam said.

Billy gave them each a suspicious look when he neared. "Were you guys just talking about me?"

Nevaeh smiled. "Yes, Billy. I was telling them you'll make a great addition to their team."

He grinned and kissed her cheek. "Thanks, Nev. I'll come visit you in Phoenix sometime." He shrugged, and lugged the bag further onto his shoulder. "You know, if I don't die."

"I'd like that." She smiled again. "Though if you do pass on, the invitation still stands."

They all chuckled at this. It felt good to laugh. Ben suspected there wouldn't be much opportunity once they crossed into the Rift.

They thanked Nevaeh again before leaving camp, for rallying the Gurpies on their behalf. She offered them "positive energy," and a bowed "namaste," and sent them on their way. As they passed through camp people in the midst of leaving waved, wishing them good luck, and hugging Billy. A little curly-haired boy with his right arm wrapped in gauze ran up to them, bumped his uninjured fist with Billy's clenched prosthetic, and ran off giddily.

"Jason loves that," Billy said with a grin.

Eventually the camp gave way to open field and the three of them were on their own, though as Ghostland's east wall towered over them, Ben began to sense other ethereals nearby, very faint, like distant radio signals.

While they headed along the wall toward the gates, the Dark Rift churning high above, Billy told them how his life had changed since his injury at Ghostland. His entire forearm and hand had been crushed under a falling tram car when he pushed a little girl out of its path. He'd gone through months of intensive—and expensive—medical treatment and physical therapy, and had channeled some of that enthusiasm into his valedictory speech. He'd always had decent grades but his parents couldn't afford tuition, and without his scholarship he couldn't get into college. He'd been offered a full ride at Stanford—he'd likely have been in some of the same first-year classes as Lilian—but without his throwing arm they'd walked it back. He'd no longer known what to do with his life.

Some friends had created a crowdfunding campaign for him, which ended up making enough for his parents to buy the top-of-the-line bionic prosthetic he wore now and pay back all of his outstanding medical bills, as well. The hand itself was pretty nimble but he still found it difficult to catch and throw a football, and he'd never been ambidextrous.

When Thea and the other Gurpies arrived in town he hadn't expected much from them beyond the class-action lawsuit his parents had joined. It was at the memorial ceremony that he'd finally found something to live for again. "You changed my life," he said to Ben.

"Me?"

"Yeah. If you hadn't opened the hatch, none of us probably would've survived. That's what Deputy Lovett told me, anyway. Because of you and Lilian, they were able to get inside and lead people to safety. One of them was me."

Ben let this sink in. He'd spent so long feeling guilty for opening the hatch and setting Garrote free, he'd rarely considered the lives that had been spared because of it. Without his last-second decision—whether it was a mistake or the right thing to do—many more lives could have been lost. It was all a matter of perspective. One person's hero was often a villain or coward to another.

"Anyways, that's when I decided to dedicate my life to GRP2. My parents hated the idea. So I packed up a tent and moved out here for the summer."

Ben nodded. "I saw you at the Ghost Brothers protest. We appreciate all the help we can get."

"Thanks. Hey, I, uh…" Billy kicked a stone. It struck the wall and bounced off. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"You know, for being a dick to you. Back when you were still in school."

Ben was surprised to find the hurt still there, after all these years. After everything he'd been through. Dying. Almost getting sucked into the Dark Rift. The old cuts were the deepest, apparently. "It's okay," he said. "We were just kids."

"That doesn't make it right." Billy gave him an apologetic look. "Actually, I think I mighta been the first one to call you 'the Dead Kid.'"

"And look at me now." Ben grinned.

Billy looked like he wasn't sure how to respond, and Ben let his grin slip. "It did hurt, for a long time," he admitted. "But thanks. Apology accepted."

Billy stuck out his prosthetic appendage. "I wish I could shake your hand."

Ben splayed his ethereal fingers. "Same."

"You know, this is gonna sound weird, but I kind of envy you two. I mean, you can pretty much do anything you want, right? You're kinda like superheroes. Make things move with your mind. Cross super long distances in a blink. Walk through walls…."

Ben smiled softly. "It does have its advantages. But I'd give just about anything to be alive again."

Billy looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Why?"

Sam had been following behind them, giving them space while they hashed things out. She caught up to them now, pointing toward the parking lot. "Hate to interrupt, but we've got trouble."

Ben looked ahead. They were just close enough to the county road to see the Army convoy driving along the edge of the field, a trail of dust in their wake, the massive car-pusher in the lead. They were on their way back from the Temple already. He wondered if they'd left any survivors, even among the living. He wondered if the ethereals had caused any casualties of their own.

He couldn't tell if they were heading back to the base or to Ghostland until the big truck in the lead turned at the lot entrance and started coming their way. With the speed they were driving, he expected the convoy would reach the entrance before they did. He didn't think it was likely they'd let anyone follow them in, especially not ethereals. They were heavily armed, and would likely protect the gate to the death. He and Sam wouldn't stand a chance, let alone Billy.

"What now?" Sam said, seemingly having come to the same conclusion.

The only option Ben could think of was to send Billy back to camp and head through the wall, like they'd originally planned. "Let's keep going," he said, delaying the inevitable. "We can decide what to do once we get a little closer."

"So long as they don't find us first."

Sam was right. He hoped it wouldn't come to that.

"Hey! Come and look at this!" Billy had fallen behind them while they'd been scoping out the convoy, and had stopped to stare at the wall.

"What is it?" Ben said, heading back to him with Sam at his side.

Billy pointed. "The wall is moving."

Ben and Sam moved closer. Billy was right. The wall was moving. It was very subtle, but it looked almost like minuscule ripples in the cement. Almost as if the matter itself was in flux.

Billy reached out his living hand, fingers splayed as Ben had moments ago. Before either of them could warn him to be careful he plunged the hand into the rippling surface and drew it back quickly, turning back to them with a look of amazement. Ripples spread out across the surface of the wall, like a stone just dropped in a body of water.

"Did you see that?"

Sam nodded. "We saw it. What does it mean?"

Ben said, "It must be another effect of the Dark Rift. Changing matter into… gas? Ether? How did it feel? Is your hand okay?"

Billy grasped his forearm with the prosthetic and wiggled his fingers. "It feels fine. A little tingly, I guess."

"I don't want you to try walking through but—"

Before Ben could finish Billy took a quick single step, the cement parting around him as if he'd walked into an extremely dense fog. A moment later, he was gone.

Sam and Ben exchanged an anxious look.

"You think we should—" Sam began.

"Hey, guys!" Billy laughed excitedly from the other side of the wall. "Come through!"

They shrugged at each other and passed through the wall together. Billy stood on the other side, his back to them, his head bowed. The three of them had entered just behind the midway, facing the backs of carnival rides, trailers and booths, amid long tracks of snaking cables. The dark, swirling mist Ben had seen from the top of the hill clung to everything like smoke in a burning building. Above the rides and games, he saw the top of the Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, and beyond that, what looked like the shattered rotunda of Fontaine County Correctional.

"It's like Brigadoon," Sam said.

Ben blinked at her. "Briga-what?" He was thinking it reminded him of Silent Hill.

"Guys, look." Billy held out his arms, wriggling the fingers on his right hand with a look of astonishment.

Sam squinted at them a moment. Then her eyes alighted. "That's the wrong arm," she said, before Ben could ask what the big deal was. When he realized she was right, he joined in their amazement.

Billy looked at his living hand—now the right instead of the left—and clenched it into a fist. "This feels right. I mean, it feels like the right. After I lost the arm, I kept having this strange feeling. My doctor called it 'phantom limb syndrome.' I could feel the arm for months after I lost it. Mostly it was just this crazy bad itching I couldn't scratch. But sometimes it felt like I was still moving it, even though it wasn't really there. This feels just like that."

"I dunno if this is what it is," Ben said, "but I read about this thing called chirality. It's this theory that when you pass through a black hole, everything is reversed. Like a mirror world."

"Are you saying we passed through a black hole just now?" Sam asked, dubious.

"I don't think that's exactly what it is. But maybe the Dark Rift is like a black hole."

Sam tugged her shirt out of her waistband on the right side and raised it just below her ribs. A pink scar about half an inch wide rose from her hip to her ribs. "My scar's still where it should be."

"It's just a theory." Ben shrugged. "Maybe it only affects physical stuff."

"So what you're saying is—" She waved a hand at midway. "—we've entered the Twilight Zone?"

"Probably more like a Bizarro World version of Ghostland. But yeah." He shrugged. "Close enough, I guess."

Sam sighed heavily. "Well, I can't speak for the two of you, but I am really looking forward to finding out what that'll be like."

Ben appreciated the sarcasm but he was in no mood to laugh. Everything they'd endured to make it this far was nothing in comparison to whatever the Dark Rift had in store for them.

Rex Garrote would make certain of that.

Psychic Geography

LILIAN WONDERED IF her heart was thrumming inside of her body back in the bunker while she cowered below the counter in the nurse's station at Bright Falls Sanitarium. Was she hyperventilating? Was she moaning and thrashing wherever she lay? Would her mother know what was happening to her? Would Blake? Did any of them have a clue that she was about to die?

She knew hiding was useless. No material object would protect her from an ethereal meaning to do her harm. At any moment the Nun could walk right through the door as if it was nothing and slash Lilian's throat or carve out her heart. Emma-Lou Amesbury may have had a particularly gruesome method for dispatching men, but it was possible she saved an even worse fate for women, especially if they came between her and her "playthings," as Lilian had with Ben.

Can ethereals kill astrals? she wondered. Bram had never specifically told her, but she supposed all evidence so far pointed to him believing they could. Aside from the ghost dogs, they'd fled from every encounter. Then again, he'd said the giant doll had been an imago.

She'd already seen what they could do to ethereals. Le Mon hadn't looked good the last time she'd seen him. She wondered if the imago she'd created in the Hall of Mirrors—or tulpa, or whatever he wanted to call it—had absorbed Bram's energy.

It'd serve him right, she thought, and was surprised to find she felt a little guilty.

A throaty laugh interrupted her thoughts, followed by the rapid thump of bare feet on tiles, somewhat like what her heart was likely doing at this very moment. She heard something heavy and fleshy being dragged behind or alongside it.

"'Poor Mary sits a-weeping,'" the ethereal sang in a toneless near-whisper, passing through the door to the recreation room. "'A-weeping, a-weeping. Poor Mary sits a-weeping, on a bright summer's day.'"

Snow eddied into the nurse's station through the window, triggering a memory of what Lilian had read in the patient files tucked into the leatherbound books on the rolltop desk back in April. She recalled pointing out a photo of the snow globe with the Christmas tree inside it to Ben, and telling him they might be able to use it to pacify the ethereal. Ben had told her it wasn't a video game, that they wouldn't get trophies for completing side quests.

Real life wasn't like video games—but the Dark Rift wasn't exactly like real life, was it? Physics followed different rules here, like Bram had said. She'd already made a woman appear out of nowhere, real enough to convince Bram, allowing her time to escape. Was this any different?

Lilian crept across the small room to the glass-doored cabinet holding a display of old medical instruments: the skull drill, the rusty speculum, the calipers and empty medicine vials. Holding out her hands, cupped together, she focused on the glass.

She pictured the dark green, impossibly conical tree within the globe, brushed with snow like a Frosted Mini-Wheat. The miniature lights and ornaments. The star on top, the bone or soap used for snowflakes falling lightly around it. The shape and pattern of its base, the phrase O Tannenbaum etched into the—metal or wood? It had looked more like metal, the color of lead.

"I know you're in here, girl," the Nun said from a distance, within the outer room. "I can taste your fear."

Lilian ignored the nun's taunts, her eyes fixed on the glass. A white spot had formed slightly above her hands. It seemed to be growing, spiraling outward.

"A frightened little girl is all you are." The voice was closer now, the thud of her bare feet and the dragging sound nearing. "I eat frightened little girls. Eat them and spit out the bones!"

Lilian fought the urge to tell the ethereal she wished she'd choke on them, concentrating on the object in the glass that was beginning to take shape. It was very clearly round, with a rectangular base. A flurry of white surrounding the dark conical shape in the middle. Pinpricks of color were already forming on the tree.

Sharp nails clacked on the passthrough counter. "There you are!" the nun hissed.

Lilian couldn't help herself. She turned from the glass and took in the sight of the black-eyed demon staring at her, framed by the passthrough window, its white flesh iridescent beneath the nun's cowl, shimmering like fish scales. Black, membranous wings unfurled over her shoulders, each several feet long. A thick, wormlike tail slithered over its shoulder.

"You," the creature hissed, pointing at Lilian with a single sharp-clawed finger.

Lilian felt the heft of something solid in her cupped hands. One moment they'd been empty and the next, full. She regarded the snow globe, turning with it held out.

The succubus reeled, hissing through her needle-sharp fangs. Snow swirled into the room, thick as a blizzard. She couldn't see a thing around her, couldn't tell which way was right or left, up or down. Any second now the demon-nun would grab her in its sharp claws and pull her into that spiny-toothed maw, tearing off flesh.

Lilian wished she'd had one more moment with her mom, with Blake. She wished Ben was here with her, her partner, her best friend, if only to share these last few moments with her.

When the snow finally cleared, Lilian allowed herself a sigh of relief. The nurse's station was gone, replaced by a warmly lit living room. To her right, a Christmas tree stretched to the stucco ceiling, ringed with strings of popcorn, tinsel and multicolored lights, studded with silver balls and colored bells, topped by a glowing angel. Beneath the tree, wrapped gifts were heaped as high as the lowest branches. A gramophone with its horn-shaped speaker thumped and crackled, as if it had come to the end of the record. In the nearby hearth, a fire rumbled.

In front of the tree, a girl of about five or six sat cross-legged in a ruffled blue nightgown, holding a similarly dressed porcelain baby doll.

"'Poor Mary sits a-weeping,'" the girl sang, making her doll dance to the words. "'A-weeping, a-weeping. Poor Mary sits a-weeping, on a bright summer's day.'"

A muffled argument from another room tarnished this pleasant scene: a man and a woman shouted at one another, their words indistinguishable. A dish smashed. The little girl sang louder, attempting to block out the sounds from the other room.

Was this child Emma-Lou Amesbury? If so, the arguing was likely her parents. Everything about the scene was languid and soft-hued, like an old photograph or a long-forgotten memory.

Footsteps thundered, and a woman in a house dress burst into the room, her brown hair set in meticulous waves. She crossed to Emma-Lou and stooped to snatch the doll from the girl's hands. Emma-Lou cried, and the woman—her mother, Lilian supposed—slapped her backhanded. The girl stopped wailing, only allowing herself small whimpers and sniffles.

"What did I tell you about singing?"

"Let her alone, Lucille."

The man's voice came from the darkened outer room. Lilian couldn't see him from where she stood. The mother turned to the foyer. Her eyes went wide in shock. Then they narrowed to slits.

"You wouldn't," she said.

"Give her back the doll or I will."

The mother gripped the doll's head with a look of determination, calling his bluff. She twisted it quickly and tore it off the body.

Emma-Lou cried out, "No!"

A loud bang came from the foyer, accompanied by a flash of light. For a moment Lilian thought a lightbulb had exploded. Then the pieces of the baby doll dropped to the floor and Emma-Lou's mother clawed at the front of her housedress, just below the neckline. She looked up from the wound in shock, holding out her blood-drenched hands. She collapsed face first on the carpet.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie," the man in the foyer said. Another gunshot rang out, followed by a heavy thump and the clatter of the gun on hardwood.

"Daddyyyy!"

Emma-Lou got to her feet and ran for the doorway, but a flurry of black and white swept into the room, preventing her from reaching her father. The little girl screamed as Lilian recoiled in fear.

Only when the creatures circled Emma-Lou did Lilian recognize them as nuns, their pale faces twisted into scowls, their wizened fingers clutching.

"Leave her alone!" Lilian shouted at them. But the nuns ignored her, sweeping the screaming girl away.

Alone again, she crossed the memory to the doorway, skirting around the dead woman on the floor. A man in a suit lay on the rug in the foyer. He'd blown the top of his head off. His toupee lay in a splat of blood, skull and brain, looking like a squirrel run over by a car. Stairs led up to a second floor. Doorways opened on a small, yellow-checkered kitchen and a dining room. The front door stood open a crack.

Now what?

She'd expected to be brought back to the asylum the moment the nuns had taken Emma-Lou away, as if this was a cutscene from a video game. She didn't want to return there, but the fact that she hadn't, that she was still stuck in this memory, made her wonder once more if she would ever get out of this place, or if she'd be stuck in the Dark Rift forever.

The front door creaked open, inklings of a darkened room beyond. She crossed to it, stepping over the man on the floor. It was obviously the way out, but would it lead somewhere she wanted to go? Or just take her deeper into the labyrinth?

She pulled the door open all the way. Three rows of theater seating surrounded a bright, circular room behind wire-frame glass. Lilian knew this place. She dreaded going through the door but already the house behind her was fading away into nothingness, the bodies on the floor becoming ghosts, the color draining from the furniture. The lights on the Christmas tree winked out. The thump and scratch of the gramophone silenced.

Lilian stepped swiftly through the door before she flittered away along with the memory—though she feared what lay ahead might be one of her own, a bloody trauma she'd never wanted to revisit.

Back in the asylum, she descended the steps, passing rows of seating where doctors and students could watch the surgeries in the operating theater below.

She reached the observation window, where she and Ben had beat on the glass to divert Dr. Death's attention while Niko had tried to sneak up on him. The scene below was just as they'd left it. The bone saw on the floor in a puddle of blood, the blood still wet, multiple sets of footprints tracking it to the exit. The instruments tray had fallen over, medical tools scattered on the floor. Allison lay on the surgical table, the top of her head and dark hair hung loose from the valley carved in her skull, matted with blood.

Lilian felt tears wanting to come as she looked down at her former therapist, but without a body it seemed she couldn't produce them. If she was doomed to relive this memory, the least the Rift could do was give her the benefit of catharsis. But it denied her. She could only stare at the dead woman in deep, unrelenting despair. For their failure to save Allison, Niko and Leonard. For every death they'd witnessed that day.

Something caught the light from the bright surgical overheads, glinting on Allison's wrist.

"My bracelet," Lilian said. She'd left the bracelet her parents had given her as a totem for Allison, hoping it would help her to move on to whatever came next. Hoping her therapist wouldn't end up absorbed by the Ghostland program and taken over by the virus.

Except, she had been, hadn't she? In the end, Allison had returned, warning them not to murder Garrote—that killing him would set him free. Ben had seen the flash of Garrote in her face, as Lilian had seen several times before with other ethereals, and she'd believed him. Allison had already been taken over by the Garrote code, and Ben had used the stun gun on her, blasting her into oblivion. The fact that Allison had been right, that killing Garrote had set him free, had never sat well with Lilian.

She rounded the observatory glass, heading for the door and the stairs leading down to the room. She passed through the door easily and descended into the operating theater.

Allison lay unmoving on the table, exactly how they'd left her. Lilian approached the body, the same emotions she'd felt that day overwhelming her, making her stop several feet from the table, willing herself forward.

"I'm so sorry," she said. It wasn't enough. Would it ever be enough?

The dead woman said nothing. Her lips were curled in a rictus. She'd died in fear, leaving Lilian with a warning about the "red water." Her eyes must have come open after Lilian had closed them. They stared glassy and glazed at the white lights shining down on them.

Lilian took her therapist's cold hand in her own. She held it a moment, then unclasped the bracelet from her wrist. It wouldn't do the woman any good now.

Allison's eyes opened the moment the cheap gold chain left her wrist and her ethereal sat bolt upright, swinging her legs off the table. She bore none of the wounds of the body she'd just left, which still lay on the table. She blinked rapidly and turned to Lilian.

"Lilian," she said, in amazement and relief Lilian herself shared. She'd thought Allison was gone forever. Dispersed by the stun gun. Yet here she was, a fully formed ethereal.

"I was just having the worst nightmare," Allison said, frowning. "I was performing surgery on myself. On my brain. I cut open my own—"

She happened to glance down in that moment and saw her own dead face, the glistening, blood-caked skull above her eyebrows, the flap of scalp hanging down. She leaped off the table in horror.

"It's true? It really happened?"

Lilian nodded. "I'm sorry, Allison. We tried to stop him—"

"Leonard was possessed by the doctor," Allison said with a nod. "I saw him in my dream. Dr. Death—wasn't that what they called him? I kept dying and waking up over and over on a loop." She snatched out in sudden terror, grasping Lilian's hands. "Are you dead, too?"

"No. I'm…" The thought of trying to explain it, when Allison hadn't been through even half of what Lilian had herself in the past seven months, was so daunting she didn't even try. "It's complicated. We really need to get you out of here."

"You waited for me?"

Lilian shook her head. "We had to leave. To escape. I survived. The others…"

"Ben?"

"He died. But he came back, just like you. And now we really need to find him because—"

Allison's eyes widened. "The man in the red water. You let him out, didn't you? That maniac."

"Yes," Lilian said, feeling the shame of it like a weight on her weightless body. "And now we have to stop him."

"It's not just the computer virus anymore, is it?"

"No. It's worse than that. Much worse. He got out and…" How could she boil down everything she knew to a sentence or two? They needed to leave. She could tell Allison everything on the way. "Let's get out of here first," she said, heading for the door they'd taken to leave the operating theater the last time.

Allison followed her. Lilian couldn't recall what was on the other side of the door. She remembered having heard Demont over the walkie-talkie shortly after, which of course had turned out to be a dead conman named Betruger, and she'd run toward the voice, brimming with hope. Niko had died of blood loss somewhere between the patient rooms where they'd found the walkie and the hydrotherapy baths where Morton Welles and Dr. Death's other zombies had attacked them, and where moments later Leonard had given up his life to help them escape.

She wondered if they would find Leonard and Niko on the way, Demont—the real Demont—and Stan Beadle, too. If they would still be where their bodies had fallen, caught in their own death loops as Allison had been in hers.

Lilian grasped the door handle and opened it.

Morning sunshine nearly blinded her. She had to look away and let her eyes adjust before turning back again. When she did, joy overcame her, and she stepped through the doorway with no hesitation.

The rooms were so familiar she knew every object and its placement by heart. She knew the path of the sun through the windows, and the shops she would see on the other side of the street if she crossed to open the blinds. She knew its smells—her mother's teas and hand lotion, her dad's aftershave, boiled cabbage from Mrs. Kowalski in 3A, cat smells from Mr. Roscoe in 3C—and the cozy feel of her regular place on the sofa, the strange ticking and grumbles of the fridge at night, the groan of the pipes when the toilets flushed anywhere else in the building, the beeping of delivery trucks as they backed into the feed store two doors down, the sound of children playing in the street on a warm summer day.

She was home.

Lilian turned to remark excitedly to Allison but the operating theater she'd just stepped out of was gone, and Allison along with it. Instead, she saw the hall outside of her apartment.

I lost her again. She looked at the bracelet she'd taken back from Allison, now firmly around her own wrist. Had wearing it brought her here? Was this her totem? Like Whatsit had led Bram to her in the bunker, had the bracelet led her back home?

The toilet flushed and the pipes groaned. She heard toneless whistling, water splashing in the sink. A wave of excitement washed over her. She felt tears coming, but again they refused to fall.

The bathroom door opened and Hiram Roth stepped out, drying his hands on his work pants. He was deep in thought and didn't appear to know she was here.

"Dad?"

He looked up, startled. "My darling daughter is awake." He smiled, then looked in the vicinity of her waist. "You're going to get an ulcer with that breakfast."

Lilian looked down to find she was seated at the table. A cup of black coffee and a plate of dark, buttered toast lay before her. It was her usual breakfast, before she'd left for college.

Her father sat down beside her. He smiled goofily, watching her.

She didn't know what to say. How to react. She was just so happy to see him again. It had only been days since they'd buried him but it felt like at least a year.

I could stay here, she thought. I don't have to leave.

"My angel," he said. "Look at you. Grown up so fast. You got your mother's good looks, thank God. Can you imagine that gorgeous face with these eyebrows?"

"Dad, I…"

"You know, when you were just a little one, Mom and I always told you you'd go on to do great things. We hypnotically suggested it in the crib, I kid you not. Baby Einstein is an amateur compared to your mother and me."

I remember this, she thought. This is a memory. He said all this the day we went to Ghostland.

"And now here you are," her father said, "just a few months from graduating. Heading off to college." His eyes fluttered dramatically, rolling back in his head. "Oh, to be young again."

"Dad."

He blinked. The smile on his bristly face faltered, and he seemed to come around. "Yes, sweetie?"

"We've done this before."

"What? This? Well, I wouldn't say it's routine, but we've certainly had our share of John Hughes father-daughter moments." His smile returned. "Your mother and I, we're just so proud of you, honey. But you know, you don't have to go to UMD just because it's close. Don't be afraid to spread your wings a little."

"Dad, no. I went to Stanford already."

He frowned and glanced out the windows. His eyes seemed to glaze over.

He's looping, she thought, and suddenly the truth of it struck her. This isn't my memory. It's Dad's.

Her father regarded her, falling back into the rhythm of the remembered conversation. "We just don't want you to limit yourself, sweetie. Duck Falls is a wonderful little town, but this place—" He grabbed at the air and pulled. "—it sucks you in. It's like a black hole."

That's what this is, Lilian thought. It's a black hole that keeps sucking me back in, over and over, like Allison's dream, like Dad's death loop. But maybe I could stay here. Not go to Ghostland. Warn Ben not to go—and if he doesn't believe me, I'll tell his parents what he's planning. Tell them to look in his bag if they don't believe me. The lighter fluid would prove it.

I could change it all this time. Make things right.

I could put Garrote back in his cage.

She knew that wasn't true. Like the Nun's memory, this would fade in time. Who knew how long she had here? She needed to use these final moments with her father wisely. She needed to savor them, because they would likely be her last. But the allure of staying was almost impossible to ignore.

I could fix it, she thought. Put everything back in its right place.

Her dad took her hands, pulling her from her reverie, and squeezed them. "Don't get your butt stuck in Duck Falls, honey," he said.

"I won't," she said, and knew she couldn't stay here, in her father's looping memories. Finally, tears fell from her eyes. They felt strange on her cheeks, like glistening trails of diamonds.

Hiram pooched out his lower lip. "Oh, my darling girl. Why on earth are you crying?"

"I just missed you so much."

"Missed me? Honey, I'm always just right down the hall…."

He stood and hiked up his toolbelt, reached out and wiped her tears with the rough pad of his thumb, looking down at her with a smile.

Lilian missed that, more than anything. More than her mother's warm hugs and even Blake's kisses. Just knowing that Dad was right down the hall made everything feel… safe. Comfortable. Normal. Right.

"Have fun at the spooky park today, sweetie."

"Doubt it," she said, playing along.

"Well, if you can't have fun at least stay safe." He kissed her on the forehead the way he always did, cupping the back of her head with his strong, blistered fingers in her hair. "Love you, sweetie."

"Love you, Dad," she said, watching him leave.

He twiddled his fingers at her in the doorway, and the sight of it brought back the same feeling she'd had that morning: the thought that this moment right here would be the last time she ever saw her father. She'd had no idea what might happen back then, whether the morbid intrusive thought was about herself or her dad. But the feeling had been so intense that she'd almost convinced herself not to go to Ghostland that day.

What if that feeling was meant for me now, not back then? What if this really is the last time I see him?

"Dad…"

He turned, gripping the door handle. "Yes, my angel?"

"Do you know about All Hallows' Close?"

He frowned. "All Hallows' Clothes? Is that some new thrift store?"

"Close. Like open and close. I think?"

He shook his head. "That doesn't sound familiar. Why do you ask?"

"If you ever see it…" She didn't know if it would work, but there had to be some reason she'd discovered the exact place her maternal grandmother had ranted about on her deathbed right here in the Dark Rift. Unless she really was losing her mind… which, in retrospect, she supposed was just as likely.

"Just go there, okay?"

Concern furrowed his brow. When it settled, he smiled again. "Do you need me to pick something up?"

"No." She forced a smile. "I just need you to go there, that's all. Can you do that for me, Dad?"

He seemed to see the desperation in her face and nodded. "Okay. I'll go. Can I take your mother with me?"

Lilian wiped away fresh tears, sniffling. She shook her head. "Mom said she'd meet you there."

Hiram smiled. "Okay, then." He blew her a kiss.

Lilian caught it and pressed it to her cheek.

"I love you, my angel."

"I love you too, Dad."

He smiled once more, quizzically, as if thinking that no matter how much time he'd spent bonding with his teenage daughter he would never fully understand her. Then he pulled the door closed behind himself and was gone.

In his absence, Lilian allowed herself to weep.

Lost & Found

LE MON SAT with Shawna on the wall of the well, holding her hand, the two of them not speaking for several minutes, just kissing, gazing, touching.

Eventually the time came for questions, and Shawna was ready with answers for just about every one of them. The shadows arising from the well, she told him, were called tulpas, a different name for what he'd always called imagoes. They were entities formed from thought, she told him. The well itself didn't have a name, though she'd heard some within the Dark Rift call it "the Spring"—which itself was called by many names here: Heaven, Hell, Nirvana, the Great Beyond, Empyrean, Hades, the Dreamtime. Countless others.

"They say Heaven is what you make of it," she told him. "So is Hell. This place—" She swept her arms out grandly. "—it's both and neither. Hell to some, Heaven to others. It's the In Between of everything."

Le Mon couldn't quite grasp the concept of a place that was everything and nothing, but he wasn't sure it mattered. Whatever he needed to know about his new home, Shawna would be his guide.

She couldn't remember how long ago she'd arrived here, at the epicenter of the Rift, but she told him she'd found her way here because it had called to her. Not with a voice, as such. More of a gut feeling. She supposed the same feeling had called out to him.

"What if it was us," Le Mon suggested. "You and me callin out to each other, only we didn't know it? In my dream, you said for me to find you."

She smiled, touching his face. "You said the same in mine."

"It was love," he said, taking her hands. "Stretched out between us like roman candy, over time and space. Beyond death. To whatever this place is. Wherever it is."

Another shadow rose from the Spring, transforming into a vague doglike shape before scurrying off into the endless white expanse. Le Mon remembered his wound, the infection that had brought him here. He'd known these "tulpas" by another name in the world before this, and knew of their danger there. Here, wherever this was—some region within the Rift, a place of light and creation rather than darkness and destruction, the Alpha to the Dark Rift's Omega—he felt no sense of animosity from them. If they fed on ethereals, as he'd been led to believe, they possessed no hunger in this nascent stage of being.

"I could stay like this forever," he told her.

Her smile faltered. "Not this time."

"Why not? You ain't leavin town, are you?" He grinned, but she didn't return the smile. His own faltered.

"This place isn't safe any longer," she said. "There's a stain—a living darkness. It's been spreading ever since the passage was opened into the physical world. It's a disease that won't stop until it consumes everything."

"It's him, ain't it? Ga—"

She put a finger to his lips, her gaze penetrating. "We don't say his name. Not here, so close to the Spring."

"How do we stop it?"

"You can't. But you can help us leave before it's all destroyed. That's why you were called here, Leon. Why I was called here."

"I don't understand, Shawna… how do you know all this?"

"The longer you spend here, the more you'll know, too. But there's no time for that now."

She looked up suddenly, fear in her eyes. A ribbon of black shot through the white in the sky, like lightning in negative, causing a flash of darkness to fall over them. It made Le Mon's eyes hurt, like looking at the sun. He blinked it away.

"You have to leave," she said, standing and taking him by the arms.

He got up, following her away from the well as another shadow, malignant or otherwise, rose from the milky depths. "Where we goin?"

Shawna shook her head. "Not 'we.' You. It's not my journey to make," she said, peering over her shoulder at the flashes of darkness on the horizon.

He felt his eyes welling up. "But I just got you back, Shah…."

She wiped his tears away before they could fall and held his face in both hands. "And you'll see me again. I promise. When it's all over."

He shook his head. "This ain't fair. You know that, right? Why us, huh? Why can't we be together?"

"We will, Leon, my love. Soon."

The look in her eyes told him she wouldn't take no for an answer. He sighed heavily. "What do I have to do?"

Shawna smiled, taking his hands again. "There's a woman who can help us. You need to find her."

"A woman?"

"A very old woman. A powerful woman."

Another fork of lightning shot across the firmament, further darkening the sky.

"Powerful? Then why can't she stop all this? Why does she need me?"

"She's powerful, but nothing like him. He's tamed the Darkness, made them his pets."

This was all too much for Le Mon. Taming darkness? Milky springs giving birth to sentient shadows? Psychic phenomena? How could any of this be real?

If it's not real, then she's a dream, too. Do you really want that?

"Okay, love. I'll do it. For you."

Shawna nodded, as if she'd known all along he would say yes, and was only waiting for him to confirm it. Of course, he would. There was never any doubt he would do whatever she asked. He'd already followed her to the end of the earth and beyond.

It was only a question of whether or not he would succeed, and if he'd ever be able to return to her.

"There are people you need to find first."

"People?" he said. "What people?"

* * *

Andy sat for a long time in the dirt patch beside Lamb's freshly covered grave, thinking about how little time the two of them had gotten together, which had been both the best and worst days of his life. Best, because Lamb Curtis had made him happier than he'd ever been in his mostly miserable existence. She'd made him forget about gambling for the first time since his late teens. She'd believed in him and appreciated him, making him a stronger, more caring person. She'd pushed him, with love and kindness, to be the man he'd maybe always been meant to become, a man who would risk his own life and freedom for the safety of others.

He knew she would want nothing more for him than to continue being that man. She'd want him to help Ben and Sam and whoever else they'd managed to wrangle into their ragtag band of freedom fighters, to stop this Rex Garrote guy, save all of the ethereals caught in the Dark Rift and close it for good.

And he would have. He would have followed them to the literal End of the Earth… if Lamb had been at his side, gently prodding him the way his Nudges had toward lucky slots and tables and eventually toward his Destiny.

But now he'd been set adrift. His gwisin had moved on, or been sucked into the Rift with all the others they'd lost before Thea had managed to get the Recurrence Field working. Lamb was dead and buried, already cooling a mere few feet below the surface. Ben and Sam had left him, heading toward a Destiny he had only a short while ago thought he'd shared. There was nothing and no one pushing him forward. He was alone, in every sense of the word.

He sat cross-legged in the dirt, surrounded by straw the same blond-gold as Lamb's silken hair, his hands blackened with grit, the sky above as dark and empty as her death had left his heart.

Staring determinedly at the low mound he'd created over her body, the stones he'd placed to mark the grave of the only woman he'd ever truly loved, he waited, as if expecting the dirt to tell him something. To spell it out for him like a Ouija board. To tell him what to do next.

But there was nothing. Less than nothing. It was just a stupid pile of dirt and rubble.

Double zeroes, Andy, my man. The House wins. The House always wins.

As he thought this, the ground began to tremble, causing little clods of dirt to tumble and roll off the pile of earth before him. For the briefest moment, both terrified and strangely exhilarated, he imagined her hand shooting up from the earth, and Lamb clawing herself out of her fresh grave.

Come sleep with me down in the dirt, she'd moan with a mouth full of earth, reaching for his throat with grimy, mud-caked fingers… and the worst part was he would probably join her, even knowing she was a card-carrying member of the living dead.

The roar of engines came from the road, shaking these disturbing thoughts from his head. Andy stood abruptly, trying to see through the gently swaying straw. It sounded like the same convoy that had passed them on the road, only this time heading in the opposite direction. He couldn't be sure unless he got closer to the road, and that would mean leaving Lamb behind.

He looked down at her burial mound, a pale excuse for a memorial. He'd said some words in a desperate, tearful haze, most of which he no longer remembered. There hadn't even been a large enough rock to properly mark the spot. He'd found a few round stones about the size of his fist and laid them atop the mound just about where her head would be in the elongated figure-eight shape of an infinity symbol, just like her necklace. If the owner of this land brought the plow out here—if any of them managed to survive this extremely long day—he'd turn her body into mulch without even knowing it.

What now? Do I stay or go?

The rumble and roar continued despite his hesitation. Knowing what Lamb would have wanted pushed him reluctantly through the brittle straw into the next row. From there, he turned back. The mound was barely visible. If he lost track of his footprints—the dirt was parched, each footstep kicking up fresh dust, leaving barely a trace of him—he'd lose her grave entirely.

But if that convoy's heading for Ghostland, I need to warn Ben and Sam.

He hurried through to the next row, and the next after that. The rumble and roar drove him onward, and he held on to the thinnest hope he'd gone in a straight line, that his footprints would lead him back to her grave.

With the road just visible through the sway of straw, he ducked as the tank trundled past. The convoy was driving faster than before, without the need to wait for the car-smashing thing to push vehicles out of their path. Rather than marching alongside and behind, the excess soldiers hung off the sides of Humvees and trucks.

When the last of the military vehicles and the black Hedgewood vans retreated, throwing dust, the limousine roared by in their wake. Andy had first seen it three days earlier, parked outside of the Temple, the "mean man" Lamb had teased him about sitting behind the wheel. This time the back windows were closed.

Ben had told them all about the bald freak with the twisted smile who'd tortured him and the floating Scottish head, and Andy had a pretty good idea why Mr. Sick Smile wasn't looking out the window anymore: with no more ethereals to watch being tortured into oblivion, the view would be pretty dull. Andy had an idea the guy got off on it.

The cloud of dust sifted through the straw, so thick and cloying Andy had to shut his eyes against it. He coughed, then choked until fresh tears came, making tracks in the dirt on his cheeks. It felt like he'd swallowed a goddamn pebble, and it had stuck right at the back of his throat.

When the dust cleared, when his coughing fit finally diminished, he found he could no longer see the footprints he'd left behind.

"No," he croaked, and coughed afresh from the sharp tickle still at the back of his throat.

What now?

He turned back to the road. There was a signpost directly across from him. He couldn't tell what it was—dead-on, it just looked like a pole with something flat across the top—but he'd seen it in flashes between the vehicles. It meant he was standing in just about the same place he'd been when he got here. He was sure he'd walked here in a relatively straight line—or as straight as humanly possible—from Lamb's grave.

Turning in a sharp one-eighty, he stared at the field, stretching from horizon to horizon. Not a single thing distinguished it from the miles and miles of it they'd passed on their way into town. Even if he'd used the Dark Rift as his compass, the tear in the sky had widened so far in the sky above it seemed as though he now stood directly under its shadow.

With little other option, Andy pushed through the row ahead, the brittle stems and thin leaves suddenly feeling very sharp and hostile, slashing at his arms, his bare calves and face. At first, he thought he must be imagining it—he'd only just passed through here, after all—that his fear at potentially losing track of Lamb's grave, thus losing her forever, was making him loopy. But when he looked down, he saw beads of blood rising from thin lacerations on his forearms and in the tangled hairs on his legs.

The straw had turned predatory.

"What the fuck?" he said. A stem swung at him with the chitter of a rattlesnake, slashing across his right eye, temporarily blinding him.

He cried out and pushed forward, arms held out like a boxer to protect his face, savaged by a hundred tiny paper cuts. The straw seemed endless. What he should have passed through in one or two seconds had already taken ten, fifteen, twenty… Was he walking sideways? No. He opened his left eye—the right was angry and pink—and saw that it was just as thick to the right and left as it was ahead and behind him. A strand slapped across his face, nearly striking his other eye.

He screamed for help.

All over now. Might as well cash in your chips, Andy, my man, because your luck has finally. Run. Out.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

Despite its gentleness he whirled, crying out in terror, suddenly sure the man they'd been looking for had found him, that this man who'd orchestrated the second biggest American massacre in the past century would be standing there with a smile burning in his shadowed face, and tear Andy's beating heart right out of his chest.

Through tears, with a slight pink haze on his right eye, he turned toward the owner of the hand.

"Breathe, punkin," Lamb said. She was watching him with concern, her hair shimmering like cornsilk, a faint glow emanating from it just like the rest of her, just like Ben and Sam and the others.

"You're—"

"—a ghost?" She gave him a crooked smile. "Looks that way, huh?"

Andy just stared at her, open-mouthed. They were in the middle of a dirt row, the straw swaying lightly on either side of them, no more deadly than any field growing at the side of the road. The pinkish hue of blood in his right eye had cleared. He was free.

Lamb reached out gently and caressed his cheek. "Thank you for laying me to rest," she said. "But we've got work to do."

His eyes were tearing up again. "I thought I lost you."

She pouted. "Aww, punkin. You can't lose me. Not anymore. I'm your gwisin now," she said, pronouncing it the way his mother had, not like she had before. "You're stuck with me until the end, one way or the other."

His eyes brimmed with tears again. "But I lost your grave. It's back that way, I think," he said, pointing toward the epicenter of the Dark Rift, toward Ghostland.

"It doesn't matter, Andy. It's just a shell. Let it turn to ashes and dust, like it says in the Bible. All that matters is we're together, you an me. And Ben was right. We can save em, Andy. We can save em all. But you an me have to be there." She suddenly gave him such an earnest look it hurt his heart. "You believe me, don't you?"

"Of course, I believe you, Lamb. But how do you know all this?"

"I can see like your gwisin now. It's beautiful, Andy. That's what I was tryin to tell you when I died. It's so beautiful you can't even imagine. And you can join me, soon. But our work here isn't finished just yet. Not til we gather up the others."

"Others? You mean Ben and Sam? They're already on their way—"

She shook her head. "Not them. Other ethereals."

"What do you mean 'other ethereals'?"

"'Member when my mom said you're like a magnet? That ghosts are attracted to your indigo aura?"

He thought back to that brief meeting which seemed like so long ago now, more like a year than a week. He wondered how Lamb would've known what her mother had said, but he supposed Psychic Sonya likely would have told her after the fact. "I think so…."

"Well, it's true. The aura thing isn't quite like she said but that doesn't matter. What matters is, ethereals are attracted to you. You're like a… a spiritual conduit. Ben was recruiting an army of ghosts to go up against the bad guy but now it's just him and Sam. We need to finish what he started, Andy. We need to go back to Duck Falls and gather up as many willing souls as we can, and bring em to that House. Fortune smiles upon the brave, and frowns upon the coward."

Andy frowned himself. Lamb was acting kind of strange, but he supposed death would make anyone act differently. The few brushes with death he'd had—when he'd almost been run down by a Humvee on the Strip, and when Mr. Broadman's goon finally caught up with him at the psychic expo—had put his whole life into perspective. Both times he'd zeroed in on what was most important to him. He supposed actually dying would narrow that focus to a pinpoint.

"Okay," he said. "But why would they come with us?"

"Not us, Andy. You. It was always you. I really should've known it the moment you intervened at the Psychic Expo…"

Her thoughts were moving so quickly he couldn't quite follow along. "Known what was me, Lamb?"

She had a faraway look, as if she was staring into the future. After a moment she returned to him with a half-smile, the kind that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Never mind that. Let's shake a leg, huh? Time's a-wastin."

She started moving, passing easily through the straw. Andy rushed to catch up. "But it'll take an hour just to get back to town," he called after her. "We still have to warn Ben and Sam—"

"If we don't get movin, no amount of warnin's gonna help em." She turned back between the rows, wearing a slight frown. "Do you trust me, Andy?"

"Of course, I trust you."

"Then believe me. 'Sides, it won't take more than five minutes to get back to town. There's a car off the side of the road, just up here."

Stepping out onto the empty county road, Andy saw she was right. There was a car up ahead, the last ray of sunlight that hadn't been swallowed up by the Dark Rift shimmering off its windshield. They reached the lipstick-red '79 Trans Am with a giant black Firebird decal on its hood in under a minute.

"Mint!" Andy said, running a hand along the chassis, still baking from the vanishing sun. The car appeared to have survived the car-smasher machine, making off without even a scratch. Andy supposed it must have been parked like this, just far enough out of the road while the convoy passed, though he wondered why its owner would have left it just sitting here.

Lamb grinned. "I figured you'd like it."

He tried to measure his hopes. "It's gotta be out of gas, right?"

"Why don't ya look for yourself?"

Andy peered through the driver's window. The door was unlocked. The keys were in the ignition. He laughed and opened the door, climbing in behind the wheel. The interior was stifling, the gauge resting at just over half a tank. Again, he wondered why the owner would have left it but he decided, as he'd done countless times before, not to question his good luck.

"Here goes nothin." The key turned easily, the engine roaring to life like a lion freed from its cage. This would be way more fun than driving Thea's hybrid. He didn't want to put a curse on it, but the '79 Esprit Red Bird had been his dream car ever since he'd seen one roaring down the Strip when he was little.

"Whatcha waitin for, punkin?" Lamb said, already sitting comfortably in the passenger seat. "Open 'er up and let's see what this baby can do!"

Andy grinned. He buckled up, threw the car into gear and peeled rubber, wheeling the beast toward town.

The Taken

THE LIMOUSINE DOORS locked with a decisive clunk. Thea shifted uncomfortably in the seat facing Hedgewood and his companion: a severe-looking woman with dark hair pulled back from a face the color of soap. The woman held a pistol pointed at Thea, as deadly as the infrasonic weapons had been to the ethereals they'd murdered at the Temple only minutes before.

"May I offer you a drink?" Hedgewood asked, picking up the crystal decanter of amber liquid on the console.

"You kidnapped me," she spat, wanting to laugh in his face but not daring, wary of the gun trained at her. "You slaughtered my friends right in front of me. And now you want me to join you in a fucking toast?"

Hedgewood smiled bitterly and returned the decanter to its place. The woman's face remained impassive.

"You asked me something when we last met," the murderer said. "You suggested humans attempt to dominate what they fear. You then proceeded to ask if I was afraid of ethereals. I didn't answer you then. But I'd like to explain myself now, if I may."

"As if I have a choice."

"There's always a choice, Ms. Petralia."

Her gaze fell on the gun. "Fine. Enlighten me."

The sickly smile returned to his nearly purple lips. "I was thirteen years old when I first saw a ghost," he said, the smile fading. "Several ghosts, in fact, though one in particular haunts me to this day. My brother and I never saw eye to eye about a great many things in those days. I was jealous of him, to be frank, though that wasn't the least of it. When my father handed down the business to him instead of me, the eldest son, I was incensed. But I bided my time. I knew Christopher would one day tire of doing Father's bidding, even if when the time did come the old man was already years in his grave.

"Eventually, I was proven right. Christopher stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer, handing the reigns over to me, his aggrieved brother—under the specific condition I allow the projects he'd been working on to continue unhindered. One of said projects was his precious theme park. He'd had me sign legally binding documents, so that when he passed away, I was obligated to pursue his dream despite him not being alive to see it come to fruition. Ghostland, you see, is the posthumous success of my little brother, Christopher… and my own most colossal failure."

She opened her mouth to retort. He raised a hand, announcing his intention to continue. The sight of the gun made her choke back her words.

"I don't deny responsibility for what happened on April twentieth," he went on. "For what's happening now even, though I'm well aware you and your people were responsible for the Recurrence Field breach. It was my hunger for power that allowed Christopher's monster to grow out of hand. If not for my desire to gain control over the family business, his park might have died along with him. This is my mess to contain, Ms. Petralia. Everything I've done since the disaster has been to atone for the tragedy caused by my own ambition."

She let the silence in the back of the limo draw out a moment, the only sound the rumbling engines from the road ahead of them. Then she laughed. She laughed in their surprised faces until tears spilled from her eyes.

"You honestly expect me to believe that?" she asked once she'd controlled her laughter.

"Truth isn't dependent on whether or not you believe it. You can choose to think the worst of me, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm the only one trying to put a stop to what's happening here. We all want the same thing."

"Not this way," Thea said. "Those were good people whose afterlives you extinguished. They have friends, people they love, who love them. What if your brother had been in there? Would you have wiped him out so casually?"

Hedgewood appeared to think about it, squinting out at the battered vehicles lined up on either side of the street, pushed up on the sidewalk, through storefront windows, on steps and porches. The limo was headed up the Duck Bill now, out of town on the county road.

"Fortunately for the people of Duck Falls, I didn't have to make that choice," he replied, turning back to her with a dead-eyed stare. "I only took the most logical course of action to prevent the further loss of lives. Real lives, Ms. Petralia. Not the theoretical existences of your so-called ethereals."

The limousine blew past the town sign, wishing them a quacking good stay. "Where are you taking me?" she asked, certain she already knew the answer.

His sickly smile told her she was correct. "To my greatest folly, of course."

"Why? Why didn't you just shoot me when you had the chance?"

"Because you and I have unfinished business to attend to, Ms. Petralia. This problem belongs to you now, as much as to me. I wonder…" He shook his head daintily, tutting. "No, I don't suspect you knew you were doing Garrote's bidding when you took down my Recurrence Field, did you? You likely had no inkling of your second-in-command's ties to the man."

Thea nearly choked. "What are you talking about?"

The sickly smile returned. "So you didn't know Rex Garrote bought Bram Merritt's freedom from a mental institution? I must admit to only discovering myself quite recently, but it does track, doesn't it? Whose idea was it to destroy my machine? If I were a betting man, I'd say it was Bram who'd first suggested it. Perhaps as a joke, at first. But a joke with an undercurrent of truth."

Thea bit back a snarky retort. Was he right? Had it been Bram's idea from the start? Had he been playing her the whole time?

No, she told herself. It was as much her idea as his. Maybe he'd been the first to suggest it out loud, but she'd certainly considered it many times before that. Originally, she'd planned to sabotage the Recurrence Field or the program servers on opening day, hoping a major scare with a few injured guests would make front-page headlines and cause an uproar, certain the public outcry would be enough to pressure Hedgewood into closing the park. But the logistics of doing so with such heavy security had proven to be too difficult, and she hadn't been able to reconcile the possibility that her plan might cause casualties.

Had Bram pressured her into making those thoughts a reality earlier than she might have otherwise? Likely. Without him, there would have been no explosives. Bram had been the one to plan the bombing, from the burner phones to placing Jerry Dougan on guard duty and pinning the bill of sale on him, their sacrificial lamb. If it had gone as planned, the freed ethereals would have either joined them at the Temple or gone back to find lost loved ones and passed ancestors. She certainly hadn't expected them to attack the town. But if Bram really was working with Rex Garrote, as Hedgewood claimed, this was likely the exact outcome they'd hoped to achieve.

Garrote had been one step ahead of them all, just like Ben had said. All this time, he'd been preparing to wage his war against the living… and she'd played right into his hands.

She couldn't admit any of this to Hedgewood. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, she asked, "Why did you want Ben?"

The man seemed surprised by the question, and for a moment he didn't answer. "Because he let Rex Garrote out of his cage," he said finally. "I wanted to know how and why, and where the bastard is hiding."

"So if you knew Garrote was alive all that time, why did you keep his secret?"

Hedgewood nodded. "It was a stipulation of my brother's last will and testament, I'm afraid, as well as a contractual obligation. Ghostland was Garrote's dream before it became Christopher's. Keeping his limited existence beneath his house a secret was part of the contract. Though I must admit, I might have been a little too eager to have Garrote under my thumb. With his dark secret kept at my discretion, whether or not he continued to enjoy his albeit limited freedom was mine to control."

"And that was important to you?"

"Rex Garrote murdered my brother," Hedgewood said, with only a slight downturn of his lips. Thea couldn't decide if it was a pout or his sickly smile. "I may not have liked Christopher very much but he was still family. Ms. Amblin assured me one of her ethereals was to blame, the entity known as the Behemoth, but I know better. I suspect I always had. Garrote controlled them, you see. He's always controlled them. I'm more certain of that now than ever. Only now, he's far more powerful than he ever could have ever been in life."

He waved a hand toward the windows. "This schism he's opened here, my great-great-grandfather spoke of it in his journals. He and Garrote had conversed with each other, nearly one hundred years apart, through this… rift in space and time. After that night, my namesake spent his remaining days vainly attempting to reopen that schism with machines, powered by vast amounts of electricity—a phenomenon he distrusted quite deeply, apparently. He was certain reopening this rift was the key to unlocking the mysteries of life and death. But the truth of the matter is, it was only ever possible to open it with psychic energy. What Ms. Amblin called 'dead energy.' The more of it the better." The sour smile returned for an instant. "Rex Garrote knew he'd need a tragedy on a grand scale. And in my negligence, I handed him that tragedy on a silver platter."

"Then why didn't you put a stop to it when you had a chance?" Thea asked with undisguised exasperation. "You could've reneged on the contract. It's not like your brother could take you to court if he's dead."

"The sad truth is," Hedgewood said in a tone of contrition, "I thought Ghostland would be a harmless bit of fun. We all thought it was harmless. Everyone but Rex Garrote, it would seem, who outplayed and outmatched each and every one of us from the very beginning." Hedgewood tented his fingers below his chin. "One could almost imagine the outcome was predestined. Wouldn't you agree?"

* * *

Blake and Maddie had been watching Lilian for over an hour while Ben's grandmother crocheted, seemingly oblivious to the anguish her housemates were going through. Lilian hadn't moved once in the time they'd been sitting at her side. Just the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, and the restless flutter of her eyes behind their lids, as if she were merely dreaming.

"I wonder where she is right now," Blake said.

Maddie smiled lightly. "With her father, I hope."

Blake agreed with a solemn nod. He'd never heard of anything like this happening for so long outside of a fairy tale, and had grown increasingly anxious the more time had passed. What if she never returned to her body? What if she stayed like this forever?

"Blake?"

Maddie looked at him with baleful eyes. She'd taken her daughter's hands again, holding them tightly in her own.

"Uh-huh?"

"Do you think… whatever is happening to her… that she'll survive? That she'll come back to us?"

"I hope so, Maddie. I hope so."

Earlier, Ben had given them the gist of what had led up to today and what they expected to face at Ghostland. Blake had been swept up in a wave of hopeful excitement at the prospect of Ben and his friends preventing Rex Garrote from destroying the world. Sitting here now, waiting for Lilian to show some sign that she was okay out there, wherever she was, he didn't think it was likely any of them would return, let alone Lilian.

They could all be dead already, he thought. And Ben and Sam, they've probably already been sucked into the Dark Rift.

Blake still regretted pushing Lilian away the day she'd admitted her guilt to him, unburdening herself of what she considered her dark secret, her belief that Rex Garrote escaped because of something she'd failed to do. He regretted the times he'd pried too hard, trying to stick his fingers into her open wounds. Most of all he felt guilty for not giving her the benefit of the doubt.

But he knew guilt was useless if it didn't lead to change. Following her here, first to Duck Falls, then hunting down her parents and bringing them back to the bunker, had been an effort in that regard. He'd already begun to sway, to believe in the unbelievable, even before they'd landed in Duck Falls, while Thea related some of GRP2's—and Lilian's own—more memorable achievements. Having seen Ben for himself the other day, and Sam Beadle with him this morning, no longer left any room for doubt. The truth wasn't out there—it was right in front of his eyes. He just hadn't been able—or didn't want—to see it.

It was why he'd so easily believed Lamb when she told them Lilian was no longer with them. He'd felt it himself, in the time since Lilian had fallen into Michael's arms at the door. Her mind—her astral, her essence, her soul—was elsewhere.

Right now, Mr. and Mrs. Laramie were out there searching for a doctor, facing who knew what kind of monstrosities. He'd seen what the entity Lilian called the Behemoth had done to her father, lifting a grown man who likely weighed about two-hundred and fifty pounds, and tearing him in two with very little effort. He would hate to think what might happen to the Laramies if they came up against that, or this "Swarm" thing Lilian had described their first night in the bunker.

For all he knew, the Laramies were already dead.

Worse than that was knowing that if they did die it was to find a doctor who likely wouldn't be able to help Lilian anyhow.

These were worries he couldn't share with Maddie. She still held hope that Lilian was in a strange form of coma, that she'd fallen prey to some mental disorder or disease that had yet to be named—Roth Syndrome, the doctor would call it, once he or she had arrived and had time to diagnose her—and Lilian would soon be cured.

He had to admit it was easier to believe than the truth, that a man Lilian had trusted had snatched her soul right out of her body and likely taken her to a mass murderer for nefarious purposes. Blake only wished he could've gone with Ben and the others to help find her. Staying with her mother felt somewhat cowardly, but he knew it was probably for the best. Maddie needed someone with her, especially after what had happened to her husband. Ben's grandmother—as nice as she was, and despite the alleged bed farts—didn't seem to be all there.

As he thought this, Grandma Laramie started up on that song again, to a tune he didn't recognize, sung so softly it had taken a few times for him to decipher the words. The first time she'd started singing out of nowhere and in a soft yet clear voice, it had given him chills. He was used to it now, but it still disturbed him for some reason he couldn't define. She'd been singing it here and there for the past few hours as she crocheted. She would hum a few bars, hook the yarn, pull it through the loop, then start into the words again.

"What's that song she's singing?"

Maddie shook her head, looking over her shoulder at the woman. "I've never heard it before. It is strange, though, isn't it? It sounds more like a nursery rhyme than a song."

Blake watched Grandma Laramie's withered hands move expertly with the hook and yarn, her eyes remained focused elsewhere, staring off at the wall.

"Is that a real place, you think? All Hollows' Close?"

"Hallows," Maddie said, and shook her head again. "I don't know."

Blake hummed thoughtfully. Whatever or wherever it was, with a town filled with ghosts just outside the door, he couldn't help but wonder if the old woman wasn't more aware of what was going on around them than he'd first suspected.

"The spirits are meeting at All Hallows' Close," she sang again, hooked the yarn and pulled it through the loop. "They're going to decide who stays and who goes…."

* * *

Lilian wiped her tears, sitting in the kitchen chair in her father's memory far longer than she should have, mulling over her predicament. She could only hope her dad had absorbed what she'd told him, and that this All Hallows' Close place was benign, as she felt it was.

When she'd finally cried herself out, she stood, leaving the unfinished toast and coffee—she didn't much feel like eating, even if she'd been able—and crossed to the kitchen sink. She splashed water over her face, briefly forgetting where she stood, that such normality was abnormal in the Dark Rift.

With her hands dried on a dish towel, she turned to study the door, wondering how it was she'd come to arrive here, finally. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to where she'd ended up the other times she'd opened a door within the Rift. She hadn't been thinking of Bright Falls Sanitarium when she'd stepped out of Ben's hospital room, and she hadn't meant to return here when she'd tried leading Allison out of the operating theater. Each instance had just happened, and if there was some internal logic to the choices it was—at least at the moment—far beyond her ability to understand.

She crossed to the front door, wondering, If I choose a different door, will it take me someplace else? If I go to my bedroom, will I end up in a different place than if I go through the front door, or into the bathroom, or out the window?

The problem was she had no way to tell until she'd done it. It wasn't as though she'd been able to see what lay ahead before she'd stepped through the doorways. If there was a way to predict the path she'd take, she would have tried.

Her desire to get to All Hallows' Close was more than just a vague feeling now. She needed to find Ben and her father. She was certain if she didn't meet up with them soon, she'd lose her chance altogether.

How do you find your way through a maze like this?

It came to her suddenly, so obvious she could have slapped herself.

The Dark Rift really was a maze, in a way: a very elaborate, unpredictable and potentially deadly maze, but a maze nonetheless. And what advice did she always follow when caught in a maze?

Touch the wall and always turn right.

Rather than reach for the door handle, she moved her hand to the right and touched the wall. She followed the wall past the open front closet to the hall, running her fingers over her bedroom door, turning at the end of the corridor and touching the door to her parents' room. She passed over the bathroom door and stopped in front of the hall closet.

The last door on the right.

She closed her eyes and reached out for the handle, grasping the cool brass. She took a deep breath in through her nose… concentrating on nothing but the image of the psychic's booth in the midway, with the cartoon image on top and the various occult symbols below… and out through her mouth.

Then she opened the door.

She stood looking in at the shelves of linen and towels for a long moment, the luggage high on the top shelf, the boxes of tax documents and business papers below.

I won't see it until I've gone through, she reminded herself, and took a single step into the closet, as far as she was able, then pulled the door shut behind her. For a moment the uncertainty was so intense she almost tore open the door and ran back out, the darkness fueling her anxiety and claustrophobia.

What if I end up in back the Gorilla's Heart? What if Morton Welles is there, waiting for me?

Lilian pushed away the terrible thought and held on to the bracelet her parents had given her, trying again to conjure the brief image she'd gotten of All Hallows' Close. The psychic lady with the (was it purple or violet?) turban, conjuring mist within her crystal ball. She tried to envision the symbols she'd seen on the front, hoping to manifest it the same way she had Emma-Lou Amesbury's snow globe, and Bram Merritt's lost love.

The cramped closet brightened with a warm and flickering light. She felt the space open up, no longer squeezing her between the shelves of linen and the door. She smelled—A fire?—no. They were gas flames, like from a lantern. And very old paper. And dust. All of this came to her before she even attempted to open her eyes.

"Ah, Lilian!" Rex Garrote said cheerly, and when her eyes sprang open, she saw him hovering cross-legged in the center of his library, ten feet above the floor. Oil lamps held back the dark from all but the shadows on his face, giving his sadistic smile a haunted, campfire glow. "I'm so glad you could join me!"

Lilian screamed.

Part 4

The Dark Rift

Life and Death, Heaven and Hell, the Past, the Present and Future—all of this is nothing more than a hyper-realistic dream of the waking mind.

— Rex Garrote, Rough Beast

I had discovered myself within a realm of impossibility, unburdened by the laws of the natural world. It would be easy to lose oneself within such a place, tantalized by the ability to shape reality to one's own whims with a mere thought.

— Yogi Udarsh, translation of a 15th Century text

The Way Station

BEN LED THE others through the midway, heading the way he and Lilian and Allison had gone on opening day, toward the prison, which stood directly between them and the ruins of Garrote House. Billy marveled at his right hand multiple times on their journey, like he'd reunited with an old friend and still couldn't quite believe it. As they passed children's rides and small exhibits, he picked up a discarded Gatorade bottle and started chucking it up in the air as they walked, catching it nimbly and smiling to himself.

About halfway to the northern end of the midway—Ben could just see the giant gorilla from Rocky's Fun World towering over the games and rides ahead of them—he looked to his left and saw a sign with a cartoon psychic.

"All Hallows' Close," he said. "That name… it's familiar for some reason."

"I think it's close," Sam said. "As in close and far."

However it was pronounced, Ben was sure he knew the name from somewhere, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He was certain he hadn't seen the place on their way through in April—he would've suggested they get their palms read, if only for a laugh—but he supposed he might have caught a glimpse of it or seen it mentioned in the park pamphlet and filed it away subconsciously.

However he knew it, here it was, and as they neared he felt his ears begin to ring.

Sam stuck a finger in her right ear and wiggled it around. "My ears are ringing."

"Mine, too," Ben said.

Billy scowled a moment, looking off. Then he said, "Must be something living people can't hear. Like a dog whistle for ethereals."

Sam chuckled to herself. "Curiouser and curiouser."

It was definitely strange. The closer they got to the intersection leading off to the psychic booth, the louder the ringing in Ben's ears became. On a hunch, he turned away and the sound lessened. It reminded him of the game he and Lilian used to play in his backyard: Hot and Cold. Turning away made it colder. Turning back, it got warm.

"I think it's calling to us."

Sam frowned. "Calling?"

"I think Billy was right. It's like a sound meant for us, calling out to us. Whoever or whatever it is wants us to know it's there."

Billy nodded, chucking his bottle and catching it.

Sam narrowed her eyes in distrust. "What if it's calling us because it's hungry? Like how the smell of a Venus flytrap lures insects."

The ringing increased as Ben turned to face it again. "I don't know," he said. "I think we should risk it."

Sam shrugged. "It's your funeral."

"Well, okay. Let's vote. All in favor of going to the psychic's place, say aye."

Ben and Billy put up their hands and said aye. After a moment, Sam did too.

"You changed your mind."

"I happen to think you're probably right. And if you aren't… well, then I guess three heads are better than one if whatever it is decides to get violent."

"Okay, let's go check out this psychic!" Ben said, trying for a super-cool Ghost Brothers voice.

Billy and Sam just looked at him. It didn't have quite the same flair as Jake and Eric Gallagher's mantra, but he knew Lilian would have appreciated the reference.

He brought them around the corner to the connecting promenade, passing carnival games and rides, the ring in his ears increasing—You're getting warmer, he could almost hear Lilian say: hot… hotter… you're on fire—until they stopped in front of All Hallows' Close, where the sound ceased immediately, as if it had never been there to begin with.

"It's gone," Sam said.

Ben nodded. "This must be the place."

On the trailer's oversized façade, a cartoonish elderly woman in a turban held her wrinkled, jewel-studded hands over a crystal ball filled with purple smoke. Psychic symbols covered every available space on its walls, like tattoos. In the middle, right below the crystal ball, thick royal purple curtains were draped over the entrance.

The three of them looked at each other, then back to the trailer.

Ben said, "It was my idea, so I guess I'll go first."

Sam and Billy followed him to the entrance. He stopped a foot or two before the curtains, some instinct causing him to knock on the trailer wall, rather than walk right in.

"Come in, my dear child," an old woman called from within. She sounded frail and somewhat out of breath, though he supposed that could be part of the trap. Like the old witch in the gingerbread house.

He peered back over his shoulder. Sam pooched out her lip and nodded. Billy tossed the bottle in the air and caught it.

Ben shrugged. "Here goes." He stuck a hand into the darkness between the curtains, parting them.

The scent of warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven, tickled his nostrils the moment he stepped into the waiting room. It made him think of the cookies Mom used to make on rainy weekends when she wasn't showing houses, the store-bought kind that would bulge out from the tube the moment he pulled the tab, like a sentient glob that couldn't wait to be baked and eaten.

"Mmm," Sam said, licking her lips. "Smells like fresh oysters with Tabasco sauce."

Billy looked at her like she was crazy. "Oysters? It smells like my ex's perfume. Sensation, or something like that."

"You're both right," the old woman said from just beyond another set of purple curtains, bookended by two comfortable-looking chairs.

Sam and Billy gave each other quizzical looks.

"Come in, come in," the woman said. "We've been waiting for you."

"We?" Ben said, raising an eyebrow.

"You'll see."

Ben reached out again and parted the inner curtains. A warm orange glow like lamplight emanated from within. The smell of cookies—or oysters with Tabasco sauce, or Billy's ex-girlfriend's perfume—faded away, replaced by a pleasant smell Ben couldn't quite define. Vaguely sweet and somewhat savory, with a hint of perfume, it was like an amalgam of every delicious, tantalizing, heady smell he'd ever experienced. Whatever it was, it filled him with an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being.

"Welcome to the Close," said the old woman seated at a small round table covered by more purple velvet. She wore what looked like a very old wedding dress and veil, with lace gloves and puffed shoulders, only black instead of white. Her smile, just visible through the veil, was as warm as the light emanating from the room around her.

The space itself, glowing from end to end, was far larger than the outside of the structure would have allowed. It was at least forty feet from the curtains where Ben, Sam and Billy stood to the far end, where yet another set of curtains awaited them, and at least twice that from one side to the other.

"Whoa," Billy said, fumbling the bottle. It struck the floor and rolled to a stop at the foot of the old woman's table.

It took a moment for Ben's eyes to adjust to the brightness of the light, and when they finally did, he realized the light itself was coming from the many beings crowding the room from end to end, ethereals glowing like fireflies, in shades of white to orange. He saw faces he recognized from Ghostland: Steamroller and Mr. Lim, the football player and the man who, it turned out, had been one of the richest men in his time and place; Rocky Arnault, of Rocky's Fun World, all of his body parts pieced back together; the Victorian nanny from Garrote House, with two babies in bonnets in their bassinets, and the maid who'd survived being attacked by the first Oliver Hedgewood in his kitchen; the Japanese teenagers who'd committed suicide together; the man in the tracksuit, zapped by Niko and Leonard and subsequently neutralized by the army; the portly guy in the No Fear T-shirt who'd thought he could bring a gun into the park; the kid with the green hair and piercings from Ben's old school, who'd sold them their tickets and given them their glasses. Among them were others he recognized: the Ghost Brothers, Jake and Eric, and the teacher they'd brought with them on their Return to Ghostland live event; Lilian's maternal grandmother, who'd died in the hospital, losing her mind first to schizophrenia and then to dementia; Brit and Glenn McGowan, the young, attractive couple who'd moved in just down the street from Ben's house; Jessica Kissimon, otherwise known as the Woman in White, and Corky Lewis, the little girl with the blonde pigtails and the ability to gather and control plasma energy; a couple Ben recognized from the Gurpies, Johnny Plain Feather and Stacy Maitland—though he didn't see the twins, Cody and Jody.

It was a who's who of people who'd died here, within the general vicinity of Ghostland, or had come to the Temple looking for a better afterlife. They'd all gathered here together—but why? Who was this old woman behind the table, welcoming them to "the Close"? Had she been the one calling to them? And for what purpose? Why were he and Sam not glowing like the rest of them? And why wasn't Le Mon here with them? Where were Allison and Demont, Niko and Leonard?

A bark shook him from these thoughts, and a small shimmering creature bounded out from the crowd, heading straight at him. He remembered the dog who'd attempted to escape with them from the prison—Freddie, he thought its name was—and was surprised to find a much smaller dog with long ears and shaggy fur made entirely of light approaching him. Ben recognized him by his loping run—he'd been hit by a kid on a bike when he was a puppy and had never run quite right since—and the way he lowered his butt when he wagged his tail, as if in deference.

"Rollo!" Ben crouched to let the dog put his front paws on his knees, and stroked his soft, shiny fur as Rollo, the Cocker Spaniel he'd had until he was thirteen, licked his cheek with his rough, wet tongue. "Who's my good boy? Who's my good fluffy boy?"

Rollo barked and got down from Ben's knees. He rolled over onto his back—this tendency was what had given him his name—and Ben rubbed his belly, the shimmering fur like spun gold between his fingers.

Rollo rolled back to his feet suddenly and shook his head, causing his tags to jingle and his glowing ears to flap. Then he ran off, back into the crowd, without even a look back.

Ben stood back up as a man approached them from the crowd. Like the dog, Ben recognized him from his shuffling gait and rotund silhouette before his features became discernable. It was Lilian's dad, Hiram Roth. He was smiling from ear to ear, and shining like the others.

"Ben!" he cried. "You finally made it!"

"Hi, Mr. Roth!"

"Mr. Roth nuthin," Hiram said, and hugged him fiercely. "It's so good to see you!"

"It's good to see you too, Hiram. Lilian told me what happened. I'm so sorry."

He waved it away. "Sorry schmorry. What's done is done. You know, I spoke to my sweet angel just now. It was that morning again, the day you passed away. We were in the kitchen, but what she said was different. She told me she missed me, and she said to come here. To All Hallows' Close. I don't know how she knew about it, but she did." He shrugged. "I thought it was a clothing store."

That's it! Ben thought. It was Lilian who'd told him about this place. He remembered the exact moment, too. She'd come to visit him in the hospital, a few days after heart surgery. He was still on a lot of pain meds at the time and the details were hazy… for some reason he remembered a gorilla in a sailor suit barging into the room after her, and something about a soldier from the Vietnam War blasting a machine gun. But none of that made any sense. He could only assume he'd mixed it up the memory of her visit with some movie that was on the television, or an opioid dream only half remembered. With the pain and the drugs, the wires must have crossed.

It was hazy, sure. But he did remember her telling him to find her at All Hallows' Close.

He didn't say any of this to Hiram. It wouldn't make any sense. And his attention was diverted by the reunion Sam was having, with Stan Beadle. Father and daughter broke their embrace, and Stan plucked the hat from his head, giving Ben a slight bow. "Lookin good, kid. Sorry your heart didn't hold out."

"Thanks, Stan."

Stan gave him a lopsided grin, crushing the hat back down on his head. "Your friend, the stubborn girl with the quick wit. She made it out alive, did she?"

"She did."

"I kinda had a feeling she'd outlive the two of us."

Ben smiled. "So did I."

"My girl—" He nodded toward Sam. "—she says you brought her here. Is that right?"

Ben nodded.

"Then I suppose I owe you thanks. We didn't have a lot of time to chat, the last time we saw each other."

The old woman in the black wedding dress had approached them, holding out a hand as if she were cutting in on a dance. "My dear Detective. If I may?"

Stan and Sam Beadle took a single step back in tandem. "Sure thing," Stan said, gesturing for her to proceed. He and Sam returned to their conversation. They had a lot of catching up to do, it seemed.

"I'll see you again soon, I think," Hiram told Ben, a smile on his round, bristly face.

Hopefully not too soon, Ben thought but didn't say. "Take care, Hiram."

"You too, Ben." He clasped his hands together cheerfully and returned to the others.

The old woman simply smiled at Ben, long enough to make him uncomfortable. They stood alone now, with Billy off to the right, shaking hands with a kid Ben thought he recognized from school but whose name he didn't recall.

"Do I know you?" Ben asked the old woman.

"I don't believe so," she said. "But I know you, Benjamin Laramie." Her smile faltered as she stuck out a dainty, gloved hand. "My name is Mrs. Speer."

Ben shook it lightly, the feel of her delicate bones beneath the silk fabric like holding a baby bird. "What is this place?" he asked, with a small measure of the marvel he still felt.

"I call it All Hallows' Close," Mrs. Speer said, "as you may have noticed from the sign out front. It is a way station, I suppose you could say, betwixt the Here and the Now, the There and Then, Darkness and Light. Between the land of the living, the astral plane… and whatever comes next."

Ben liked the way she spoke but he had no idea what she was talking about. It seemed to be between a lot of places, but she didn't quite explain what or where it actually was.

"If it's so special, why does it look like a plain old psychic booth? And why is it so big inside?"

She smiled, winking slyly at him. "I've had to keep it hidden, from entities which might mean us harm. It is a place I've created within the Dark Rift, once I was banished here by the man I believe you and your companions seek."

"Rex Garrote," Ben said darkly.

"The very same." Her lightly powdered brow creased in a glower. "I made the mistake of opening a passage to the spirit realm in his infernal House, in the hope of bringing small comfort to a grieving husband and father. What I didn't know was that the door had already been open an itsy-bitsy crack, just enough to eke its filth and vileness into our world, long before I'd set foot on that wretched plot of land. Long before the Hedgewood clan, or even the Native Indians who'd known well enough to avoid the spot before Hedgewood's time."

"Where he built his house," Ben said.

"The very same. I believe you may have encountered some of this vileness yourself. It is the very gravity which holds the elements of this realm in place. A living darkness. Jealous of life, so they consume it. They are entities of such malignance and blind malice as to make the horrors of war and disease and famine pale in comparison."

"The Swarm," he said.

"Indeed."

An image—mercifully brief—of the horrible thing that had come for him in the hospital simulation in the sub-sub-basement of the Hedgewood Facility flashed before his eyes. He recalled thinking it must have come from the Dark Rift, and wondered now if it had been one of the entities Mrs. Speer spoke of—if he hadn't actually seen its true form.

"Yes," Mrs. Speer said, as if reading his mind. "The creature which hunted you in your electric dream was one such entity. They can take on many forms—as many forms as there are to embody, I would imagine—but this 'horrible thing' that came for you was attracted to your suffering, summoned by your proximity to the Dark Rift, and it was but one of a myriad of such creatures. Your Mr. Garrote intends to unleash them upon the mortal realm, to cleanse the world of life."

"He told me he wanted to protect ethereals from Hedgewood and his army."

"That may be so," she said thoughtfully, tapping her chin with a wizened finger. "But the full truth is that he was misled by someone he trusts."

Ben couldn't imagine trusting someone so much to extinguish all life from the world. "Who?" he asked.

"Himself," she replied.

Ben blinked. "Wut."

"There is much I still do not fully understand, though during my time within this realm I have learned a great deal more than I could have within the physical world. My connection to astral powers has been attenuated to the briefest thoughts, the barest dreams and imaginings. I can draw matter from the air and reshape it to my whim, as I have done with my Close. I can call out to those who are lost, and usher them into the Next World." She smiled wistfully. "There are a great many things this woman closing in on her two-hundredth year of existence can do which she would never have dreamed possible as a child. What I've learned is that, upon my first visit to that House, I had inadvertently widened an already existing portal to the Dark Rift. I'd spent many years—many, many years—attempting to put the genie back into the bottle, worming my way back into that House the only way I knew how: by offering help to the families in peril. I had only ever succeeded in making things worse." She shook her head solemnly. "Those poor families. So much death." With this she clucked her tongue. "The final time, whereupon your Mr. Garrote thrust me into the Rift and summarily shut the door, trapping me here, I believe he passed words with an older version of himself. Perhaps from the future." Her eyes narrowed in thought, and she stroked her lightly whiskered chin beneath the veil. "Perhaps from a different reality altogether…."

Ben was finding it difficult to keep up. Not only was there the world of the living and the astral plane, with the Dark Rift and this All Hallows' Close betwixt them, now she was suggesting there were other realities to keep track of? "What do you mean, a different reality?"

"I see this is all a bit much for you," Mrs. Speer said with sympathy, once again seeming to read his mind. "I don't suspect that information will help you much, anyhow. Forget I said it."

Ben put up a hand. "I have a question."

"Yes, dear?"

"Why aren't me and Sam like them?" He waved the hand toward the other ethereals. "Why aren't we glowing like they are?"

"It is not yet your time. You still have much work to do, my dear Benjamin, and that is what I've summoned you here to discuss."

"There's more?"

Mrs. Speer chuckled pleasantly. "Not much more. Your time in this realm is coming to a close." She smiled lightly. "So to speak."

"Do you think we can defeat Garrote? Is it possible to close the Rift?"

"It is indeed. As I said, I've learned much during my imprisonment here. There is a place within the Rift I call the Spring. The denizens of this realm have no use for language, nor the tongues for it, so I've taken it upon myself to name and map its regions. The Spring is the point from which all life springs forth. Hence the name. That is where your Mr. Garrote is heading."

"For what?"

"Within the Spring there is a… not quite a place, I suppose. Though it isn't quite an anti-place, either. I call it the Infinite. This is the epicenter of the Spring, where life is both created and whisked away. I believe that, once he's unleashed his nightmare creatures upon the other planes, your Mr. Garrote intends to become one with the Infinite, and to transubstantiate within it."

"Trans-what?"

Mrs. Speer smiled patiently. "Not a Catholic, I see. He intends to recreate his physical form. To become alive once more—though, like me, he would become…" She wobbled her head back and forth. "…not quite immortal but undying, for lack of a better word."

"He can do that?"

"Within the Infinite, nearly anything is possible."

He intended to ask why but the answer came to him before he could voice the question. It was Shōki. It had always been Shōki. Ben quoted the opening line from memory: "'The last living ghost looked upon the burning ruins of the world he'd conquered and thought, This land belongs to us now—a world of the dead, a world full of ghosts.'"

"The last living ghost," Mrs. Speer confirmed with a grave nod. "That House of his seems to have attuned him to all manner of psychic phenomena. I believe it's quite possible he had visited the Dark Rift in dreams or visions long before I met him. He was the perfect conduit for such a place of unadulterated evil. The brutality he'd witnessed in that vulgar war in the jungle, and the gruesome ends of the House's former residents—horrors he masochistically relived day after day, bleeding them onto the page for the world to revel in, deriving sadistic pleasure from the fears of his readers…."

Not a horror fan, I guess, Ben thought, suppressing a grin.

"The crux of the matter is," she went on, "Mr. Garrote intends to become this 'last living ghost,' which he'd somewhat prophetically, self-fulfilling or not, written about before he bought his House. It has been his raison d'être since the evening he imprisoned me here, whether or not he was aware of it at the time. To become the only living entity in our interlinked worlds, able to reshape matter and life to his whim. What do you think a man of your Mr. Garrote's inclinations might do with such power?"

"Nothing good," Ben admitted, though he was a little annoyed she kept attributing Garrote to him, as if the man's existence was Ben's personal responsibility, as if he didn't already feel guilty enough about letting Garrote out of his cage. "What about Hedgewood? He's got a literal army ready to charge through your front door."

"Mr. Hedgewood's progeny may pose a vague threat to ethereals with his fancy electric doodads—though much of the damage he's done I've undone within my Close. If he's able to find the Spring before your Mr. Garrote, he might be able to slow him down, but he won't be able to stop him. Certainly, he wouldn't be able to enter the Spring in his current state."

"Why not?"

She looked at him as if it should have been obvious. "Because a living being cannot enter the Spring. If he were to step into it, unaware of the dangers, perhaps charmed by the immense power it might present to him, he would be stripped apart to his very essence within moments. Only ethereals have the ability to enter the Spring unharmed. Which I presume is why your Mr. Garrote was only too happy to let you destroy his body. Certainly, he was far too cowardly to take his own life, so he forced the act upon you. Little more than a child."

"How did he know I would do it? How did he know any of this stuff would work?"

"Everything he has done was foretold to him by his future self."

"When he opened the Rift here. At Ghostland."

Again, the old woman bobbed her head back and forth. "Here. There. Yes."

"So he could only know up to when he talked to himself through the Rift, back when the two of you opened it. It's a, whatchacallit…" He searched for the phrase. "…a causality loop. He can't know what comes after that moment."

"Unless, like myself, his proximity to the Rift has attuned him to the many possible outcomes of the very situation we discuss."

"You mean he still could know what comes next?"

The old woman's eyes fell closed languidly. "That is entirely within the realm of possibility."

"Well, ain't that a can of sweet peas?" Stan Beadle grumbled, scratching the sparse hairs on his head. Ben wondered how much he'd heard of their conversation. "And I suppose we're just gonna waltz right in there and try to jam a wrench in his gears, aren't we?"

As he spoke, the glow emanating from him began to dwindle, the color returning to his clothes and skin. By the time Ben replied, he looked just like the last time Ben had seen him alive.

"You're coming with us?"

The detective shrugged, the shoulders of his light-colored sport coat bunching. "Sounds like you'll need all the help you can get, kid. Besides, I'm not leaving here until Sam's ready to join me. And apparently that time hasn't come just yet."

Sam grinned. "Not while we've got a mass murderer to bring to justice."

Stan smiled at her, crushing his hat back on his head. "It's your funeral," he said, unintentionally mimicking Sam's earlier statement.

Mrs. Speer gave them all a grave look as Billy returned to the group. "I feel I should warn you," she said. "There is a very distinct possibility everything you know could be stripped away from you, that the light within you could be extinguished forever, and you would not be able to return here. You would not move on, in this world or the next. You would instead become fragments of the Living Dark: a soulless, nameless creature whose only purpose is to feed upon all that is good and pure in our realms—even upon life itself."

Stan chuckled morosely. "Sheesh, when you put it that way, how can we say no?"

Sam uttered a guttural laugh.

Ben regarded the others, the excitement in their eyes just as apparent as their fear and his own. "All in favor of risking everything to potentially stop the end of the world, say aye."

Hands shot up, but Ben didn't even need to count. The vote was unanimous.

The Other Side

WHEN THE ECHO of her scream finally died out, Lilian allowed herself to study the room she'd entered. Garrote still sat in mid-air ten feet above her, cross-legged with his hands clasped beneath his chin, the index fingers tented, as if in meditation, though he was smiling down at her. Beaming, actually. Lilian whipped around, prepared to run into the foyer… except she found no door. It was only more books, as far as the eye could see. As she craned her neck upward, she saw that the bookcases stretched on and on forever, each row lit by its own gas lanterns. There had to be thousands of books just within the first two or three rows—and very possibly hundreds of thousands above those.

For all of this, the library had no way in or out. She was trapped. Trapped inside a house that should no longer exist with a maniac who'd tried to murder her multiple times before.

Garrote House! she cried out in her mind. It's still here! In the Rift it's still here!

"Yes, it's quite the thing, isn't it?" the writer mused from behind her, as if he could eavesdrop on her thoughts.

Lilian spun on her heels as Garrote unfolded his legs, still high above her head, and casually descended an invisible set of stairs.

He stopped suddenly—right above the scorched spot where he'd burned another man to death in his place, still two feet above the floor—smiling his joyless smile.

"To be honest, I liked it much better before," he said, taking the final two steps to solid ground. "There was a… certain quaintness to it, a charm that this House lacks. But beggars can't be choosers, as my dear old mater used to say."

"Let me go," Lilian growled.

"Oh, I'm afraid it's too late for that. Much, much too late. You see, Lilian, my lacky may have underestimated you but it's a mistake I don't intend to repeat. It'll take a lot more than some barely imagined floozy to turn my head, I assure you."

"What do you want from me? Why did you bring me to this place?"

Her scream echoed above them, scaling the shelves of the endless library: "this place… place… ace…"

"Two reasons, actually," Garrote said, unaffected by her anger. "One, I intend for you to help me find what dear old Mrs. Speer calls the Spring—and two, I intend for you to be my insurance policy when our old friend Benjamin inevitably attempts to stop me from doing what I've come to do."

"Which is what?"

"You don't really expect me to fall for the 'villain gives away his evil plan to the protagonist' trope, do you?" He sounded very bored. "I wouldn't even write that scene in a novel."

"And what makes you think I won't run the first chance I get?"

"Well, I'm glad you asked that, my dear."

The writer snapped his fingers. A moment later, a raucous din came from above, like the sound of a thousand scuttling limbs and buzzing wings. Garrote looked up, the smile returning to his lips.

Lilian followed his gaze and saw what appeared at first to be insects, small as ants, marching down the never-ending bookcase. The creatures grew larger and far more fearsome the closer they came, crawling and skittering down the shelves, knocking books loose, which plummeted to the floor below and tore along their spines, scattering pages. Lilian rushed into the center of the room, unfortunately much closer to Garrote but further away from the walls, where the creatures rapidly, jerkily descended.

Among them were bulbous, tumorous heads dragged by chitinous, spindly bodies, sleek shovel-like heads bearing horns, scaly carapaces and mandibles with viciously spiked hairs, feathered and membranous wings beating madly, abdomens lined with scutes or denticles or plates like desert hardpan, limbs ending in barbs, stingers, blunt clublike appendages or misshapen pincers with jagged teeth. There were five creatures in all—though she sensed many more above them, perhaps millions—each incredibly distinct in its physiology but identical in one detail: every inch of them was the same impossible shade of black. It was the black of space, the black of death. The only way to distinguish one feature from another—a mouth, a tooth, an eye—was the way the lamplight cascaded over their shiny exoskeletons.

"Lilian, I'd like you to meet my new friends." Garrote gestured toward the shuffling creatures, their claws and limbs clicking on the marble tiles. "They don't have a name for themselves but we like to call them the Living Dark. Living Dark, say 'hello' to Lilian, please."

Wings and claws and mandibles rubbed and clattered together in a chaotic symphony, an enormous, raucous din that somehow resembled the words: "ELLO LILIA."

Lilian shuddered at the sound, but Garrote smiled, clearly proud of himself. "I've been teaching them. Would you believe they're only one or two eons old?"

"Great," she said, wary of their deadly appendages and jaws as they surrounded her.

Garrote gave her a dark look. "You won't go running away now, will you, Lilian?"

She shook her head and said, "No," in a very small voice.

"Good. Because I assure you, I am the only thing preventing them—" He nodded toward his pets, this Living Dark. "—from making your time in this place very unpleasant."

"Well, it's been awesome so far," she grumbled, "I can't fucking wait to see what's next."

Garrote barked a laugh. "Yes, there's that chutzpah I remember!"

Lilian jerked away as he laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'll take you where you want to go but keep your hands off me!"

"Noted," he said, lowering the hand to his side. "So… where do we begin?"

Lilian looked around, searching for something out of place. The insectile creatures swayed back and forth as if to some unheard beat. Between two of them—the one with the bulbous head slumped on the floor and another with paper-thin wings, translucent aside from black veins—was the ladder she and Ben had climbed when they'd been looking for an exit the last time she was here. She wasn't sure if she'd overlooked it before or if it had just appeared in the room. Either way, it was the only point of egress she could see.

"There," she said.

Garrote's smile widened. She thought now that the ladder must not have been there before, or it would have been evident to him, as well. He gestured toward it. "Ladies first."

"Make them move back."

"Very well," Garrote said with a dramatic sigh. "Brutus. Medusa. Please stand aside."

The two creatures parted—click-clack-clack went their limbs—leaving about six feet of space between them… not nearly enough for Lilian to feel safe passing through. Either one of them could swing out with an appendage and take off her head, or cut her off at the waist as she climbed. But she didn't have much of a choice. She swallowed hard, beginning her cautious approach.

"Lilian," Garrote said behind her.

She turned. His head was cocked at an angle. "Do you honestly think I'd let them murder you, my only guide toward my goal?"

"How do you know they won't do it anyway?"

"Brutus—jump."

The one called Brutus—the taller, slender creature, something like a praying mantis, only its bulbous head was studded with a hundred unblinking black eyes—leaped into the air. The head left the ground after it, and thumped down first, shaking the floor.

"See? I say jump, they say jawohl, mein Führer." He grinned, pleased with himself.

Lilian startled, unsure whether he'd overheard her conversation with Bram an hour or so ago or if he'd read her mind, tapping into her memories. Either way, she didn't like it. It meant he was much more powerful than the last time she'd encountered him in this terrible House.

Escape wouldn't just be difficult. It might very well be impossible. Her only hope was to cooperate just long enough to give Ben and the others—if there even were any others—enough time to figure out a way to stop him.

Garrote had said it himself: she was his insurance plan. When the time came for Ben to choose, she'd have to do whatever it took to make his decision easier, even if it meant giving up her life. She'd done it before—or had at least intended to, before the choice had been taken out of her hands—to spare the world from having to face Garrote. She would do it again.

Lilian kept these thoughts vague, in case he could hear them. Then she sidled between the Living Dark entities to grasp the ladder determinedly in both hands, pulled herself up to the first rung, and began to climb.

* * *

Rex Garrote was going to kill him. There was no use denying it. Bram felt like a complete fool, falling for such an obvious trick so easily. He'd vastly underestimated Lilian—that had been his first mistake—and he was sure to face Rex Garrote's wrath for it. The writer had wanted her for a reason, and Bram should have assumed it meant there was more to her than he'd previously imagined.

The painful truth was that he'd wanted to believe so badly that Evangeline Cotard had returned to him he didn't even think to question it. Once Lilian had gotten far enough away from him the illusion quickly faded. Eva's tulpa, created by a girl who'd only just learned they exist, had drained of color and flittered away like dust. The dead soldiers who'd followed them into the mirror maze had immediately filled her absence, and Bram had snapped back to his body before they could turn his astral form into an impromptu skeet shoot. The bulldogs they'd encountered in the upstairs hall of Legion House were gone when he returned, likely pulled into the Dark Rift themselves, and now he stood just outside the Visitor Center, wondering what the hell to do next.

He was far too exhausted to leave his aching body again. He should have brought sustenance. A pack full of the bananas he'd found in Lilian's kitchen, fatty leftovers and energy drinks. Yet even if he had, Lilian's totem was back at the house on Koestler Street. He'd likely never be able to find her again without it.

He also had to consider the very real possibility she'd figured out how to return to her body and was already back in the bunker in Duck Falls, relating her experience to her companions. She had created a pretty realistic tulpa with no prior experience, after all—though he supposed being within the vicinity of the Dark Rift might have made the task far less of a challenge. Clearly, she was much more gifted than he'd imagined.

All he knew for certain was that Rex was going to be livid. He'd been given one thing to do and it had taken him days to make the little progress he had. Now he had nothing at all to show for his troubles. As devoted as he felt to Rex Garrote, he knew his master was not a kind man. He thought back to that morning, Rex casually tossing the recently severed head from hand to hand.

If you fail me, your fate will be far worse than Harrison Greely's.

Bram shuddered, realizing he stood at a crossroads. He could run as fast and far away as he could manage and hope like hell Rex Garrote—who seemed to have a preternatural ability to predict the future—would never find him. Or he could return to his master with his tail tucked obsequiously between his legs, begging the man for impunity.

Either way, he was a dead man. It was far too late to stop the Dark Rift from enveloping everything, and once Rex carried out what he planned, all life on Earth would be extinguished like Macbeth's brief candle. The choice was between dying like a coward with the rest of the world or taking his lumps, however excruciating they might be, and possibly getting himself back in Mr. G's good graces.

Whichever path he chose, his odds weren't good.

In the end, it wasn't really a choice at all. He'd pledged his allegiance to the man. It was far too late to course correct.

But the question remained: What now?

He looked back the way they'd come. The dark mist they'd first encountered at the lighthouse had spread across the entire area, enshrouding everything at hip-level. It was light enough he could still see the asphalt and his boots on it, but anything more than five to ten feet away was obscured, verging on invisible.

Meaning, he thought, just about anything could be lurking out there in the fog.

He saw he wasn't too far from the security station and decided to start there. It was possible they had equipment that could feasibly protect him from any ethereals or entities within the Rift. One of the keeper suits like he'd seen in Lilian's luggage, maybe. Or some kind of sonic weaponry.

Heading swiftly across the promenade in a crouch—praying with every step that nothing would jump up from the mist and attack him—Bram began to hear the first rumblings that would, as he reached the security station, become a pervasive roar. He tore open the door and stepped quickly inside, pulling it shut on its pneumatic closer but leaving just enough of a crack open to see what was causing the sound.

The vehicle in the lead was massive, about the size of a small building laying on its front, with a plow on the front. Humvees and transport trucks followed closely behind, so densely packed with soldiers in desert and jungle camo they were hanging off the sides. A tank trundled along behind these, followed by vehicles he knew quite well: black vans with HEDGEWOOD in gold lettering on the sides. Ollie Hedgewood's private military contractors. Behind them came the limo carrying the man himself.

The limo's back window was zipped down. Staring out was a wide-eyed face he knew far better than the man who owned the fleet preceding them.

It was Thea Petralia.

Her dark eyes looked haunted, as if a terrible trauma had been inflicted upon her in the very recent past. Bram had a good idea what might have happened. Thea wouldn't have gone along with Hedgewood willingly. She would have been taken by force. That likely meant the military had already wiped out every last ethereal at the Temple right in front of her, then brought her here, to Ghostland, to watch them finish the job.

The lead vehicles turned at the Visitors Center and headed down the promenade to the right. Toward Garrote House, no doubt. Bram wondered if Hedgewood and his Army pals had any idea what they would be up against. They were heading deeper into the Rift, and soon all of their hardware and sonic weaponry wouldn't make any difference in the world.

He might have felt good about it, knowing they were heading toward their doom, if he hadn't seen Thea in the back of the damned limousine.

He'd betrayed her, manipulating her from the very beginning. She'd wanted to trust him, impressed by his ability to transverse in the astral world and communicate with ethereals while he was there, but also by his stalwart dedication to her cause. He'd come to her as an acolyte, a loyal follower, posing as a Gurpie from Akron—though he was really from San Francisco—who'd chatted with her via the GRP2 message board for over a month before Thea finally asked him to fly out to Maryland and join her at the Temple. He'd understood even then she would be agreeable to militant action only if it wouldn't cause more harm than good.

Rex had called it "the old bait and switch." Bram thought "catfishing" was closer, although he and Thea had never been romantically involved, despite a few fleeting moments of temptation working late at the Temple.

Since then, he'd subtly persuaded her to trade Ben Laramie's afterlife for Hedgewood's tech—knowing full well it would only be beneficial to them for a few days at the most before the Dark Rift made them useless—while also encouraging her to betray the man, turning his Recurrence Field to rubble and ash. He'd whispered in her ear like a modern-day Rasputin, telling her exactly what she wanted to hear, then convincing her the ideas had been her own.

As he got to know her a little better, he'd felt poorly about the betrayal. She was sincere in her conviction that ethereals should be free to coexist with the living. Those beliefs aligned with Bram's own—and Rex Garrote's, for that matter. She was dedicated, intelligent, cunning and often very kind. But she'd always been a tool to him, a means to an end.

Still, letting Hedgewood take revenge on her didn't sit well. And Mr. G would want to know his archnemesis was on the way to knock down his door.

Bram pulled the door all the way shut and turned to survey the inner office. Nothing had changed since he'd been here a few hours ago, but this time he noticed a plastic bin labeled LOST & FOUND at the foot of the desk. He unclasped the lid, tore it off, and his eyebrows rose at what he saw.

There were all sorts of items: sweaters, a set of keys, a baseball cap with a stylized orange W, glasses and sunglasses, change purses, cell phones of all kinds, water bottles, a wallet, flip-flops… and lying on top of all of this was a pistol about the size of his closed fist.

"Huh," he said, picking up the derringer and turning it over in his hand. It had four barrels. COP INC. and CAL 38SP/357 MAG were stamped on the left side. He knew .38 Specials were what police had used up until recently, and the .357 Magnum was Dirty Harry's weapon of choice. He didn't know the calibers were apparently interchangeable, but he did know for a tiny gun it would have a hell of a lot of stopping power.

Bram checked the load—there was a latch on the top that allowed him to pop up the barrel—and saw that the chambers were full.

Four rounds. Four shots.

If he managed to get close enough to Hedgewood he could do quite a lot of damage with it, so long as the soldiers and henchmen didn't get in his way.

If anything would put him back in Rex Garrote's good books, killing his arch nemesis would.

Bram tucked the gun into his waistband and left the security station smiling.

* * *

Ollie Hedgewood smiled, watching Thea peer out the window with a look of such depthless despair in her dark, Mediterranean eyes it might have made him feel pity if not for what she'd done to him. He had to admit to taking a degree of pleasure from her pain, despite his desire to rise above such petty matters. Pleasure was a sensation he'd denied himself almost religiously, only allowing himself to dabble in it, like a weekend drug abuser, when the need became too overpowering to ignore.

Following the destruction of the Recurrence Field, and the Laramie boy's escape from the facility—which had apparently left dozens of casualties and many more gravely injured, all caused, no doubt, by Rex Garrote himself—Ollie had fallen into a foul mood. Mother used to call these funks a "brown study." In the days before they'd lived in that infernal House, she would have made him a cup of hot cocoa to draw him from his moods. "A brown drink for a brown study," she'd say, and despite its silliness young Ollie would invariably laugh and begin to feel better almost immediately.

No hot beverage would brighten his mood this time. He was much too old and far too cynical, never mind that Mother herself was long in her grave. The days of "brown drinks for brown studies" had ended when two men had held his family at gunpoint, demanding money from Father, who'd been away at the time. After that, there had been very little happiness in the Hedgewood household, wherever they'd chosen to live. "The Damned House," as Father had often called it, with its legion of troubled and often violent spirits, had soured everything. It had murdered his brother and both of his parents—one literally, the other from guilt—and in the end had taken over two-thousand lives.

The Hedgewood legacy—five generations of wealth and prestige Ollie had once revered, aspiring to uphold—had only ever been death.

Today, he would change that.

General Zaydan and his army would neutralize every single ethereal in their path on their way to that infernal House. And when the smoke cleared, and the writer was safely contained within a pocket Recurrence Field, Ollie would finally make Rex Garrote pay for his crimes.

So he supposed he was pleased. Thea's expression as she peered out the window was fair enough recompense for her betrayal, as he'd suspected it might be. Watching Zaydan's soldiers terrorize stray ethereals on their way to Duck Falls and neutralize them at the so-called Temple had been pleasurable, as well. Taking the writer to task would also please him, likely more than either of the preceding events.

And didn't everyone deserve a little pleasure now and again, even someone as universally hated and feared as Oliver Hedgewood III?

His smile faltered as a terrible thought occurred to him: What if he knows we're coming? What if he's hoping we do?

Well, then, he told himself, at least I'll inherit the Hedgewood legacy. "Death comes for us all," as the playwright said. If death is my legacy, so be it.

Thea zipped up the window and slumped back into her seat, eyeing him with naked malice while the convoy trundled along, rumbling and roaring past the Visitor Center.

Toward the ruins of Garrote House, where the writer and the Laramie brat no doubt awaited him.

Toward destiny, whatever it might entail.

Chasing Ghosts Pt. 3

ANDY HAD TO restrain himself from pushing his foot to the mat on his way through Duck Falls. Despite Hedgewood and the military having roared through town with their sonic weapons, Lamb had assured him there were still dangerous ethereals hidden among the shadows, biding their time to return to the light and wreak havoc on the living.

"That Ollie Hedgewood's a ruthless sonovabitch," she'd said when she told him this, just past the town sign. "You know he gave that Recurrence Field to the Gurpies just so it'd make their ethereals easier to get rid of when him and his goons got to the Temple?" She sputtered. "Ollie. What kinda grown man calls himself that, anyway? It's like a child. Ollie. Olly olly oxen free, he calls. Then the ghosts come runnin home and he blasts em to oblivion."

Lamb had been on a rant since they'd started driving, slipping from one stream-of-consciousness topic to the next like someone high on cocaine. Andy had listened intently for a while but drifted off as they reached what was once the massive roadblock, focusing on the drive, looking for other survivors or ethereals with his fancy new glasses.

"Are you even listenin to me?"

"Huh?" He glanced at her. "Sorry, I kinda drifted off there."

"Keep your head in the game, punkin. I said take a left up here."

He flicked on the turning signal. There was no need for it with nobody else in the road, it was just second nature. He turned left at the corner, weaving between an SUV and an El Camino that had been pushed off the main road haphazardly.

"You sense one?" he asked Lamb.

"Oh, I sense one, all right. And it's a big'un."

Andy turned to her. She was smiling, her eyes almost glittering as she stared out her window with her bare feet on the dash. A few minutes ago he'd glanced over and seen her running her hands over her tanned inner thighs. Normally seeing that would have gotten him at least slightly aroused, but there'd been a strange look in her eyes, almost as if she was feeling her own skin for the first time. He supposed she could've been marveling that she could feel herself at all, after death. When she'd first returned to him, she'd put her hand on his shoulder and he'd felt it. But when he'd tried squeezing her thigh after he'd turned them back to town, his hand had gone right through her, thumping on the blood-red bucket seat. Lamb had looked down with a shrug. "It's still a little hard to keep up," she'd explained.

After the left turn, she pointed ahead to the squat, brown-brick Duck Falls Middle School building. "Pull in there."

Andy put on the blinker. He saw Lamb smirk in his peripheral vision as he pulled into the lot.

A sporty hatchback and a couple of older-model minivans still remained in the lot. The windows were smashed outward on each of them, and they'd taken a fair bit of damage to their chassis, as if Ryu or Guile had given them an old-fashioned Street Fighter beatdown. One of the minivans lay on its crumpled driver's side, making Andy think of a giant dead beetle.

Bagged lunches, lunch boxes, school bags and papers littered the lot as children and staff had apparently left in a hurry. Many of the school windows were shattered, shards of glass on the asphalt below. Venetian blinds rattled lightly in the frames, moved by the cool breeze. Otherwise, the school was silent and more than likely abandoned.

"Oh yeah," Lamb said as Andy parked the Trans Am. "He's real close now. I can feel 'im."

"Who?" he asked, but she just vanished from her seat and reappeared in front of the car, walking barefoot toward the front doors.

Andy startled at the sight. It was still jarring to see her act like a ghost, despite the obvious fact that she was one. He unbuckled his seatbelt and fumbled with the door in a rush to follow her.

Lamb sashayed right through the closed front doors as he finally managed to get out of the car. "Hold up," he called, making sure the car doors were locked before hurrying to the school. Already he felt a misplaced sense of ownership for this car that didn’t belong to him. He pulled open one of the school doors, just glad the staff had left in too much of a hurry to lock them, and stepped into the dim, dust-speckled entrance.

A sad, squat pumpkin lay rotting at the foot of the principal's office. Halloween decorations lined the walls, drawings and paintings of various monsters, Disney and superhero characters. He only saw one or two ghosts among them, and wondered if the children had been encouraged not to draw them. With the new "death-conscious" curriculum some school districts across the country had begun this year, Andy thought ghostly caricatures might be considered offensive. And anyway, there had been more than enough ghosts in Duck Falls to make up for their absence.

"Down here," Lamb called. She waved at him from the hallway ahead. The last vestiges of daylight filtered in through the wired windows in the doors at the far end of the hall where she stood. Soon, the sun would be gone altogether, even though it was barely past three in the afternoon.

Andy followed her, moving cautiously and peering into opened lockers and classroom doors as he passed. Scattered items littered the floor here and there: a yellow Minions pencil case, a spiral notebook, a cell phone, a small girl's fedora, a pair of damp swim trunks, reeking of mildew.

Finally, he reached Lamb, her bare feet hovering just slightly over the speckled floor tiles. "He's in there," she said, pointing into the classroom.

Cautiously, Andy stepped up to the doorway and peered inside. He reared back immediately, his eyes wide, turning to Lamb. "You want me to… what is that thing?"

"Aww, punkin." She pouted briefly but it turned to a scowl, creasing her tanned and freckled forehead. "Don't be a fraidy-cat. He ain't gonna hurt ya." She narrowed her eyes in the ethereal's direction. "Not with me around."

Andy watched her for a moment. She wasn't quite awed by the thing in the classroom. What he saw in her eyes might best be described as admiration, like she was looking in at a caged tiger.

The thing made an insectile sound that chilled his blood.

Warily, Andy turned back to face the room. Many of the desks had been overturned, contents spilled, chairs tipped. Multicolored cardboard cutout letters spelled 4TH GRADE on the corkboard along the right side of the room, facing the desks and shattered windows. Drawings, cutout musical notes and children's assignments were tacked up around it.

A churning thundercloud hovered near the teacher's desk. The thing made another chilling sound—insane, cackling laughter through a tin can—and Andy flinched.

"What is it?" he whispered.

Lamb was still watching as the narrowed point of the entity probed the items left on the teacher's desk, like an animal sniffing its territory.

"It's a piece of the Dark," she said.

Andy didn't understand what this meant, nor how exactly Lamb knew it, but he didn't like the way her eyes had popped when she spoke, as if she'd just bestowed a name upon some majestic, never-before-imagined beast.

Before he could voice any of his concerns, she stepped into the room, navigating the upturned desks, school supplies and personal items, her bare feet still hovering an inch or so above the floor.

Despite his better judgment, Andy crept into the room behind her, following in her footsteps.

At the front of the class Lamb held out her hand, palm up, toward the dark creature. As Andy neared, he saw bulges in the darkness, as if the entity was having a difficult time containing itself. The probing end of it, which Andy supposed was either a head, nose or tongue, rose from the desk and began to investigate Lamb's empty hand, like a sniffing dog.

Something crunched beneath the heel of Andy's right sneaker. He winced and raised it sheepishly, revealing a shattered piece of pink chalk.

The inhuman cackling came again as the smoke creature snaked around Lamb, who stood immobile, staring in wonder as the "piece of the Dark" hurtled toward Andy like a speeding train.

With no chance to run, Andy threw up his arms to protect his face with a yelp of terror.

"LEAVE HIM!" Lamb shouted.

A faraway part of Andy realized he'd never heard such fury and forcefulness in her voice before, but his forebrain was fully engulfed by hellacious, unholy terror. His entire body quivered in fearful anticipation of the end, scant seconds away.

The seconds ticked by and… nothing.

Reluctantly, Andy opened his eyes.

The creature, this "piece of the Dark" Lamb had named, hovered barely a foot from his face. The bulk of it had flattened out in front of him, as if Lamb's command had dropped a sheet of impenetrable glass between them. As he stared, slack-jawed and slowly lowering his arms, the thunderhead expanded and contracted before him like a living, breathing thing. The sporadic bulges he'd seen from halfway across the classroom were still appearing, but this close to it they looked more like malformed faces and appendages: some human, some animal, others… Andy had no words with which to classify them.

While he stared, Lamb crossed to the terrarium, on a bookshelf under the smashed windows and bent blinds. She reached in and scooped up something gently from the hidey hole nestled in wood shavings. Crossing back, she held out whatever she'd found in her cupped hands. When she reached Andy's side, she opened them, revealing a tawny dwarf hamster, skinny and ragged-looking.

"Is he dead?"

Lamb looked up from the curled animal in her palm, her eyes twinkling in a smile. "It's hungry, that's all."

She stretched out her hand then, and before Andy could react the thunderhead narrowed to a deadly point and shot at the tiny animal. The hamster writhed, its little legs pinwheeling, just visible within the slate-black fog. It stopped moving very suddenly, jerking stiff, and the thunderhead retreated.

Andy frowned at her. "Why did you do that?"

Lamb chuckled and dropped the tiny carcass at her feet. "It's just a hamster. Would you rather it ate you?"

Andy turned away from her suspiciously lurid smile to the entity she'd just fed. "No," he admitted sullenly.

"Well good. Honestly, Andy, you can be such a baby sometimes."

He looked down at the hamster, a small, furry lump on the floor. There wasn't a single drop of blood on it. The living thunderhead had sucked the life right out of it but had left it otherwise unharmed.

"Let's shake a leg," Lamb said, already sauntering off toward the door. "Gotta catch 'em all."

Andy didn't follow her immediately. He wasn't sure he wanted to follow her. She didn't seem much like the Lamb he knew and loved anymore. Death had perfectly preserved her physical form but seemed to have scrambled just about everything else. He could pretend her words didn't hurt him but killing the hamster had been the last straw.

Still, he didn't think he had much choice in the matter. Especially now, with her new pet in tow.

He ain't gonna hurt ya, she'd said. Not with me around.

Andy shuddered, trying not to imagine what the hideous thing might do to him if she wasn't around. He followed Lamb to the door, though he didn't dare turn his back on the entity, not entirely. He walked on a diagonal, keeping the thing in his periphery. Whatever the thing had wanted to do to him before, it appeared content to follow along behind him now, chittering madly. It made Andy wonder if, like him, it had no choice.

Lamb's mother had called him a spiritual magnet. If he really was able to "collect em all," as Lamb seemed to believe, would they all just follow him like his gwisin had? Would they obey his command? And what would they do to him if he let them go?

He followed this hellscape version of Lamb back to the car, the dark entity trailing along behind them. When he climbed in behind the driver's seat, the entity hovered outside his window. Lamb was already in the passenger seat, her bare feet up on the dash.

"That's gonna make it hard to drive," he said, nodding at the ethereal.

"Tell it to move."

Andy blinked at her.

"Go on," she said. "It'll listen to ya."

Andy turned to his window, and the churning dark outside. "Move!" he said.

"You gotta be more assertive than that, punkin. Think of it like a real mean junkyard dog you know's about to hump your leg."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Now tell it to haul ass," she said with a giggle.

He took a deep breath, then shouted, "MOVE," as loud as he could. The tendons in his neck strained and his breath fogged the window. The sound of his own voice in the enclosed space made his ears ring, but the entity immediately swooped around to the back of the car. Twisting around to peer over his headrest, Andy saw it hovering in the rear window. It looked like the Firebird was burning too much fuel, spewing a billowing cloud of black exhaust.

He sighed again, feeling only slightly less anxious, and started the engine. As he backed out of the spot, the entity allowed him space. It swung around and followed as he pulled back out into the road.

"Full speed ahead, mon capitaine," Lamb said. She pushed the cassette tape into the player, and the old hippie version of "Spirit in the Sky" started blaring at them in mid-chorus.

Lamb's face brightened, the darkness lifting briefly. "Ooh, don't you just love kismet?"

Andy, startled by the sudden racket and wary of their new companion, snatched out to turn it down.

"Aw, no fun," Lamb groaned, her frown returning, still thumping her feet to the beat on the dash. "C'mon, Andy, you gotta live a little." She turned to him with a sly grin, adding, "While you still can." Then she laughed as if this was the funniest thing in the world.

Something occurred to him just then: what they were doing here couldn't possibly be good. In fact, it was very likely downright evil.

Something else had occurred to him, as well. It had begun when she'd stopped the entity with a single command and solidified when she'd let it eat the poor, defenseless hamster.

He wasn't just afraid of their new companion. He was afraid of Lamb, too.

Andy pushed the thought from his mind and focused on the drive, dreading the work ahead of him.

What Comes Next

LE MON HAD walked for what felt like ages through the haze of white fog after leaving Shawna behind at the place she'd called the Spring. He'd been reluctant to leave her there, but she'd assured him they would see each other again. She'd hugged him so fiercely he could still feel her body pressed against him, his lips still tingling with her kiss.

At first it was difficult to tell if he was making any progress through the fog at all. The only way he could tell he'd been moving forward was that Shawna grew distant as he pushed on, becoming no more distinct than the shadow things emerging from the Spring. Eventually, she disappeared entirely, and once again Le Mon found himself alone—though he no longer felt lost, not as he had in the years following Shawna's death.

He knew he would be with her again, soon. That was all the comfort he needed.

The dark flashes spread across the sky—already he'd started thinking of it as "darkning" instead of lightning—as he trekked on through the vast, white emptiness. After a while he began to notice the interval between strikes had shortened, and the bolts themselves were far more complex, forking through the clouds like varicose veins. At one point it had streaked right over his head, and he'd thought for sure the next strike would hit him, but he'd kept moving in what he hoped was a forwardly direction and soon the storm passed away into the distance, leaving him, for the time being, unharmed.

It wasn't much later that the first sight of something other than himself penetrated the white expanse. It started out as a small shadow on the horizon, then grew to a tall, sprawling shape as he neared, one which could just as easily have been a mountain as a building. Its brick exterior didn't become visible until Le Mon was fifteen to twenty feet away from it, and then he saw it all at once: the barred windows, the pillared archway, the peaked turrets and asphalt surrounding it. Now he could make out other structures nearby, in the distance and surrounding him on all sides. It was as though he hadn't stepped out of the fog so much as the fog had transported him here.

Ghostland, he thought with an involuntary shudder.

The sound of something beating against metal caught his attention. He stepped under the archway, following it around the side of the building. A tall, burly white guy with a shaved head and a dark goatee stood pounding on a set of forest-green double doors. He wore a white, sleeveless security guard shirt and black pants.

The guy stepped back to grab one of the handles and jerked on it roughly, one foot pushing against the other door. The tendons stood out on his neck and his face turned red. He gasped and staggered back with a growl. "Son of a bitch!"

Le Mon stayed back a safe distance, not sure he wanted to startle this guy. Having seen plenty of death loops in his time, he was well aware that some ethereals could turn nasty when spooked. "I don't mean to sound like a dick," he said, "but have you tried your keys?"

The burly guy spun around fully at the sound of Le Mon's voice, eyes wide and mouth agog. "Aw, man!" he said. His face folded into the expression of someone trying to decide if he was going to smile or cry, and settled somewhere in between. "You don't know how good it is to see another face!"

He lumbered over, closing the distance quickly. Le Mon made to shake hands but the bigger man wrapped his meaty arms around Le Mon's shoulders and lifted him right off the ground.

Le Mon chuckled awkwardly as the guy squeezed him in a bear hug, then set him down, gave him a sheepish look and apologized. "It's been forever since I seen someone around here," he explained.

"I know that feeling," Le Mon said. He introduced himself, sticking out a hand.

The burly guy took it in his big mitt and pumped it vigorously. "I'm Leonard. Le Mon—is that French?"

Le Mon nodded. "Sort of. Short for Leon Moncrief."

A goofy smile spread across the bigger man's face. "Another Leon. Fuckin A. We could be brothers from another mother."

Le Mon grinned. "Have you tried—"

"The keys," Leonard said, remembering what he'd been asked. "I totally fucking forgot I had these things." He grabbed the keyring on his belt and pulled, rooting through them.

"What's inside?"

Leonard paused, looking at the keys. "I lost a buddy. My best bud, actually. I—" His face crumpled and he started weeping then, big tears that rolled down his ruddy cheeks. "It's my fault he's dead!"

Le Mon patted the big man's shoulder. "I'm sure it wasn't your fault." He nodded toward the building. "You were there, huh? Opening day?"

Leonard wiped his nose with the back of his hand, nodding with a sniffle.

"Nobody gon' fault you for anything that went down that day. A lot of good people died. Too many."

Leonard's eyes suddenly widened. "The kids!"

"What kids?"

"Ben and, uh… Lil! Lilian!"

"Hold up. You know Ben and Lilian?"

"Sure do. I died so they could get away. We protected them. Me and my buddy Niko."

Le Mon grinned and squeezed the man's shoulder. "Then, Leonard, maybe you are my brother from another mother. Now how 'bout them keys?"

* * *

After a great deal of trial and error, Leonard fit the right key into the lock and the two of them entered Bright Falls Sanitarium through the aquamarine-tiled shower room. In the meantime, Le Mon filled him in on Lilian's escape—"Jesus, that's a bummer about Ben but I'm sure glad she made it out alive," the big man said—and what had happened in the interim.

They were passing between two half-empty pools now. The dead that Leonard said he'd seen were long gone, but the small train cars remained.

"So you and me, we're both dead," Leonard said as they moved through the halls, trying to wrap his head around it all. "And we're in this place called the Dark Rift. But we're also still in Ghostland."

"Seems that way. It's pretty complicated, I admit. But Shawna, my girl, she said there's a woman around here who can help us."

"Help us to what?"

"To move on."

Leonard peered back over his shoulder, tromping slightly ahead of him. "Move on? Like, to Heaven?"

Le Mon realized he had no idea where they'd be going, only that wherever it was had to be better than this place of endless fog and shadows. "To what comes next," he said. "Whatever that might be."

Leonard grunted thoughtfully. "And this Rex Garrote guy, the same guy as the holograms in the park… you say he's no good?"

"That's an understatement, man. He's the reason all of this is happening."

"He opened the Dark Rift."

"That's right."

"Well, what if this—" He waved an arm, gesturing at the scenery. "—is all there is?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what if everything you say is gonna happen already has happened, and this place is all that's left?"

"Nah. Shawna woulda told me."

Leonard raised an eyebrow. "But how do you know that was really your girl?"

Le Mon regarded him with a narrowed gaze. "You wanna watch that kinda talk, man."

"Look, I'm not trying to be a dick but it sounds like you went through hell before we got here, and I sure as shit did myself. I don't know about you, but I don't know what I can trust anymore. Or who."

Le Mon bit back a reply and considered Leonard's suggestion. How could he know for sure the Shawna he'd sat with at the Spring was the same woman he'd watched waste away in a hospital bed so many years before, especially after the nightmare he'd endured to find her? Nothing that had happened in that hospital room after she'd died had occurred in real life. Pop and Clem saying, Find us. Shawna rising from the dead to repeat their words. What if the woman he'd sat with by the well was just another of these shadows? Was it that much of a stretch?

"Nah," he said aloud. "We can't think like that. We have to have hope."

"Hope," Leonard repeated. "Man, I gave up hope when that fuckin creepo doctor possessed me and made me cut up my best friend."

"Then why are we looking for him, huh? What's the point if there's no hope?"

Leonard stopped in his tracks, reaching out for the doors. "'Cause he's my brother, and he's a Marine. You never leave a Marine behind."

Le Mon nodded. "Okay. I can respect that. Any idea where to find him?"

"He died right up ahead here."

They moved down a dim corridor with rusted, paint-flecked doors inset on either side, each featuring a caged glass window and food slot. Le Mon suspected it would have been a wing for dangerous patients, though he knew most of these old asylums treated just about every patient poorly back in the day.

Leonard stopped at what appeared to be a random place in the hall until Le Mon looked closer, noticing the dark stain on the floor. "This is where he died," Leonard said, his shoulders slumped.

"I'm sorry."

Leonard gave him a troubled smile. "Thanks. But now I'm shit out of ideas where to find him."

"Then it's lucky for you I'm here," Le Mon said. He crouched and pressed his palm flat against the stain on the cold tiles.

"What are you doing?"

"Shh."

Leonard shifted uncomfortably, looking up and down the hall. "What are you doing?" he asked again, quieter this time.

"I'm tryin to listen to your friend."

"Niko's talking to you?"

Le Mon ignored him. He sensed pain and confusion in the dried blood, but that was expected. Those were pre-death emotions. What he was looking for was…

There! Now if I could just tune it up just a little….

The haze cleared and a fully formed image came to him of a man in a doctor's coat, slicked hair, reaching out to take his hand. The doctor spoke with him, leading him down the hall, looking back and taking off his glasses to polish them on his lapel every once in a while. A trickle of blood dribbled from the man's nostril and he wiped it away absently with a monogrammed handkerchief. The glimpse was too quick to get a good look at the initials.

Le Mon stood up, blinking away the vision. "I think I know where he is." He started off without awaiting a response.

Leonard hurried to catch up. "You do? How?"

"It's hard to explain."

He turned at the next corner and almost ran into a woman with pale skin and dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail. She startled at the sight of him, staggering back a few steps, chewing on her black-polished fingernails.

"Allison?" Leonard said behind him.

Her eyes widened as she looked over Le Mon's head. "Leonard! Is that you?"

A look passed between them, some interpersonal thing Le Mon didn't have the frame of reference to understand. Leonard looked guilty and Allison seemed afraid. Le Mon figured she must have been with Leonard when he'd been possessed and killed his friend. Might very well have been the one to kill her, too.

"It's me," Leonard said with a nod.

She shook away the fear. "Have you seen Lilian? She was just here."

"Lilian Roth? She was just here?" Le Mon asked, skeptical.

"Yes," she said urgently. She pointed behind her. "She just vanished less than a minute ago. I was with her in the operating theater." Again, the urgent look in her eyes. "We have to find her."

"Miss, if Lilian Roth is in this place, then that's an understatement."

Her frown deepened. "Allison. Not Miss."

Le Mon smiled. "My apologies, Allison. You can call me Le Mon."

This seemed to settle her. She tried on a smile and shook his hand briefly. "Nice to meet you. Now we really need to find Lilian."

"Well, just so happens I was about to suggest just that, once we've found the big fella's friend."

"Niko is here, too?" She addressed this to Leonard.

"If that's his name," Le Mon said, "then I believe he is. Some bougie doctor took him to a big room with caged windows."

"That's probably the recreational therapy room. It's just back there through the theater."

"Well, good. We'll follow your lead, then."

Allison nodded and headed down the hall. Le Mon and the big fella followed her. The corridor was windowed along one side. Through the bars and warped glass, he saw what looked like the park thoroughfare, and beyond that a sandstone wall that likely surrounded the prison. A dark ground mist, almost like smoke, clung to just about everything out there, but the white fog he'd passed through to get here had dissipated. He supposed at one point these windows would have overlooked the asylum grounds, lawns and gardens and pretty things to soothe the troubled heart.

This nuthouse is out of place, too, he thought. Like the three of us.

"It's just through here," Allison said, holding open a door at the center of the corridor.

They followed her into the operating theater, which looked just as Le Mon had expected. Leonard kicked something on the floor that skittered away with a shriek of metal on hard tile. Le Mon saw that it was a bone saw, the plug resting below the socket.

Allison stood over the operating table, not blinking.

Leonard approached her cautiously. "I'm real sorry about what happened."

"It wasn't your fault. It was him."

"Rex Garrote did this to you?" Le Mon asked.

Allison turned. "Dr. Hammersmith," she said. "The head psychiatrist for Bright Falls. The papers called him Dr. Death. Rex Garrote let the ghosts out of their cages, but Dr. Hammersmith's the one who kept us here. He had me performing brain surgery on myself." She swallowed hard, justifiably disturbed by the memory.

Leonard nodded. "He had me trapped in Fallujah, right after this roadside bomb hit our convoy. Lot of my buddies died that day. It kept repeating and repeating, over and over on a loop."

Allison nodded.

"That's a death loop," Le Mon said. "Plenty of us experience something like that."

"I think he was feeding on us," Leonard said. "On the bad memories. Like some sadistic headshrinker."

Allison flinched at this.

"No offense," he said.

Le Mon had never encountered a spirit who could psychically feed on others, but he supposed it wasn't out of the question. There were all kinds of dead folks out there. Who knew what kinks some of them might be into?

"You said you saw Lilian here?"

"She was here when I woke up," Allison said. "Almost like she'd been waiting for me."

Sounds like what happens to me, Le Mon thought. Like she got a nose for the newly woke. Only she ain't dead—least I hope she ain't.

"Okay," he said. "Well, let's hope we find your friend before this doctor fella gets to him. Then if we got time we'll go lookin for Lilian."

They all agreed to this, and Le Mon followed them through a little door at the side of the operating room that took them up a set of stairs to the darkened theater seating surrounding it. Their route from there wasn't exactly "just back through the theater," as Allison had said, but it wasn't too far. Le Mon was just glad they didn't have to walk through fog.

Another abandoned coaster train lay on busted tracks in this corridor. It wouldn't be passable, unless they winked out, and teaching these newbies how to swift travel would take too much time they didn't have. So Allison led them through Dr. Hammersmith's office, and Le Mon got a good look at the guy he'd seen in his vision among all of the newspaper clippings about his murders by proxy.

"That's him," he said, pointing to an old photo of the man and his staff grouped outside of the asylum. "He the one who possessed you?"

Leonard nodded. "That's the son of a bitch, all right."

Allison had already turned away, apparently eager to leave. "It's through here," she said, holding open another door.

Le Mon and Leonard followed her into a spacious recreational therapy room. At the far end of the room, a big Polynesian-looking dude with a buzzcut and tattoos sat alone in a chair by the barred windows, dressed in an off-white hospital gown.

"There he is," Leonard said, pushing past Allison through the door. "Yo! Niko, buddy!"

The man at the window didn't respond to the sound of his name. Either he hadn't heard his friend or he was out of it. The three of them were close enough now that Le Mon could see Niko's eyes were open, though there was a dullness to them, as if he wasn't all there. He was still looping, likely. Trapped in a prison in his own mind, the way each of them had been until only recently.

"Niko, buddy! Wake up!"

Leonard reached out to grab Niko by the shoulder, but some invisible force wrenched his arm and pushed him back. "What the fuck?" he cried out, grasping his apparently injured arm.

Le Mon stepped back warily. "Somethin grab you up?"

Leonard winced. "Nearly took my damn arm off!"

Le Mon remained where he was, considering the situation. He supposed it was possible there were psychic entities surrounding Niko, draining his energy like Dr. Death allegedly had to Leonard and Allison. But it was just as likely Niko was doing it himself, protecting himself subconsciously from potential aggressors while he looped. Either way, they would have to be quick if they wanted to reach him.

Le Mon swifted to Niko's side and grasped the man's muscular shoulder. Niko's head snapped back violently and his eyes bulged, staring at the ceiling.

In the same instant, multiple people appeared in the room around them: two orderlies and several other patients. The orderlies—a couple of menacing-looking, though not quite frightening, white dudes—stood on either side of Niko. Le Mon figured one of them had likely pushed Leonard back, meaning they were stronger than they looked. Little badges on the lapels of their white uniforms said BETRUGER—this guy had a Caesar haircut and aviator glasses—and FISCHER—a clean-cut, preppy-looking guy with a pair of handcuffs hanging from one wrist.

"Looks like we've got some new admissions," this Betruger guy said with a sneer.

"Niko, you gotta wake up, man," Leonard said, still cradling his injured elbow. Allison only stood there, a short distance away, wearing a concerned look.

"Patient One-Nineteen's not gonna be waking up any time soon," Betruger sneered. "He's all hopped up on Thorazine."

"Thora—" Le Mon started, then decided to change his approach. "Man, you can't pump a spirit full of dope. It don't work like that."

"Spirit?" Fischer said. "Looks like we got another fifty-one-fifty here, Betruger. He's muy loco."

Le Mon nodded at Niko. "I'm not crazy, I'm dead. Your patient there's dead, too. Fact, every last one of us in this room is dead. Including you two."

Fischer and Betruger looked at each other for a long moment. Then they burst out laughing. "You're a real card, Patient One-Two-Five," Fischer said, his little raisin eyes narrowing. "Dr. Hammersmith oughta add that to your chart."

"Dr. Hammersmith is dead," Allison said. Le Mon could almost feel the fury in her voice. She took two steps toward the men.

The orderlies flashed annoyance. "Who let you out of your restraints?" Betruger said.

"Go ahead," she told him. "Look in his office."

Betruger and Fischer shared another look, this one harder for Le Mon to decipher. He thought she might be getting to them.

"We can't just go into his office," Betruger grunted. "That's against protocol."

Allison nodded. "Okay." She was still nodding as she turned and dashed across the room.

Betruger and Fischer realized what she was doing and took off after her. "Hey! You can't go in there!" Betruger called.

"Help your friend," Le Mon told Leonard. "I'll keep an eye on Allison."

Leonard nodded, hunkering down at Niko's side. "Hey, buddy," he said.

Le Mon didn't hear the rest. He'd already swifted across the room and stood just outside the doctor's door. Allison was holding up newspaper clippings. The two orderlies, likely just as caught up in this fantasy as the rest of these people, like some freak psychological experiment, actually seemed to be cluing in.

"Hammersmith's been playing us the whole time," Betruger muttered.

Allison set the clippings on the desk as the two men moved in to read them. She came around the desk, giving them a wide berth, and rushed to the door where Le Mon stood, smiling at her.

"Hey!" Betruger called after her. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Allison didn't turn, returning Le Mon's smile. "My friends and I have been discharged."

The two men scowled at each other, then returned their attention to the clippings in their hands, looking them over in disbelief.

"You're a natural," Le Mon told Allison as she stepped past him.

"I've had some practice," she said with a grin.

The two of them returned to Niko's chair by the window. Leonard had gotten the man standing but "Patient One-Nineteen" still looked doped out of his mind.

"He won't come around," Leonard said, looking like a wounded pup, holding his friend by the shoulders.

"We'll get him back to you," Le Mon said. "Let's just concentrate on gettin us all the hell outta here first."

He and Leonard helped Niko shuffle along, heading for the double doors near the nurse's station. When they reached them, Leonard asked, "So what's next?"

"Well," Le Mon said, "I'm told we got a few more people to find first. Then we off to see the Wizard."

Giving Up The Ghost

THE BELL OVER the door jingled as Lamb left for the crêpe restaurant two doors down with a spring in her step. She was still feeling fine from moments ago, when Andy Park had blown into the shop like the wind to hide from casino thugs, and ended up scaring the bejesus out of her mom during his palm reading.

In all the years she'd worked with her mother, local-famous psychic Sonya Curtis, Lamb had never seen her so genuinely concerned about a client. Lamb herself had sensed something special about Andy even before her mom told her more about the spirits he carried with him. She'd felt them herself, and all three—Andy and the two ghosts—had radiated positive energy. Yet under his enthusiastic and somewhat shy exterior, she felt Andy was hiding an immense amount of pain. She found herself curious as to what might have caused it, and if she might not be able to coax it out of him when her mother couldn't.

She was still thinking about Andy when she returned to the shop, pushing the door open with her hip, the bell above the door jingling once again.

Speak of the Devil, she almost said, but what she saw shook her. Her mom wore a look of terror. Whatever was happening, Andy stood close behind her, holding her by the hair as if she'd been puking. Only it was blood Lamb saw on the counter and streaming down her mother's chin, not vomit. The blood had stained the front of her pink-and-violet silken gown—violet like her aura, Mom would say—and the floor at their feet.

Andy's aura was pure black.

Lamb dropped her lunch and rushed into the shop. Before she could stop him, Andy smashed her mother's face into the counter—SLAM!

"Mom!" she cried, terror stopping her.

"It's not—" her mother gasped.

Andy slammed her head down again, breaking her nose with a crunch. He was grinning, spatters of blood on his face, still holding her mother by the hair, holding her wrist against the counter. Lamb couldn't understand what she was seeing. Why was he doing this?

"—not—" her mother cried, interrupted by another SLAM! on the counter.

"Mom!"

Lamb reached out for her mother but Andy let go of Sonya's wrist and backhanded Lamb across the face. She staggered backwards, holding her cheek, feeling blood on her palm.

Sonya Curtis looked up with a bloody, broken-toothed smile. "I love you, my little La—"

Andy thrust her face into the edge of the counter with an ugly crunch, silencing her forever. He tossed her body aside and stepped around the counter, advancing toward Lamb.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, showing his teeth in a snarl.

Lamb backed away. "What… what do you mean? Why did you kill my mom?"

"It's not me, it's not me," he said in a high and whiny voice, mocking what Lamb was sure her mother had been trying to say. But there was no doubt it hadn't been her. Lamb had seen Andy murder her. The planchette, which had fallen out of her mother's ruined eye, lay on the counter, covered in gore.

"You shouldn't be here," Andy said again, jabbing at her with a finger. "Now I'm gonna kill you, little Lamb, like I killed that crazy bitch mother of yours."

"No." Lamb shook her head meekly, backing away, unintentionally kicking her lunch aside with her heel, a mush of crepes and spilled cream soda. Her butt hit the door and the bell jingled above her head. She startled… then her subconscious mind seized on what it meant.

Run! she told herself.

She spun on the soles of her shoes, slamming both hands into the door before she was even fully turned, rushing out into the—

—straw.

Straw?

She blinked rapidly, spinning in a tight circle, her fear gradually diminishing, traded for confusion. She'd expected to see the sparsely populated parking lot, and a line of traffic between it and the gun range across the street, but all she saw was an endless sea of shimmering golden wheat, moving gently in a light breeze. It was night, the purest dark Lamb—a city girl, and Vegas no less, possibly the brightest of any city at night—had ever seen.

The shop was gone. Andy and her mother's dead, brutalized body had vanished with it.

In the dirt at her feet was a mound of earth, marked by smooth, round stones in the shape of her infinity necklace. Is this Mom's grave? she wondered. Why'd they bury her in the middle of a field in East Bumblefuck?

She wasn't about to dig the woman up, so she had to assume her mother had asked to be buried simply, in some nameless wheat field outside of the city, maybe in Utah where she was born, near her grandfather's airstrip.

Whatever the reason, Lamb spoke a few words to commemorate her mother's untimely passing. With this in mind, she began wandering through the field, looking for the road or a farmhouse, whichever came first.

The further she walked, crossing from one row to the next, the more she began to forget. Like what had happened to Andy after he'd killed her mother. If he'd been caught and punished or fled the city. Or how she'd gotten out here to the middle of nowhere in the first place. She didn't have a driver's license, so someone must have driven her here. It wasn't like there were any wheat fields in the middle of Las Vegas.

After a while, walking through the seemingly endless ocean of nothing but straw and hard, stony soil, she even forgot why she'd come here in the first place. Something about a pile of dirt she'd left somewhere behind her and her infinity necklace, which she rubbed between thumb and forefinger at her sternum.

By the time she reached the large clearing where a few vehicles and people were still milling about under the twilight sky, Lamb couldn't even be sure of who she was at all. All she knew was that her mother was out there somewhere, and she desperately needed to find her.

* * *

Nevaeh Jacobian was rolling up the awning on her camper when the woman entered the erstwhile GRP2 camp. Darkness had hit the camp in a flash a short time ago, the sun winking out like someone had literally turned it off with the flick of a switch. The remaining Gurpies were packing up their belongings and clearing the grounds of trash with flashlights and car headlights shining, even though it was just after three in the afternoon. Nevaeh would've liked to blame the sun's bizarre behavior on global warming, but they all knew better. There was only one reason for this sudden twilight, and his name was Rex Garrote.

Her awning caught a hitch and Nevaeh brought her folding chair over, climbing up cautiously to pull out the snagged fabric. As she wound it up the rest of the way, she first saw the blonde woman staggering into camp.

She climbed down from the chair and watched the woman stumble through camp like a teenager drunk off her first beer. The headlights and flashlights shone right through her.

She’s an ethereal, Nevaeh thought. And she’s lost.

The young woman was asking confused Gurpies the same question as she approached them: "Where's my mom? Where's my mom?"

"Oh, you poor dear," Nevaeh muttered to herself. With a glance back at her camper door, she headed out across the trampled straw and dirt, hoping to console the woman.

"Where's my mom?" the ethereal asked again as Nevaeh neared. She was dressed in faded cut-off jeans and a well-worn Pink Floyd T-shirt, her face streaked with tears. Her toes were painted green, her eyes as wide and blue as a sunny day. "Have you seen my mom?"

Nevaeh held out her arms to the young woman, and the ethereal's face crumpled as she broke down in tears, stepping into her embrace.

"Shh, shh," Nevaeh said, hugging her, only vaguely aware of how strange it was to not only be seeing and hearing ethereals but now to be hugging and consoling one, as if the woman were flesh and blood.

The young woman's chest hitched from sobbing as Nevaeh patted her back. "I'm sure you'll see your mother soon, darling. We'll all see our friends and family when the time comes, won't we? It's the way of things. The wheel of life and death. Karma."

"Andy," the woman sobbed into Nevaeh's shoulder. "He killed my mom. I thought he was a good man but he killed her. Bashed her head in like she was nothin."

"I'm so sorry to hear that."

"If I ever see him again…" There was an edge to her voice now, as dark as the starless expanse above their heads. She stepped out of Nevaeh's embrace, shaking her head solemnly, her jaw clenched. Nevaeh was startled to see the ethereal's blue eyes had gone ice cold. "He deserves to die for what he did to my mom."

* * *

The Trans Am's engine rumbled as Andy pulled into the grocery store parking lot, the sentient thunderhead still hovering behind them. A few vehicles remained here, but Andy figured most shoppers had made a mad dash to get out in the aftermath of the explosion. It also looked like it had been looted in the meantime, two of the storefront windows smashed inward, and a trail of diapers, toilet paper, canned goods and personal items scattered like a breadcrumb trail down the walkway. Shopping carts lay forgotten on the asphalt.

He wheeled the car around an overturned cart with products spilling out of it, and pulled right up in front of the doors. He didn't suspect anyone would be driving up any time soon, let alone someone in a wheelchair. Sitting at his side, Lamb turned to him with the malicious smile he'd come to know intimately in the last hour, her eyes glowing somewhat in the early twilight.

"This is the last of 'em," she said.

He stopped the engine and peered out at the store through the windshield. After facing death in the middle school, and again in the Sheriff's station—where they'd found the ethereal currently sitting quietly in the back seat, staring blankly out his window—Andy was wary to attempt another capture.

The cop shop had been a bloodbath. Several people dead, two of them police, flies lighting on their corpses in various states of decay. They'd found this one stalking around like a zombie among the holding cells. He'd held a knife in one hand, and had swung it at Andy several times, until Lamb had stepped between them. Coolly and calmly, she'd taken the knife from the ethereal's grip. Andy was grateful for her company in that moment, though it wasn't lost on him that he never would've been put in harm's way if not for this "mission" of hers.

"This one's gonna be a prize possession," Lamb said now, still wearing that disturbing smile.

The man in the back turned at the sound of her voice, a little runnel of drool spilling from his lower lip, the wild eyes Andy had first seen now sufficiently tamed. With his messy hair, his filthy hospital gown, and a lobotomy scar across his forehead, he looked like he'd just stepped off the set of a horror movie set in a haunted asylum.

"Then what?" Andy asked.

"Then we take 'em back to Ghostland."

"To help Ben and Sam," he said.

Lamb looked at him with a blank face, long enough that he began to wonder if she'd heard him. Then she snorted laughter. "Of course, to help Ben and Sam." She smacked him on the shoulder. "That's what all this is for, ya dummy!"

Andy nodded. Sure, he told himself. Of course, it is. He unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the Firebird. If only he could make himself believe it.

Lamb turned to the back and pointed at the man—she'd called him "Morton"—giving him an all-business look. "You. Stay there."

The man said nothing but he didn't appear to be ready to go anywhere. He looked dazed. Stoned.

I'd kill to get some of whatever he's been smoking, Andy thought.

In a blink Lamb disappeared, reappearing beside him. This time he barely reacted, let alone flinched.

"Watch the car," she told the black cloud hovering around back as she patted the hood of the Firebird. Then she slapped Andy's butt. Like the smack on his shoulder, he felt the sting of it, which was strange considering what she'd told him before, about it being difficult to hold on to her physical form. He was beginning to suspect she just hadn't wanted him to touch her, or—and this was a far more disturbing thought—that maybe she was getting stronger.

He couldn't be sure of either, because he hadn't felt the urge to touch her since the incident in the classroom. It wasn't that he was frightened by her, or intimidated by her power—though he certainly was both. It was more that he was no longer sure this was the Lamb Curtis he'd fallen in love with barely a week ago. For one thing, she no longer seemed to be concerned about her mother, murdered by Garrote to open the Dark Rift. Andy had tried to broach the subject, mentioning that they might find Sonya Curtis at Ghostland, and Lamb had casually sloughed it off with a "Yeah, prob'ly."

Just the thought of touching this thing wearing his girlfriend's image repulsed him, and the slap on his ass—which normally would have excited him—sent ripples of revulsion up his spine.

The grocery store doors opened partway and stopped as Andy approached them. Lamb sidestepped and walked through one of the broken windows. Andy followed her, his shoes crunching on tiny squares of shattered safety glass. As usual, Lamb's bare feet didn't make a sound.

A jumble of water jugs lay in front of the doors. The overhead lights were all off—someone in charge must have decided the electricity bill was more important than their life, at least for the time it took to shut them off—but the fridge lights were still on, casting a ghoulish glow on the front of the store from the prepared food and deli area. One of the closest cash registers lay open, loose change and a few dollar bills scattered on the floor below it. Products were strewn just about everywhere. The stink of rot hung in the air, sour and pungent.

Lamb went through the turnstile, which rolled as she passed, as if she were still alive, and she looked back at him with an eyebrow raised impatiently. "Don't you chicken out on me now, punkin. Not while we're so close to done."

From deep within the store came a loud rattle of metal, like someone had just upturned a shopping cart. The sound of breaking glass and clang of cans followed.

Lamb popped her eyes in excitement. "Ooh, he's an ornery sucker!" Her laughter rang out in the empty store as she turned and started skipping down the cereal aisle, toward the racket.

Andy wasn't exactly eager to find out who their final companion might be, but he was less willing to face this new Lamb's wrath. He followed her obediently. They found her "prize possession" in the frozen food aisle.

"Jeezum Crow, he's big!" Lamb said, looking up.

Big was an understatement—and "he" wasn't exactly right, either. From the shoulders down it was male, a muscular man with deep brown skin, wearing some kind of black, rubberized apron over his bare chest, scarred and stained, and loose-fitting Karate pants underneath.

A second torso of a waifish, light-skinned Eurasian woman, was sewn with heavy thread over the man's head and shoulders, leaving his face hidden within her abdominal cavity. Where her breasts should have been, two tiny infants had been sewn from the waist up to her body, mewling and grasping blindly. The woman wore a strange, medieval-looking mask of burnished metal and leather, shaped like a trumpet, over the lower half of her face. Her long, sleek hair hung over her shoulders.

The creature was hunkered down, pulling boxes of frozen pizza out of the freezer. Of all things, Andy thought. Even in a crouch it was clearly massive, so much so that Andy took a single, staggered step back into the cereal aisle, startled by the sight of it and more than a little afraid.

He turned to Lamb with a questioning look.c

"Go on," she said. "They ain't gonna hurt ya."

Andy forced himself to take a single step into the frozen food aisle. He turned back and whispered, "What's its name?"

"Call them Clayton. Or Laura. They'll respond to either." She smiled and said, "Glen or Glenda."

Whatever she meant by that, Andy didn't get it. She'd been dropping a lot of comments he didn't understand since she'd returned from the grave.

Andy raised a hand in nervous greeting. "Hi, uh, Clayton…."

The beast tore down an entire shelf of frozen pizzas which clattered and thudded around its feet as it stretched to full height—at least nine, maybe ten feet tall. The ceiling was high enough that the half-man-half-woman and—Andy assumed—their two children could stand without ducking, but it still towered over Lamb and himself, with only the counter of spoiled charcuterie separating them from the enormous creature.

Clayton/Laura's head reared back, long black hair cascading over its shoulders, and a horrible sound—like a sheep bleating into a trumpet, Andy thought—unleashed from its strange mask.

Then the creature, entirely blind with its six visible pairs of eyelids sewn shut, lumbered toward him.

Andy tried to step back in response, but Lamb held him fast by the shoulder, forcing him to stay where he was. A high, tremulous wail accompanied the heavy thud and trembling of the floor as the creature came near them. It took Andy a moment to realize the sound was coming from his own lips.

It was mere feet from them now, and if he didn't turn and run it would pick him up and pulverize him, tear him limb from limb, split him in two. He felt a dribble of urine soak into his underwear and tried again to turn around, but Lamb's grip was dangerously strong.

She thrust out her free hand in a stopping gesture, and the creature, still blind, stopped at her command. She swished the hand downward and the huge, human conglomeration knelt before them, lowering its heads in deference.

Lamb stroked the smooth hair, as if she was petting a dog. The image repulsed him—this thing had been human once, after all, and Lamb was treating them like a tamed animal. But looking away wasn't an option. She still held him fast, facing forward. And even though it was tame now, he couldn't be sure it wouldn't suddenly decide to grab him by the waist and chuck him into the half-emptied pizza freezer.

That'd be ironic, he thought, and somehow managed to prevent a mad chuckle from escaping his lips.

"That's a good Behemoth," Lamb said softly, still stroking the dead woman's hair on her crown. "You really should feel this, Andy. It's just like silk."

"I'll pass," he said, feeling ill.

"Wuss." She lowered her hand. "Now," she said, and flicked the hand upward, like a conductor. "Arise."

The creature stood again, taller than Andy by a good four feet. Taller than anything around them, even the shelves. The woman's head lolled, dark hair falling over the heads of the softly mewling babies, and its massive, male chest heaved in and out, in and out beneath the heavy apron, as if it were breathing.

"Now what?" Andy asked, not daring to look at the creature in its eyes, even though they were all sewn shut.

"Lead the way," Lamb said, gesturing back the way they'd come.

Andy turned and headed off, and the floor shook behind him as the creature followed.

I can't keep doing this, he told himself. I have to say something.

"Lamb—" he blurted, before he could stop himself.

"What's up, punkin?" she said, catching up to him.

"This doesn't feel right."

She looked at him askance, walking alongside him. Her voice was without inflection. "What d'you mean, 'not right'?"

"This. These ghosts we're collecting. All of this. There's people out there we could be helping. People who've suffered—"

"They're about to suffer a lot more if we don't get these ethereals back to Ghostland." She stopped. "You still trust me, don't you?"

"Of course, I trust you—"

"Andy."

"I trust you, Lamb. It's just… these ghosts don't exactly seem…" He lowered his voice. "…good."

Lamb laughed brightly. "Never judge a book by its cover." She winked. "Now c'mon. We gotta get movin if we're gonna get there on time. It's almost over now."

She took the lead, sashaying back down the cereal aisle. Watching her cheery gait he could almost convince himself she was the Lamb he remembered, the woman who'd loved and encouraged him, who'd led him to be a better man.

Almost… but not quite.

Andy glanced back over his shoulder at the hulking beast lumbering obediently behind him. He shuddered at the sight of it: this grotesque, mindless creature that had once been a family.

Almost over, he thought, and grew troubled by how relieved the idea made him.

Garrote House Revisited

LILIAN FOCUSED ON moving forward, eyes ahead, deliberately avoiding the sight or even the thought of the monsters trailing behind her, their knurled insect limbs and febrile wings scuttling. Unfortunately, the monster at her side was impossible to ignore. He enjoyed the sound of his own voice far too much, and kept up a constant barrage of boastful tales peppered with vaguely humorous—though mostly lost on Lilian—references, while they navigated the stacks of Garrote's seemingly infinite library.

"That's when I told Artie Best—he was my agent, as I mentioned earlier—I said to him, 'If you can't sell it as a movie, let's pitch it to the networks.' So we shopped it around, and the next thing you know, I'm in a meeting with Sandy Grushow at Fox. Now I'll be the first to admit I wasn't exactly thrilled we'd had to go beyond HBO or the Big Three. This could have been the next Tales from the Crypt! But Fox was an up-and-coming fourth network at the time and Artie was convinced—"

Lilian tuned out again. She'd been following her instincts, leading them higher and higher, keenly aware it was her instincts that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Still, it was all she had to go by, and she didn't have much choice. Either she lead him directly to this Spring place or his "pets" would tear her apart. The decision was obvious.

She'd spotted a grouping of the same books Harrison Greely had pointed out when they'd escaped Garrote in his library the first time, and suspected, like then, to find a hidden door on this level. She grabbed the copy of Shōki from between Crichton's The Terminal Man and Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines, and drew it down from the top like Ben had.

"Ah, very clever," Garrote said, taking a break from his monologue.

The book slipped off the shelf and fell on its spine at her feet with a thud, its pages fluttering open.

The writer looked down at it with disappointment, the spine broken. Then he eyed her suspiciously. "I'm beginning to wonder if you have your best interests in mind, Lilian."

"Best interests?" She rounded on him. She'd spent the last half hour climbing ladders and pulling books off the shelf, trying to get them out of this fucking library while all he did was yap about himself and he had the nerve to challenge her?

"Why don't you know where it is?" she said, vaguely aware of his pets clicking and chattering on the level below. "This is your House, isn't it?"

"Not anymore." Garrote's voice held something close to sadness, though his expression betrayed nothing. "It belongs to the Rift now. Perhaps it always had. There were times, late at night, when I'd head up to my office and find myself on the other side of the House. It plays tricks, you see. Particularly after dark. That's why they called it the Moving House."

Lilian considered this silently. When she and Ben had been here the first time, it had been like a carnival funhouse in a way, with its hidden exits and trapdoors, but it had still followed the rules of the normal world. In the Rift, the House was unbound by the rules of physics and logic. Lilian only had to look down, a hundred feet up from the library floor, to prove it.

It was obvious she needed to use divergent thinking to navigate this House within the Dark Rift. The way she had with Bram, imagining a tulpa to distract him, and the nun, envisioning the snow globe to pacify her. Ladders and secret passages would lead her nowhere in Hell's Labyrinth.

She bent to pick up the book she'd dropped, closed it and looked at the cover, a hand-painted image of a shogun with a red skull for a face and burning swamp-green eyes. The title was emblazoned across the top in blood-red faux-Japanese lettering, Garrote's name in bold white letters below the demon samurai lord.

"Ah, the Screamhouse edition hardcover. I released this one through my own imprint. A very rare find, especially if it's—" He opened the book, still in her hands, and flipped through the pages until he reached the title page. "—flat-signed by yours truly," he added with a grin, and tapped the scrawled signature. "Last I looked, this could fetch a savvy bookseller two-hundred dollars. I suspect the incident at my park may only have increased its value."

Lilian didn't much care about Garrote's signature, nor the value of the book. It was the publisher's logo on the prior page she was interested in: a door with a German expressionist slant.

She reached out, holding the spine in her palm, and pinched at the small door handle on the page. She didn't expect to feel the knob, cool metal the size of a rivet, between her thumb and forefinger, but when she did, she twisted it. The latch made a tiny

<click>

Garrote raised his eyebrows at the sound. "Ahhh! You see? All you needed was the proper motivation."

Lilian ignored the barb and tugged on the tiny handle. The little red door came open, pulling away from the page like a door in a children's pop-up book. Beyond it was a miniature version of Garrote's foyer, replete with gaslit sconces on the stairs, the crystal chandelier, and a fire burning in the hearth, bracketed by Clayton Odell's strange metal sculptures, the size of semicolons.

"Wonderful," Garrote said with a somewhat sarcastic edge. "Now, how do you suppose we all fit inside?"

"Shh!" Lilian hissed, concentrating on the doorway, not allowing what she thought—that not all of them needed to fit inside, only herself—to reach a conscious level.

With the tiny door opened, she held her bracelet in her free hand, worrying at it like a rosary, hoping the totem her parents had given her to guide her far away from Duck Falls, all the way to Stanford, would guide her in the right direction now

Hope was the only thing keeping her alive.

Dad, if you can hear me: help me get there safe.

The crackling of the miniature fireplace grew louder. She thought she could almost feel its warmth on her face.

"What's going on?" Garrote asked her.

Again, she ignored him. The smell of leather and lemon furniture polish and burning wood pricked her nostrils. The last time she'd been in the foyer they'd narrowly escaped a headless corpse and the Behemoth by pitting the ethereals against each other. This time, she doubted she'd be as lucky. But if she focused hard enough, she thought she just might be able—

"Very impressive," Garrote said.

Lilian opened her eyes. The writer was seated in front of a roaring fire in an ornate, high-back chair made from gold-painted wood. He held a glass of amber liquid in one palm, and a lit cigarette between his first and second fingers. Lingering in the shadows below the balcony and beneath the stairs, the Living Dark clung to the walls like human-sized insects.

Lilian's heart sank at the sight of them. She'd hoped to leave them all behind in the library. Now she knew better. They were linked together, Garrote and herself. He wouldn't let her out of his sight, not until she got him to the Spring.

The man himself stood with a dark grin, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. He puffed on the cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray, a dragon's claw made from jade, already filled to the brim with stale butts. He slurped down the last of his pungent drink and laid the glass down on a coaster beside the smoldering ashtray, then let out a satisfied gasp and smacked his lips.

"Thank you, Lilian. That was lovely. Now, shall we continue?"

* * *

Ben heard the cries and gunfire long before they'd seen any sign of the battle raging just beyond the edge of the midway. A violent, bloody confusion of soldiers from America's past fought circus performers and pirates and prisoners and one another. There seemed to be no order to the "sides." Confederates and G.I.s murdered their own. Civilians used whatever was at their disposal to gut and batter and gouge. Women in Victorian dress tore at each other's garments and hair, stabbing each other with hatpins. A mime brutally smashed a clown's face into the asphalt, the nose honking as it crunched. A pirate ran another through with his scabbard, spilling loose guts onto the asphalt. Gore spattered the ice cream man's pristine white uniform as he bashed in the skull of a woman wearing a purple Ghostland SPO T-shirt with the blunt end of an ice cream scoop.

Bullets and cannonballs and screams volleyed across the promenade ahead of Ben and the others. Plasma and water, ice and fire shot from one side to the other, splashing and crashing, crackling with black smoke and forks of lightning. Orbs darted above it all, bouncing off each other like mating fireflies. The injured and the dead—Dead again, Ben thought—lay across the battlefield in various states of distress and horror.

Ben could see no way through the skirmish without entering it, and he wanted nothing to do with this fight… though he wondered if he was already an integral part of it. He thought it might be the inevitable outcome of Rex Garrote's bid for power, that like himself and the others, these people were fighting against Garrote, or for him.

What side's what? he wondered again. But there was no indication among the carnage. The only flags he saw were the same: the Stars and Stripes from various eras, as far back as the thirteen stars, flown over shoulders and on the backs of horses. Looking further, he found a single Confederate battle flag among the brutality, hung limp and ragged, riddled with holes like a zombie's tattered garments.

"War of the Ghosts," Sam remarked.

Stan scratched his head. "What is that, some old sci-fi movie?"

“Just something silly, Dad," she said with a shrug. "Never mind."

Another agonized scream rose from the massacre. Ben winced at the sight of a soldier in jungle camouflage on fire, trailing smoke as he ran and rolled.

They couldn't afford another detour, but what choice was there? They couldn't expect to just saunter through this madness. They would have to go around.

"This way," Ben said reluctantly.

They'd already begun making their way around the chaos, toward the side of Rocky's Fun World, when a thunderous rumbling of what sounded like an avalanche stopped everyone dead, even amid the conflict. Weapons lowered and heads rose from murderous intent toward the source of the sound, as the ground shook beneath them and the structures around them trembled.

"My God!" Stan gasped, holding his hat against his chest. "Look at it."

"'Look at it'?" Sam scoffed. "How can you not?"

Ben turned and looked up.

A mountain of wood and brick and shingle and glass had risen above the shattered dome of Fontaine County Correctional, towering over it, where there had only been the black expanse of the Dark Rift before. The rumble—which persisted as Ben watched, in horrified awe—was caused by a ripple within the byzantine structure, as its features fanned outward and reassembled, shifting and changing shape, changing intent. Gables stretched and twisted into spires, doors lost their opacity to become windows, panes of glass merged into a solarium, stairs flattened into walls—while all over the moving surface of this architectural abomination ivy crept and crawled, the only thing appearing to hold its form.

Even with this latest renovation complete, Garrote House still appeared to be in motion. The rumbling had ceased but the spires and rooftops and balconies seemed to be gradually taking up more and more of the blackened skyline. At first Ben thought it was an optical illusion, like the first time he'd gone to Baltimore as a child and looked way up at a skyscraper, and the building had been so tall it looked like it was falling down on him.

But this wasn't a trick of the eye. Garrote had raised his House up from the rubble with the power of the Dark Rift. It was still growing.

And high above this mountainous mansion, a bright full moon shone down like a pale and watchful eye. The sight was almost too perfectly macabre, making Ben wonder if Garrote hadn't placed it there himself, like a reverse Star of Bethlehem, calling to his Wise Men… or the burning Eye of Sauron, ever watchful.

Can you see us? he wondered. He watched the moon for a long moment, as if waiting for it to blink.

"We're going in there?" Billy said, pointing with his newly resurrected arm.

Ben nodded gravely.

"But what if it, like, changes while we're inside?"

Everyone looked to Ben for an answer. But all he knew was what the psychic had told him, and he shook his head. "Mrs. Speer said that's where we'll find the Spring, which means that's where he'll be. I guess we just have to hope if it does move that we'll move with it."

Stan shrugged, crushing his hat on his head. "Good enough for me, I guess. I've had a good run."

Sam nodded. "You don't have to keep going if you don't think you can, Bill."

Billy lowered his head in thought. When he looked up again, it was with fierce determination. "No. When those dark clouds started moving across the sky, I was pretty sure I'd die today, anyway. I'm coming with you."

"Good man," Stan said.

Before they could head off again, someone called Ben's name from across the battlefield. The combatants had already picked right back up where they'd left off, making it difficult to distinguish the voice.

He found Le Mon standing just outside the prison wall, waving at them over the moving crowd. Ben laughed joyfully, waving back. "Le Mon! You're ali—I mean, you're here!"

Le Mon vanished, leaving the others—Niko and Leonard, Allison and Demont Hudson were with him—and reappeared at Ben's side. He smiled his gap-toothed smile and grabbed Ben up in a bearhug.

"Am I glad to see you!"

"Me too," Ben said when Le Mon set him back down on the ground. "I thought you were gone for good. Thea said you got bit by one of those imago things."

Le Mon looked at his arm, where no trace of the wound remained. "That's right. By a petit minou, of all things. A cat," he explained to the others. Ben recalled when he'd first met Le Mon, he'd been rubbing the belly of the McGowan's orange tabby and had called it the same thing. "Hurt like a bastard," Le Mon continued, "but I guess it put me right where I needed to be." He looked back over his shoulder. "Your friends'll sure be glad to see you. But where's Lilian at?"

"Bram took her."

"Bram did? That slippery mother…"

"He pulled her astral right out of her body."

Le Mon narrowed his eyes and nodded toward the House. "You think he's working for him?"

"That's what we figured, yeah," Stan said, sticking out a hand. "I'm Stan. Stan Beadle."

Le Mon shook it, smiling despite looking somewhat annoyed to be interrupted. Ben introduced the others. When the time came for Le Mon to shake Billy's hand, the man startled.

"You're corporeal," he said, gripping Billy's revived hand.

Billy laughed. "As far as I can tell, sir."

"But this ain't your real arm."

"No, sir, it's not. It's…" He looked at the others, suddenly self-conscious. "It's a long story."

Le Mon hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe another time. Well, Ben, all this time I told you Rex Garrote was livin rent-free in your head, turns out we was all livin in his. All of this is his doin," he said, with a sweeping gesture toward the brawl. "He got these poor deluded folk fightin with each other when they should be fightin him. It's all a distraction."

"He's in there," Ben said, nodding toward the House. "He's looking for this place called—"

"The Spring." Le Mon nodded, as if he knew all about it. "I could sense him in that House when we come 'round. His mind is louder than all of these folk combined. It's like a symphony, only not the kind with instruments." He shrugged. "Instruments of pain, maybe. I s'pose it's why I didn't sense this til we was just about on top of it."

"Can we stop them?

Le Mon shook his head in despair. "They gone blind with rage. Prob'ly don't even know why they fightin anymore. Ain't nothin any of us can do to stop it."

"Unless we stop Garrote," Ben said.

Le Mon shrugged. "If that's even possible. Me and th'others, we goin to see this old woman—"

"Mrs. Speer," Ben said. "We just came from there."

"And you left?"

"We have to stop Garrote—"

"Ben, look at that thing. Give it a real good look. That House'll eat you alive if you go in there. I mean literally."

"I don't have a choice, Le Mon. I'm the reason he's there right now. When I killed him, I just made him more powerful—"

"If you didn't do it he'da just found someone else to put out his lights. This ain't on you, Ben. You don't have to carry this on your shoulders no more. Come with us. It's time we all find out what comes next."

"I wish I could," Ben said, and he truly did. "But Lilian's inside that House, Le Mon. Right now. With Garrote. We have to find her."

Le Mon gave him a deeply sympathetic look. "Ben, I don't wanna burst your bubble but if he got her, she's already dead."

Stan chimed in again. "Chances are he wouldn't have gotten this Bram character to bring her to him if there wasn't some reason for it."

Le Mon shot the man a stern look. "Y'ever consider the reason was to lure you?"

"You're probably right," Ben said, startling Le Mon. "But we can't just let him win. And we could really use your help."

"I can't," Le Mon said, seeming genuinely troubled. "I know I said when it's time to kick that beaucoup ugly horror-loving freak's ass back to Hell that I'm with you. But I promised to get these people to All Hallows' Close. I promised I'd help them move on."

"Are you sure that's what they want?"

Le Mon looked back across the violent battlefield, over the shouting and blood. Leonard perked up when he saw they were looking. Niko looked to be in a daze, one arm draped over Leonard's broad shoulders. Allison and Demont were watching the fight in despair.

"We haven't put it to a vote, if that's what you mean."

"Maybe you should."

Le Mon nodded. "Maybe we should." He squinted. "I tell you what: if they vote to keep moving, that's what we gon' do. But if they say 'stay,' I'm right there by your side, man. Cool?"

"Cool," Ben said.

"All right, gimme a minute." With that, Le Mon winked out. He reappeared a moment later on the other side of the skirmish. Ben watched them converse. He saw hands shoot up. Whatever he'd asked, the vote had been unanimous. Even Niko, who still appeared dazed, raised his hand.

Ben felt his spirits lift, but when Le Mon returned he wore a hangdog look. "I'm sorry, Ben. Your friend Niko's not doing too well. We gon' take him to your Mrs. Speer first, help him move on. Then I'll catch you up, I promise you that. Unless I see you at the Close first."

He stuck out a hand. Ben took it reluctantly, knowing he'd likely never see Le Mon again. He doubted any of them would return from that House, certain the Living Dark would swallow them up before they could. Once they got inside, short of a miracle, it would be nearly impossible to find one another.

"Bon chance, Ben. Good luck."

"You too, Le Mon. And thanks," he added.

"For what?"

Ben shrugged. "For everything."

His once-mentor squeezed his shoulder. "You're serious about going in there?"

Ben allowed his grim expression to break into a smile, recognizing the setup for his line. "Dead serious," he said.

Le Mon chuckled. "It still don't fly as a catchphrase, but I'm warmin to it. You take care now."

"You too."

Le Mon waved to the others. "Good meetin' ya'll."

They returned the pleasantry. Le Mon held Ben's gaze for a moment, conveying his concern, his regret… and vanished.

"Okay," Ben said, once Le Mon was safely on the other side of the brawl. "Let's get moving."

The others nodded. With a sense of finality, Ben led them toward the funhouse, while on the far side of the war, Le Mon led his group in the opposite direction.

Ben wished Le Mon could have come with them, but he supposed he'd just have to be content that the man had survived.

For now.

Kismet

THE FIFTH HORSEMAN'S driver didn't see the obstacle up ahead until it was far too late to avoid it. Rather than try to wrestle the massive vehicle around, he floored the accelerator. The engine roared and the Horseman picked up speed, ramming into a massive wall of what appeared to be vulcanized rubber. The scooped frontend bent metal—poles? spikes?—a foot in diameter. He couldn't see the entirety of the structure through the armored slats covering the windshield, but it was gargantuan, whatever it was.

General Zaydan's tank plowed right into the back of the Horseman, pinning it against—Just what in the hell is that thing? Zaydan thought, peering out through the periscope seconds before the collision. What it looked like a giant black innertube, though its surface was corrugated. His right eye struck the periscope, firing stars across his vision.

"Christ!" he cried out, unable to stop himself. The tank commander gave him a brief look of concern before returning to the controls.

"What was that?" Ollie Hedgewood said in the back of the limousine a good hundred feet behind Zaydan. They'd just entered the midway when two loud crashes, nearly simultaneous, caused the convoy to come to an abrupt halt. Manny had braked quickly to avoid colliding with the transport ahead of them. The jolt had nearly thrust Ollie into Thea's lap.

Thea herself had twisted around to peer through the partition, which Ollie had lowered as they passed below the asylum. All either of them could see was the back of the transport as soldiers leaped out, weapons at the ready.

"What's happening?" Thea asked.

"Manny. Can you get us out of here?"

The driver glanced in the rearview, his unibrow furrowed. "Which way? Ahead or back?"

"Ahead," Ollie said, though every instinct told him to turn around and drive away from this place as fast as the armor-plated Mercedes S600 could take them, which was very fast indeed.

"You got it." Manny looked over his shoulder and backed away from the crash site. Ollie ducked to peer out through the windshield and had to blink and stare for a long moment to be sure of what he was looking at.

"What the hell is that thing?" Thea gasped.

"OH GOODIE, MORE FRIENDS!" the little-girl voice bellowed, as soldiers ahead of them began blasting at the gigantic Victorian doll on an equally massive tricycle, the wheels a good thirty-feet tall, the doll—if it could still be called a "doll" at that size—at least twice its height. Its cracked porcelain face, easily the size of the tank up ahead, turned and tilted down in a strangely robotic fashion, and the big doe eyes with fringed lashes shuttered closed and open languidly.

The sonic weapons did nothing. Many of the soldiers had already switched to their rifles, which rapped out tattoos, firing puny rounds at the giant doll-thing, making minor scuffs in its porcelain face. In the moment before Manny wheeled the car to their right, Ollie saw the tank gun crane upward.

WHAPOOM!

The blast shook the limousine, a massive fireball exploding form the barrel. Manny ducked and his chauffer's cap fell off his head. "Fuck me!" he said, depositing the cap back on his dark, silky mane.

"I'm telling mommy!"

The doll reached down, the apron over its dress aflame, scorched by the artillery. Ollie followed the scene through the side windows as Manny drove them between a roller coaster and a row of games. The doll had just grasped the tank in its massive doll hands when the carnival trailer they were passing blocked it from sight.

Ollie leaned back in his seat, heart beating rapidly. He caught Thea's eye and for a moment they shared the same troubled expression. Then her eyes widened and she moved to the windows again, staring out.

"What did you see?"

Thea frowned and sat back. "Nothing," she said.

Ollie didn't believe her, but there was no point in prodding her with the gun Danica had left him when he'd sent her off to lead his team in the vans. Whatever was out there would reveal itself or it wouldn't. If it did, he could only hope to outrun it. He didn't suspect the limo's armor plating would protect them from ethereals, and another giant like the thing back there would tear it open like a tin of sardines.

"Where to now, Mr. Hedgewood?"

"Left. Toward the House."

Manny said nothing more, only turned them left the moment he was able. As soon as they wheeled around the corner, he slammed on the brakes. This time, Ollie was prepared, locked into his seatbelt and gripping the seat to keep from launching forward.

"What is it now?" he groaned.

Ahead of them, a very old car had parked across the promenade. In the driver's seat, a man sat in shadow, smoking a cigar which lit his face a sinister red as he puffed on it.

"Holy moly," Manny said. "I think that's a Model-T!"

Ollie seemed to recall the vehicle on a list his brother had typed up many years ago, which he'd provided for Ollie to evaluate the cost of items. The driver had been involved in a string of armed robberies and murders. The many bullet holes puncturing the Model-T's exterior attested to it.

"Can we go around?"

"I didn't see any other places to turn off back there."

Ollie nodded. "Okay. Ram it."

"Ram it?"

"You heard me."

"I could just honk—"

"Ram the goddamn car off the road!" Ollie bellowed.

Thea flinched between the men. Manny pulled his cap down and obediently floored the accelerator.

Up ahead, the Model-T's driver calmly stepped out, raising what appeared to be a Tommy-gun. He grinned, the cigar chomped between his teeth, and fired.

Phantom bullets plowed into the hood of the limo, the grill and windshield. The bulletproof glass held but the right front tire burst and the limo slumped dangerously. As Ollie zipped up the partition, the Model-T's driver began cackling, his finger still on the trigger.

The limo slammed directly into him, crushing the apparently solid-enough ethereal into his Model-T, pushing both driver and vehicle until their momentum finally halted. The maniac with the gun cackled madly, pinned between the vehicles but firing endlessly at the windshield. A bullet managed to puncture a hole in the glass and Manny's cap flew off his head, blood spattering through the half-closed partition. He struck the steering wheel face-first and the horn blared out.

Ka-chunk.

The door locks all came open at once.

Ollie saw the realization register in Thea's eyes. As he raised the pistol, she kicked out. The hard heel of her boot struck his fingers painfully and the gun went flying.

While he scrambled for it, Thea dove for the doors. The gun had fallen under her seat. He reached, his fingers thudding with pain, and managed to grasp it just as Thea got one of the doors open. He sat up again, aiming the pistol—

But Thea was already running, and zipped behind the roller coaster's control booth, out of sight. Half-dazed, Ollie pulled himself out of the limousine. Crushed between both vehicles, the ethereal kept cackling, but his ammunition was spent, his trigger finger causing only dry clicks. Ollie staggered to the front of the limo, raised the pistol, and fired at the madman's head until the laughter stopped.

He hadn't expected it to work, but the wet cigar fell from the ethereal's lips and the gangster slumped over the hood of the limo, his newsie cap falling to the asphalt between them.

Ollie peered into the driver's seat of the limo and sneered in distaste. He lifted Manny's face from the wheel and the relentless honking stopped, though it still rang in his ears.

The bullet had struck Manny directly between the eyes. It had probably killed him before he'd had a chance to feel it, which was good. Manny had been an excellent driver and a loyal bodyguard for over a decade. Ollie wouldn't exactly say his presence would be missed, but the trouble of finding someone of his caliber to replace him would be bothersome, to say the least.

Ollie staggered away from the crash. He considered following Thea, but to what end? Destiny lay within Garrote's infernal House. There was precious little time to waste.

He skirted the wrecked Model-T and strode toward the blackened sky, where Garrote House awaited him.

* * *

General Zaydan was losing ground.

Somehow the giant fucking doll had gotten the upper hand, had taken out nearly half of his goddamn men—damn fine soldiers, every last one of them—smashed a Humvee to bits and heavily damaged several transports. How had this mission gone south so quickly? Was it too late to call in an air strike?

And just why in the blue Hell weren't Hedgewood's sonic weapons working against this… thing?

The man himself had peeled out of harm's way the moment the battle began, bringing the treasonous bitch with him. Zaydan would have taken back what he'd said to Hedgewood at the old church if he'd been able. The man had no guts, not unless he was assured of victory. Like many men of his station, he was a coward. Plain and simple.

The battle at the Temple hadn't quite been shooting fish in a barrel as Hedgewood had promised. A handful of insurgents had been endowed with quite impressive telekinetic abilities, the sort of powers that would make the labcoats in Research and Development salivate. Still, the ethereals had put on quite the display of pyrotechnics. In the end his troops had neutralized all but a few who'd managed to escape, leaving the good guys with only a few scrapes and bruises, minor burns and frayed nerves.

Though they were some of America's finest, it wasn't the type of combat they were used to. How would anyone prepare themselves for fighting a giant china doll? Even their sonic neutralizers had only been tested in the field once before this assignment began, during a single covert mission in Afghanistan codenamed Operation Djinn, and though the arms test had been successful, the operation itself had been a failure.

And now this… what Zaydan's teenage son would call an epic disaster.

"Fire again," he said.

The commander nodded and depressed the trigger. The tank recoiled with the blast but Zaydan held fast to the periscope, watching as the ordnance scorched a hole through the giant's lacy, dust-colored dress.

The giant screeched and brought a single foot down on the Fifth Horseman, crushing it like an especially large pest. The driver of the vehicle leaped out of the cockpit. Several men pulled him to safety before the Horseman exploded in a ball of fire.

"Fall back!" Zaydan barked into his radio mic, crushing his helmet back onto his skull. "Everyone fall back immediately!"

The tank commander gave Zaydan a doleful look as his superior reached up and opened the hatch. "Sir, where are you going?"

"I'm going to do everything in my power to salvage this goddamn operation." He nodded curtly. "You have your orders, Commander. Fall back."

With that, the general climbed out of the tank.

* * *

Thea ran until her lungs felt like they might explode. She used to run all the time, through Runyon Canyon and La Cienega, back when she was "getting clean" and "living sober." Since starting GRP2, she'd barely had enough time to slip in a few dozen crunches most mornings. Her stamina and lungs had suffered for it, not to mention her belly, nowhere near as flat as it once was. She had to stop and catch her breath now, with that maniac Hedgewood likely still on her trail, and lean against the backside of a trailer to keep her wobbly legs from giving out.

Four shots rang out behind her. How many bullets does one of those guns have? she wondered. Six? Twelve? If she let him find her, she'd learn firsthand.

Once the pain in her lungs subsided and her vision cleared—she'd just about blacked out there for a second or two—Thea began circling around the back of a pair of conjoined trailers with a tall façade shaped like a castle, likely some kind of children's ride.

Have to get back to the Temple. Not that there's much left for me to protect.

Another explosive boom came from the midway, the tank's cannon—Or whatever they call it, she thought—punctuating the staccato bursts of gunfire. The military goons were still busy with that giant doll. Its voice was muffled from this distance, but Thea could still hear its disappointment in its new "friends."

Creeping around the front of the ride, where the tram had stopped halfway out of a hand-painted drawbridge, Thea startled, clutching at her chest. A battle had been fought here fairly recently. Fires still smoldered in asphalt craters and horse carts. Dozens of dead bodies lay strewn across the thoroughfare.

A clown lay facedown a few feet from where she stood, which was what had first startled her. What was left of his face was obliterated against the asphalt, the insides of his skull surrounding his head like a smashed jam jar. Civil War soldiers had been piled together, North and South, some of them shot, some gutted, beheaded or slashed across the throat. Their respective flags had been run through the pile of them, a tattered Confederate flag and a 35-star flag spearing the bodies on either side of the heap like kebabs. Closer to Thea, a pair of wealthy-looking Victorian ladies had died in each other's arms. One woman's face was still blue, her eyes bulging, as if she'd been asphyxiated by the silk scarf twisted around her throat. The other had what looked like a bejeweled hat pin lodged in her temple.

Glimpses of at least a dozen equally gruesome scenes caught her eye even before she saw the house towering over it all, its gables and spires and rooftops and widow's watches like the craggy peaks of a mountain. Bright light streamed from its many windows. Someone was inside.

Him, she thought. Rex Fucking Garrote.

"This place is a fucking nightmare," she breathed.

To think she'd been so eager to storm right into this place and tear down the walls only a few days ago. She and Bram had already destroyed what was likely the only thing that could save her life at the moment. If she died here, she'd only have herself to blame.

Thea crept along the front of the kiddie ride—Dracula's Castle, according to the hand-painted sign—trying to avoid looking at the carnage as she passed.

Obviously, she couldn't go back the way they'd come in. The cries of anguish and machine gun fire still rose from the fight she'd left behind, along with the childlike roar of the monstrous doll. But Hedgewood was likely still following her behind the rides and games, along the park wall.

"Guess I'll have to cross this," she said, with a strategic glimpse at the carnage, working out her route. But doing so would put her right out in the open for anything to attack her.

Still, it was the wisest option. If only she'd brought Taffy to consult with. Hedgewood would have laughed if she'd ask to go back to her office and grab her pink unicorn stuffie. He'd already made her feel weak and pathetic, though she'd redeemed herself in her escape.

Without another thought, Thea darted across the midway, looking up and down the thoroughfare. To the south she saw the doll, as tall as the nearby Ferris wheel, swinging down with one arm. It struck its intended target with a metallic crunch.

The sound of nearby hoofs startled her, and she squinted into the dense fog alongside the Cyclotron ride, where the noise had come from.

Could it be? she thought again. She'd seen a flash of pink through the limo windows and wondered if she'd imagined it. Was it possible? Or was it just an ethereal horse? She'd seen buggies burning among the carnage. What good were buggies without horses to pull them?

She dashed the rest of the way and ducked behind the side of the Cyclotron. The last thing she wanted was to get trampled by a dead horse, but she'd already come too far to go back. She eyed the fog for movement, but saw nothing.

"I had a feeling you'd be trouble," a man growled behind her.

Thea wheeled around. The dark look in the general's eyes made her step back in fright even before she saw the gun—she didn't know what kind—gripped in his left hand. He was grinning, bloodstained teeth clenched, lips curled in a snarl. Gore from a wound somewhere within his slate-gray buzzcut had spilled down his forehead and over his right ear.

"Ollie lost you," the general said. "I won't."

Thea turned quickly, ready to run, hoping to lose him in the fog, but the general caught her by the hair and jerked her roughly back to him. He pressed the gun into her ribs and wrapped his free arm around her throat, pinning her to his medal-adorned chest.

"Don't move a goddamn muscle, traitor." His breath came hot and minty in her ear. "Not unless you're eager to breathe through your ribs."

"What do you want?" she practically mewled.

"I want to wipe every single last one of your spectral friends off the face of the Earth."

"You already took everyone at the Temple! What do you need me for?"

The general tightened his grip on her throat, pinching her windpipe closed. "I know you and your conspirators colluded with Garrote to take down the Recurrence Field. You're going to be my ticket into his blasted House."

"Bram betrayed me!" Her vision was starting to gray. The man let her go just enough for her to suck in a hurried breath. She coughed, the pain like a knife in her throat.

"I don't buy that," the general said. "You're getting me through the front door, and I'm going to find that treasonous son of a bitch—"

The gallop of hoofs stopped him.

Thea squinted into the fog. A dark shape moved within, easily ten feet tall.

"Goddamn horse." Zaydan walked her backwards, toward the carnage in the midway. "Move it."

The horse trotted out of the swirling fog then—only it wasn't quite a horse. Its sleek body was as pink as cotton candy and a long, twisting horn protruded from the forehead.

"What the hell…?" the general gasped.

Taffy the unicorn rose on her hind legs and whinnied.

Thea nearly laughed out loud, marveling at the majestic creature from her childhood fantasies, who'd listened to her secrets and believed her story about the ghost she'd seen when her parents had denied it. She wondered what the girl she'd been might have thought, seeing her imaginary friend come to life.

General Zaydan didn't wait for an explanation. He removed the barrel of the gun from Thea's ribs and started firing. The bullets thunked off the unicorn's tough, coarse-haired hide and dropped to the asphalt around it.

Taffy dropped down to all fours and lowered her head, the horn jutting forward.

"My Christ," Zaydan muttered.

Thea slammed the heel of her boot into his shin.

The general let out a pained yelp, his arm loosening from her throat. She twisted around, taking the general with her, as her unicorn dashed forward.

Zaydan fired once more behind his back before the horn impaled him between the shoulder blades. A gurgled choke escaped his lips, and the gun fell from his hand as his eyes bulged in their sockets.

Thea heard the horn pop out through the general's chest with a whistling sound and felt it puncture the flesh below her left shoulder blade. She tried to wriggle away but Zaydan only pulled her closer, the horn digging agonizingly deeper, pushing through her ribcage. She cried out in pain as the general roared, squeezing the life out of her while the horn dug deeper.

Her boots came off the ground, lifted both by the sharp end of the horn and the general's forearm still around her throat. Finally, his arm slipped loose and she sucked in a huge breath, the horn sliding out of her pierced flesh with a disconcerting sucking sound.

She dropped to her knees and rolled, turning to see the creature lift Zaydan up over her head and fling him off with such force he left a dent in the side of the Orange Julius stand. He fell dead at the foot of it, his glassy eyes open in bewilderment.

Thea's next breath was short, whistling through the hole in her freshly punctured lung.

"No," she gasped.

The unicorn snorted and lowered its blood-drenched head toward Thea. At first, she thought Taffy intended to finish her off, but the downcast look in the unicorn's doe eyes told her otherwise. She hadn't meant to hurt Thea, only to spare her from the mad general.

Thea reached out and stroked Taffy's mane, trying to ignore Zaydan's and her own hot, sticky blood smearing on her hands.

"Good girl," she cooed, each breath becoming more labored. "It's okay. I know you didn't mean it. You were only trying to help."

Taffy bowed her head, indicating she wanted Thea to mount her. Thea had learned how to ride during her "clean living" days. She gripped the end of Taffy's pink mane in one hand and the withers in the other and swung her right leg over the unicorn's back. Sitting proud atop the mythical steed, Thea looked over the dead, from the general lying at the foot of the juice stand to the men and women sprawled along the battlefield.

I did this, she thought, the pain in her lungs almost unbearable. I thought I was helping but I made a mistake, a terrible mistake. If there's any way to stop it, I need to try. I have to set things right.

She looked toward the House, then back the way she'd come. She didn't know if she'd make it a significant distance with her lung collapsing and her breath painfully constricted, blood oozing an itchy trail down her back.

But atonement was all she had left.

She had to at least try.

With that in mind, Thea steered the unicorn around, stroking her mane, and gently booted her sides, starting Taffy in a trot across the corpse-littered asphalt toward Garrote House.

* * *

As Thea and her imaginary companion left the midway, the ethereals scattered there began to move.

To an onlooker, it would have seemed that they'd been playing dead all this time, that the corpses strewn across the battlefield had merely tired of their game and were suddenly rising, all at once, to return to their afterlives.

The illusion lasted only a moment. The bodies began to dance like marionettes on strings, limbs and torsos twisting unnaturally, heads hunching, flesh and garments turning black as wood rot, transmuting into all manner of abhorrent deformities, perverse caricatures of life.

These newly formed creatures, now joined to the Living Dark, rose on callused claws, gnarled bone and blistered talons, and skittered along behind Thea and her unicorn, following her home.

Esprit De Corpse

ANDY PEERED INTO the rearview mirror, glancing anxiously at the ethereals they'd collected. The lobotomized man still sat dazed in the backseat, drooling onto his lap, while the malignant thunderhead and the human composite Lamb had called the Behemoth followed the Firebird closely, the latter jogging alongside Andy's window like a dog whose leash had inadvertently gotten caught in the door.

The Firebird purred up the hill, heading out of town, through the tunnel of discarded vehicles, toward Ghostland.

Toward certain death, Andy, my man.

Yeah, that, too, probably, he answered himself. He'd been having these conversations with himself within his own head since the sheriff's station, a macabre scene which he believed may have broken him. The final straw, so to speak.

Straw? You mean the place where Lamb died? If you weren't so careless you lost her grave, none of this would be happening right now.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe. But it'll all be over soon, won't it?

Lamb squeezed his thigh. He flinched and turned to her. She was smiling brightly, as if all of this was a fun little game to her. She'd told him she was his gwisin but seeing the joy these demons brought her told him the truth. Death had poisoned her, turned her inside out and squeezed every ounce of goodness out of her. She'd become what his mother would have called a dokkaebi: an evil spirit. A goblin.

What am I gonna do? What can I do?

He was long past believing they were on their way to help Ben and Sam. It was clear now that his purpose, whether he chose to accept it or not, was to prevent Ben from stopping Garrote.

I can't just let that happen.

That's right, Andy, my man. You can't. But you will, won't you? Because deep down, you know you're just a pathetic little coward.

That was true, too. These ghosts, good or evil, they were his ghosts now, whether he chose to claim them or not. They were fused to him the way the gwisin couple had been since he was a child. Add to that the fact that he was relatively certain Lamb wouldn't let him quit without a fight. The only way to reject them would be to give up his own life… and he wasn't quite there just yet.

So he drove, pedal to the metal, glancing in the rear and side mirrors every so often, hoping when the time came he'd know what to do. That he'd realize how to put an end to this before it was too late.

If it wasn't already.

* * *

Le Mon and his people entered the camp in the field near Ghostland shortly after the sun was obliterated from the sky. By now most of the Gurpies had left and only a few stragglers remained behind, their flashlights bobbing and headlights shining in the dark. The grounds looked like the aftermath of a festival, although with considerably less trash—some of the folks with flashlights were going around picking it up, like the day after Mardi Gras—and more rubble from the Recurrence Field explosion.

"I remember these people," Allison said. "What were they called?"

"Ghosts Are People Too," Leonard said, still carrying the majority of Niko's weight as his dazed friend stared blankly ahead. "We had to kick a bunch of 'em out on opening day for causing a ruckus."

"All the precautions we took," Demont said with a shake of his head. They'd found him wandering inside the prison, near where his body had been dragged by one of the men they'd seen playing orderly in the asylum. He'd apparently smashed in Demont's head from behind with a steel bar. "The security, the Recurrence Field and electrostatic precipitators, the suicide prevention team," he went on. "None of it meant anything."

Allison nodded gravely. "Because of him."

"Because of him," Demont agreed.

"Me an' Ben," Le Mon said, "we were workin with GRP2 after the tragedy. Freein ethereals from their death loops. But they kicked Ben out when they realized what we was doin in the shadows, raising an army to stand against Garrote. All that's lost now, I suppose."

"So why are we here?" Allison asked. "You said there was one more person we needed."

Le Mon pointed across the way. "That's her, right there," he said.

Further into camp, two women stood beside a mobile home. Le Mon had recognized both of them even from a distance. The older woman, darker skinned with her gray hair pinned above her head, seemed to be consoling the younger one. He'd met the young woman only a few days ago with her boyfriend. She shimmered slightly in the dark, and he suspected she was the ethereal whose distress and confusion he'd been following like a homing beacon for the last twenty minutes or so, finally leading them here.

"The old woman?" Leonard asked.

Allison frowned. "She's not that old."

"No," Le Mon said, before it could devolve into another disagreement between the two. "Th'other one."

The group continued across the trampled wheat and bare earth. As they neared the mobile home, the young woman's head rose and her eyes went wide—as bright and blue as a summer day. Her name was Lamb, if he remembered correctly. The older woman turned to take in the sight of her visitors.

"Hello, Nevaeh," Le Mon said.

Nevaeh's face crinkled into a sunny smile that could just about brighten the gloom around them. "Leon… is that you?"

He smiled, holding out his arms. "In the flesh. Such as it is."

They embraced. "I never thought I'd get a chance to see your face," she said. "You're more handsome than I expected."

"And you're just as radiant as always," he told her, causing the woman to blush. He nodded toward Lamb, who'd turned her back, talking to herself, cringing away from the others. "Friend of yours?"

Nevaeh followed his gaze. "She wandered into camp about half an hour ago. I've been trying to console her, to use the tactics they taught at the Temple, but nothing's gotten through. She just won't listen to reason. But perhaps she'd listen to you."

Le Mon nodded. "I'll give it a whirl."

He approached Lamb cautiously. She turned further, whispering into her hands. "Lamb?" The woman startled. "Lamb, we met a few days ago, but we never got a chance to talk face to face. I'm a friend of Lilian's. My friends call me Le Mon, so that's what you can call me."

Lamb whispered into her hands. He saw she was clutching a necklace with a pendant in the shape of an infinity symbol, twisting it around and around, thumbs following its contours.

"Hey, I don't mean to frighten you. My friends an me, we just wanna help."

"My mom," she said, muttering into the pendant. "Killed my mom."

"Who did? Not you."

"Andy. Andy killed my mom."

"Your boyfriend Andy? He didn't look like he could hurt a fly, even if he wanted to. He around here?"

She flinched, her head darting around, bright blue eyes flicking from the last few vehicles to the stragglers wandering in the dark with their lights bobbing, picking up trash.

She's terrified, Le Mon thought. But they looked so happy together th'other day. Guess you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

"Le Mon?"

Allison's voice startled him. "Huh?"

"Can I help?"

He gestured toward Lamb. "She loopin pretty bad. Be my guest."

Allison approached Lamb cautiously, while Le Mon joined Nevaeh and the others to watch her work. He knew Allison had been a psychologist, that she'd brought Lilian to Ghostland as a sort of "exposure therapy" for Lilian's fear of death. It seemed like a bad idea to Le Mon, but most people had thought the park was harmless back then, from those who'd commissioned it to park employees like Demont Hudson—who seemed like a pretty smart kid, if a little too sure of himself—and the thousands of customers who'd shown up that day. The dangers were pretty easy to see, in hindsight.

Allison spoke softly to Lamb. Le Mon couldn't hear what she was saying, but Lamb seemed to react well to it, stopping that busy movement with her thumbs on the pendant.

"What do you think she's saying?" Demont asked.

Le Mon could have eavesdropped if he'd wanted to. But even with the ability to listen to people's thoughts he still believed in doctor-patient confidentiality. "No clue," he said.

"The doc's been through Hell and back," Leonard said. He glanced at Niko, resting against his shoulder. "We all have. From what we've seen, if anyone can bring this chick around, it's her."

"Where are you all off to?" Nevaeh asked quietly. Le Mon told her briefly about his experience in the fog, and at the Spring with Shawna, and what little he knew about Mrs. Speer and All Hallows' Close.

"That's good," Nevaeh said when he'd finished. "I hope you all find peace. I'll be along soon, I suspect."

Le Mon smiled. "I think you've got some time yet, cher, but I'll keep a place set at my table for when you come 'round."

Allison said something that made Lamb finally let go of the pendant, and it fell beneath her low-cut Pink Floyd T-shirt. She took Allison's offered hand and followed along reluctantly.

"She wants to come with us," Allison said.

"Come with us," Lamb repeated. She looked to have regressed to a childlike state, retreating into herself. Le Mon had seen it often in cases of extreme trauma, both in his former profession and his work with GRP2.

"But she's not doing well, as you can see," Allison continued. "We'll need to keep an eye on her."

"Well, from what I understand," Le Mon said, "we're not going too far."

Nevaeh gave Allison a look of concern. "Will she be all right?"

"I can't promise she won't backslide. But we'll see she gets where she needs to be." She smiled sadly at Le Mon. "As long as we arrive in time."

Le Mon looked off toward Ghostland. He could just make out the silhouette of Garrote Mountain to the northeast, set against the black horizon. The signal he'd heard—was still hearing, fainter now—originated from a short distance to the southwest of that.

It was impossible to tell if Garrote would manage to do what he planned before they arrived, if Ben and the others would be able to stop him before he did or at least hold him off just long enough for Le Mon to get these folks through the door. Only time would tell.

He hoped time was on their side.

* * *

The Firebird rolled into the Ghostland's massive parking lot and stopped, engine purring, the entities within and surrounding it shifting impatiently.

Lamb squinted across the empty half mile of lined asphalt to the gates set within the fifty-foot-tall outer wall. Andy followed her gaze, catching movement: two Army-beige vehicles were parked directly out front. Humvees, from the look of them. Soldiers the size of ants moved back and forth, patrolling the grounds.

"How are we gonna get through?"

Lamb turned to him with a dark grin. "With our secret weapons."

"But they've got those ghost gun thingies."

"And we've got them," she said, nodding toward the back. "Do you trust me?"

He didn't. But he told her he did. He'd gotten much better at lying to her in the last little while.

"Then drive," she said.

Andy threw the car into gear and put the pedal to the floor. As they neared the gates, he saw the ticket booths and turnstiles had all been knocked over and pushed aside. The car-smasher must have gone through the gate, leading the tanks and trucks with it. Lamb was right. Hedgewood and the military intended to get rid of every last ethereal, including Ben and Sam and Lamb's mother, unless Garrote had already used her up.

The Firebird's engine roared. At the gate, the four soldiers gathered there responded by raising their rifles. Andy flinched as the bullets—warning shots, likely—raised chunks of asphalt and dust in the path ahead, moments before the car reached the small craters left behind. The tires thudded over the fresh holes but he didn't ease off the gas.

Lamb laughed and whooped madly in the passenger seat, slapping the ceiling. In the back, the lobotomized murderer stared ahead with glassy eyes. Running at their side, the Behemoth howled through its horn mask: a cross between a death shriek and an elephant's trumpet. The thunderhead—Lamb had once called it the Swarm—chased behind them.

Andy didn't share her enthusiasm. He was scared to death, less of the soldiers and their guns, more of Lamb and their companions. At least a quick death would be an end to all of this.

Lamb leaned out her window and shouted toward the back: "Go! Get em! Get em!"

The black cloud whipped around the passenger side in a swirling mass, firing like a missile at the soldiers. Two of the soldiers scrambled to switch weapons, dropping their rifles and raising the sonic guns. The two others fired their rifles directly at the approaching entity, desperately hoping to stop the Swarm before it reached them.

Andy slammed on the brakes, spinning the wheel. The Firebird peeled rubber and swerved to the left, drifting sideways until it jerked to a halt, stray bullets thunking into the passenger door.

He ducked, covering his head. As much as he wanted to be free of Lamb, the thought of getting shot in the face was too much. He was such a coward he couldn't even let someone else end his life.

The rifle fire stopped as screams arose from the gate. Andy raised his head, peering through the passenger window. Lamb was outside now, watching with a vicious gleam in her eyes as the soldiers attempted to fight off their companions.

It was obvious they didn't stand a chance, with the Swarm darting around them, an impossible shot even for the sharpest shooter. It encircled a young man's ankle and lifted him off the ground. He dropped the ghost gun immediately with a bloodcurdling shriek. The Swarm whipped him against the roof of the gate and back to the ground. His entrails fanned out behind him in a spray of gore and his skull smashed like ripe fruit on the asphalt.

The Behemoth lumbered out to join the fray. It threw a shoulder into one of the Humvees and the vehicle rose into the air, landing on an unsuspecting soldier before she could even raise a scream.

The Swarm split into two separate entities to chase the last remaining soldiers, who'd run off in different directions. It caught one around the waist and flung the screaming man back toward the Behemoth, who batted the man out of the air with a single punch. The soldier, his face streaming blood from every orifice, tried to get up from the ground. The Behemoth stepped on his back, grabbed him by the hair pulled, tearing the head right off his shoulders. The body fell, spewing twin jets of blood.

The Behemoth held its macabre trophy up by the hair for a moment, then flung it at the wall. It struck with a sickening crunch and fell, leaving a crimson splat on the cinderblock.

All the while, Lamb cheered, leaping up and down, pumping her arms and shouting, "Yeah!" and "Get her!" and "Take that!"

Andy couldn't take any more of it. He put his head between his knees like a man preparing for his plane to go down, unable to muffle another heavy crash and one final scream with his hands over his ears. The silence that followed as he stared at the pedals was just as terrifying, as he waited for the evil ghosts to claim his own life as their reward.

"It's over."

Lamb's voice from the passenger seat made him jump and bash his head on the bottom of the steering wheel. She laughed.

"You're such a scaredy cat. Anyways, let's get movin. The coast is clear."

Andy sighed heavily, sitting up and putting the car into reverse. The ethereals, sated for the moment, had returned to their places surrounding the Trans Am. He backed up until they were facing the carnage, then drove forward, through the demolished gates, weaving between dead bodies and overturned Humvees into the park itself.

* * *

Le Mon and the others reached the park's outer wall. The opening Ben, Sam and Billy had crossed through had widened since, the fog spreading out into the field. He could see where the wall ended and the fog began, and it seemed to him the fog might be or have been part of the wall. That it had been broken down to its molecules, forming the vapor they walked through. It made him wonder if it might be bad to breathe for someone living, like the kid with the phantom arm.

"This place is as good as any," Le Mon said, leading them into the dense fog. Leonard followed him, still half carrying Niko. Allison led Lamb along by the hand, directly behind them. Demont took up the rear, peering around cautiously.

After several minutes walking practically blind, they emerged on the other side, near the midway's north exit. The top of the Ferris wheel was visible over smaller carnival buildings to the left, and to their immediate right was a haunted castle ride and a funhouse with a giant, furry gorilla as part of the façade. Towering over all of this was the mountain that had once been a House—where Ben and the others had gone to face Garrote.

"Where did everybody go?" Allison asked.

Le Mon wondered the same thing. The battle they'd witnessed here had ended, and all of its participants had departed, their discarded weapons and destruction left behind. If there'd been a victor, Le Mon couldn't tell. All he knew was the rage and fear he'd felt emanating from every single one of them before had been snuffed out.

They were gone. Entirely gone.

He didn't know what to make of that.

A tall, bald man came scurrying out of the fog behind them, startling Le Mon from his thoughts. The man wore the pants of a light-colored suit and a white dress shirt with suspenders, soaked through the armpits with sweat. From his tasseled shoes to his gold cufflinks, he reeked of old money. Le Mon had no idea where he'd come from or how he'd gotten here, but it was clear the man was still alive.

The rich man's eyes widened when he saw the six of them. He held a pistol of some kind, almost daintily, and raised it at them for a moment. His expression changed. He seemed to realize something—either that the gun would be useless against them or that they meant him no harm—and his purplish lips twisted in a sick-looking smile. He carried on past them, breathing laboriously, staggering toward the mountain that was once Garrote House.

"I think that was my boss," Demont said after the man had left.

"Thought I smelled money," Le Mon muttered. "We close now. It's this way."

They picked up again, between the rides and games, relics of a carefree time. After a minute or two of walking in relative silence, Leonard stuck a finger in his left ear and wiggled it around. "My ears are ringing."

"Mine too," Allison said with a frown.

Le Mon nodded. "That's her. She been hollerin at us a while now. Just takes a bit to tune it in."

They continued down the promenade, past a cotton candy stall and a ring toss game, past a kiddie coaster and a horse race powered by a row of water guns. Eventually they came to an intersection, near a booth bearing the inexplicable phrase "GHOST YOUR SELFIE!" and what looked like a turn-of-the-century illusionist's stage.

Slightly beyond a shooting galley game with airsoft rifles and paper targets, Le Mon found the source of the signal he'd been hearing since he first left the white fog surrounding the Spring. The innocuous cartoon psychic adorning the booth made a perfect disguise for what lay inside.

"There it is," he said to the others, pointing at it.

"There what is?" Demont said.

Le Mon grinned. "What comes next."

Demont and Allison shared a skeptical look.

As they took up toward the intersecting roadway, the rumble of an engine broke through the high whine rising from All Hallows' Close.

"Come on, quick," he said, draping Niko's other arm over his shoulder. They moved as quickly as they could, helping the two looping ethereals along.

A vintage sportscar roared around the corner up ahead, its whitewall tires and chassis the color of blood gleaming in the glow of the moon.

Le Mon was first to spot the hulking ethereal moving alongside the car and the cloud of black smoke trailing behind it.

He cried out, "Run!"

They dashed across the promenade, but the car—he could see the black Firebird logo on its hood now—growled, speeding up to cut them off, and the entity Le Mon knew as the Behemoth hunkered down and dashed forward like a running back.

The Firebird was nearer to the Close. With Niko and Lamb practically invalids, Le Mon knew he and the others didn't stand a chance. Still, he kept them moving as fast as they could, not willing to give up just yet, not when they were so close to freedom, shouting at them to go, to keep moving, to run.

The Behemoth reached them first and grabbed Le Mon by the throat, lifting him off his feet, Niko's arm slipping off his shoulders. He was caught entirely off guard, not expecting to feel the pain erupt from his larynx, as sharp and real as the pain he'd felt throbbing from the scratches left by the imago. He had no breath, but he was sure the Behemoth would choke the afterlife out of him just the same.

Leonard rushed to his aid, grabbing the Behemoth's shoulder, but the larger ethereal backhanded Leonard so powerfully he was knocked off his feet and flew back until he struck the shooting galley wall.

Brakes screeched. Le Mon couldn't see anything around the hulking creature with eight limbs and three heads, the dead children reaching for him, mewling with sewn-up eyes, the woman's dark hair hanging in his face as his vision waned.

He grasped the ethereal's wrist and tried twisting it, but it did no good. It had supernatural strength. No man was this big, this strong. Almost as though the Dark Rift was feeding it, making it grow.

I'm sorry, Shawna, Le Mon thought. I failed you.

Despite the agony shooting through his body, he felt a sudden wave of pain, grief and confusion emanating from his attacker. He felt the final conflicting emotions of the entire Odell family as his surroundings turned gray and hazy around the edges, like a dense fog.

Feet kicking madly, on the edge of oblivion once more, Le Mon heard a familiar voice shout, "STOP!"

* * *

When Andy saw the people in the road his first instinct was to turn around before Lamb spotted them and ordered him to run them down.

"What the heck is this?" she said.

Too late, Andy, my man.

Lamb lowered her feet off the dash and sat up straight, her brow knotted in a scowl. "Those are ghosts. Step on it, Andy!"

Andy gripped the wheel tighter, easing off the gas. "No," he said.

She turned to him, fury in her eyes—the irises almost red in the moonlight. "What did you say?"

He swallowed hard. "I said no."

Lamb sneered and stomped down hard on his foot. The engine roared. The Trans Am leaped forward.

He saw the shock on the small group's faces as the distance between them shortened, five ethereals caught in the headlights as they dashed across the road. Two of them appeared to be injured. As the Firebird drew nearer, Andy saw their faces, and he turned to Lamb in shock.

She locked eyes with him, her doppelganger moving along behind a dark-haired woman, holding her hand.

The Behemoth bolted ahead of the car—heading for the group.

"What is this?" Andy said.

"It's a trick," Lamb said. "That's not me."

"You're not you. I knew it!"

He thrust her foot from his and the Firebird slowed. Up ahead, the Behemoth had grabbed the leader of the group by the throat and lifted him off his feet. The man struggled. One of the other men came to his aid, but the larger ethereal swatted him away like a gnat.

Lamb grabbed the wheel, fighting to get her leg back into the footwell, her foot on the gas. Andy slammed both feet on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel to the right as hard as he could. The car spun out. He leaped out the moment it skidded to a halt, burning his palms on the asphalt.

"STOP!" he shouted, as loud as he'd ever spoken in his life.

The Behemoth whipped its head around. The others looked in his direction, shock and fear on their faces.

"PUT HIM DOWN!" Andy bellowed.

The Behemoth turned back to the man in its massive hand. The thick fingers uncurled and the man dropped to his knees.

Not-Lamb hurried to Andy's side, grabbing him by the arm. "You can't do that!" she hissed.

"Why not? They're my gwisin, not yours."

She let him go in a huff and strode up to the other ethereals. "Don't listen to him," she barked at the Behemoth. "Pick him back up!"

The other Lamb, the real Lamb, wearing the same cut-off Pink Floyd T-shirt she'd worn when they'd first met, turned to Andy. Her blue eyes opened wide. When he smiled at her, her expression darkened to match her evil twin's.

"You!" she snapped, pulling away from the woman who'd held her hand. She crossed the distance between them, moving faster the closer she got. "You killed my mom, you coward!"

The accusation stung him, like a knife plunged into his heart. After everything he'd been through today, Lamb's death, her rebirth, chasing ghosts—and now this… he felt the beginning of tears prickling his nostrils.

"I know," he said, because even if it wasn't literally true, he still felt responsible. If he hadn't entered their little shop, her mother might still be alive. Lamb herself might still be living. Tears spilled down his cheeks.

Not-Lamb looked over with keen interest, forgetting her playthings for the moment.

"You… know?" The real Lamb seemed stumped by his reply. She cocked her head, her frown softening but not entirely going away. "Your aura… it's indigo."

He wiped his tears. "Your mom said that, too. She said ethereals are drawn to that color. That's why my gwisin stayed with me from when I was little. That's why they helped me—helped us—to stop whatever it was from killing those psychics at the Palais Royale. You remember that, don't you?"

Lamb's frown softened even further. She mouthed the word "gwisin," like a dusty relic discovered in the recesses of her mind.

Not-Lamb's frown deepened. "Andy, why are you talking to her? That's not me."

The real Lamb turned toward the sound of her own voice. "Who is that, Andy? How come she looks like me?"

"I don't know. It's some kind of trick. She made me use my power, my gift," he said, realizing now that was exactly what it was: a gift, not a curse. That it could be whatever he needed it to be. "She made me use it to collect all these awful ghosts—"

"They ain't all awful," the man who'd been attacked by the Behemoth said, with a slight Cajun accent. He pointed at the ghostly amalgamation. "That one there's just confused. I can't speak to th'other two."

"Enough of this nonsense," Bad Lamb said. "Destroy these pathetic creatures, Clayton."

The Behemoth turned its female head toward Andy.

Andy said, "No. They're done listening to you."

"Think so, do you?" She cocked her head toward the Swarm. "Dinner is served, my pets!"

The living thunderhead swooped out from behind the Firebird. It shot past Andy and the Lamb twins, heading for the other ethereals.

"LEAVE THEM!" Andy called out—

—and the Swarm stopped instantly, hovering a few feet from the middle-aged black man with the soul patch, dressed in a black T-shirt and stonewashed jeans.

Not-Lamb roared in frustration. "I could kill you all like—" She snapped her fingers. "—that. I should. But you're meaningless! All of you," she roared, glowering at them. "Feckless little insects! Take your ghosts. I don't need any of you anymore! Least of all you," she said, turning to Andy. "She's right. You truly are a coward."

The insult stung but far less, coming from a cheap facsimile, a carbon copy of the woman Andy loved.

He felt a hand on his cheek, a soft thumb wiping his tears, and turned to see the real Lamb had approached him. She looked at him with eyes as blue and bright as a sunny day.

"You're no coward," she said, smiling through tears of her own.

With a final roar, Lamb's evil twin began to shudder, and suddenly all trace of her vanished, leaving a confused-looking woman with frazzled hair in her place, dressed in a drab, dingy hospital gown. "Where am I?" the woman said, sounding very afraid. "Who are you people?"

The man with the soul patch blinked at the new arrival. "It's time for us to go," he said. "You all are welcome to come with us, we can explain everythin on the way. Only you might have to leave them behind." He jerked a thumb toward the Swarm.

Andy considered it. He turned to Lamb, who looked up at him with bright, curious eyes, a hand against his chest. "Come with us, Andy."

But there was really only one choice. He was done being a coward.

"I can't," he said. "Not yet. I still have to warn Ben and Sam—"

"Warn them 'bout what?" the man with the soul patch said. "They already walkin straight into the lion's den. They already know the danger."

Andy ignored him. "Will you come with me?" Lamb turned to the others, looking for guidance. "Do you trust me, Lamb?"

She turned back with a faint smile. "You know I do."

"Then come with me. I can't do this without you."

Lamb slipped her fingers through his. "I'm with you, punkin. I'll be here for as long as you want me."

He kissed her. He felt her lips, warm and wet and as alive as she'd ever felt, when she kissed him back.

"I love you," he said. It felt good to say it, to not have to hide behind a friendly façade the way he had with the ghost who'd taken over her image. This frazzled asylum inmate, he supposed, somehow manipulated by Garrote.

"I love you, too," Lamb said. "Don't you ever go an' leave me again, okay?'

"I won't," he said. "I promise."

Lamb laughed through her tears. Andy kissed her again.

The big security guard with the goatee cleared his throat behind them. His nametag said LEONARD. "I don't suppose you two lovebirds could use some company?"

* * *

General Zaydan's eyes sprang open. Instinct caused him to suck in a deep breath, but he found he wasn't able. Nor did he need to. It was as if the puncture in his chest was already taking in air without the necessity for such wasteful expenditures of energy as breathing.

He looked down at himself, at the hole through his uniform, the blood-streaked medals and services stripes. Run through by a goddamn Pinko unicorn, he thought, and chuckled bitterly. He thought the laughter would cause him pain but he felt nothing.

In shock. Like when that fucking civilian shot me in the head. Didn't feel a thing then either, did I?

No matter. He didn't need to feel, only to act. He reached up and spoke calmly into his radio mic. "Call in the air strike, Colonel."

The silence dragged out so long he almost wondered if anybody was still left alive out there. Finally, Colonel Martin's voice came back to him, hesitant. "What?"

"CALL THE GODDAMN AIR STRIKE!" the general bellowed.

"On what, sir?"

"ON THE WHOLE PARK, STARTING WITH THAT FUCKING HOUSE!"

"Yes, sir," Martin said sharply. "Right away, sir."

The general leaned back against the battered snack stand, in a sudden state of Zen. Whatever happened from here on out, at least he would die with the comforting knowledge that this entire godforsaken place would be razed to the ground along with him.

The colonel's voice interrupted his peace a moment later. "ETA approximately fifteen minutes, General."

Zaydan managed a smile. "Good. Give me a running count, would you?"

"Copy that."

The House Changes

GARROTE MOUNTAIN HOVERED over the pit in the ground, a floating path of broken asphalt leading up to its front doors, a twisted version of the cobblestone path the House had once possessed. Ben and the others craned their necks to look up, past the ivy slithering over wooden cladding, in constant movement as the house transformed from one iteration to the next like a gargantuan puzzle box, all the way to the octagonal window in the widow's watch, from which the brightest light emanated like a lighthouse beacon.

Is that where the Spring is? Way up there?

It was impossible to tell. It could be anywhere, and Ben supposed wherever it currently was, it wouldn't stay there long. The House was in a constant state of flux, reshaping itself to the whims of the Dark Rift… or Rex Garrote himself.

"I like what they've done with the place," Stan said. "It's very…" He twirled an index finger, searching for the right word.

"Rococo?" Sam suggested.

"That's it. So, I guess we just hop like frogs from one stone to the next, huh? Hope like hell we don't fall into that bottomless pit down there?"

Ben leaned over the edge, standing on the patch of brown grass at the foot of the hole. Stan was right. There was no sight of the servers and rubble they'd left below that day. As far as he could tell, the hole went on forever.

"I could teach you all to wink out," Ben said, "but it takes a lot of practice and we don't have time. Plus, one of us would have to carry Billy."

Billy was eyeing the stones cautiously. He shrugged. "I think I can do it. It looks like the tire drills we used to do with the Widgeons, only on an angle."

"What's a widget?" Stan asked.

"Widgeons. It's our high school football team."

"It's a type of duck, Dad."

"Huh." Stan shrugged. "I was never big on football."

They ascended the stepping stones one at a time, Ben guiding them. Billy leaped cautiously at first, then with more confidence the further they rose. At one point a stone moved just before he reached it, and his foot kept going. Ben caught him swiftly and carried him back onto his feet.

"Thanks," Billy said, looking frightened. He rose more cautiously from then on, watching for patterns in movement before making the jumps. Finally, he reached the porch and stood looking down with his hands on his hips.

"Nice going!" Stan called out.

Sam had gotten better at hovering, and managed to ascend with very little trouble, though she was nervous about the height.

"Just don't look down," Ben said. "I won't let you fall."

She reached the porch and stood beside Billy, while Ben returned to Stan's side.

"You ready?"

Stan took off his hat and scratched his head. "I guess I signed up for this, didn't I?" He smushed the hat back on his head and stepped cautiously onto the first stone, then peered back anxiously at Ben.

"If you need a hand…"

Ben reached out. Stan gave the hand a slight sneer. Then he shrugged. "Aw, hell. You just better not tell any of the fellas back at the station."

Ben chuckled and helped Stan on his way up the shifting stones.

"Way to go, Mr. Beadle!"

"You can do it, Dad!"

Like Billy before him, Stan gained confidence the further he got, until he was able to let go of Ben's hand entirely and scuttle up the rest of the way. He was two stones from the top when the first of them moved and he dropped into the space it had left quicker than Ben was able to move.

"Dad!" Sam cried out.

Stan clung to the stone with both hands, hanging precariously over the chasm. Ben winked out and reappeared behind him, grabbing Stan around the waist.

Stan yelped and nearly lost hold of the stone. "You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"I've got you. You can let go now."

Reluctantly, Stan let his death grip on the stone loosen. Ben lifted him up, hovered him past the last two stones, and deposited him on the porch.

"That was a close one. Thanks, kiddo."

Sam patted him on the shoulder. "A for effort."

"Hey, watch it."

The movement of the House was far more frantic up close. The front door looked just as Ben remembered it the last time he'd stood here, but everything from the windows to the porch itself was a constantly changing amalgam of every haunted house he'd ever seen. From the creeping ivy to the cobwebs hanging from the porch beams, the dusty curtains and paint-flecked shutters, the creaky porch boards and brass door knocker, which started as a lion and changed into the face of a yawning man as he watched. One moment the House looked new, the next the paint flaked off the cladding and the wood began to wither with dry rot. A desiccated rocking chair became a deflated jack-o-lantern which turned into a black cat. It scurried across their path before falling flat and growing into a torn-open bag of trash, the spilled contents teeming with flies. The effect was dizzying up close.

"I'm getting seasick," Stan muttered, clutching his belly.

Ben turned away from the sight, looking instead at the park they'd left behind. They were high enough he could see most of Ghostland, and the dense fog had stretched from end to end. The tallest rooftops and carnival rides were visible but otherwise he couldn't make out much within the gray haze. For all he knew, there could be anything lurking out there, just waiting for them to enter the House and trap them inside.

"Everything okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, just… thinking about what Le Mon said."

"About this being a trap?"

Ben nodded.

"Devil's advocate," Stan said, interjecting, "but if what Mrs. Speer said about Garrote knowing the future was right, that he always knew we'd be coming for him, that'd mean we never did have the element of surprise—and what your friend said back there, with all due respect, was just reiterating what we already knew deep down." He nodded toward Sam. "You know, 'Light extinguished, trapped in an endless nightmare.'"

Ben gave this a moment. It wasn't as though he'd ever truly believed they could get the jump on Garrote. This whole plan—not that he really had one—had been a longshot from the beginning. "You're right," he said. "I guess let's get this over with."

The knocker changed from a Chinese dragon to a grotesque sticking out its tongue as Ben pushed on the door, expecting it to creak open on its own the way it had that day in April. This time it didn't so much as budge. He twisted the handle, but it seemed to be locked.

"Maybe we should knock," Sam suggested.

"I'm not sure I wanna see what opens the door."

"Hmm. Good point."

Stan scratched his head. "So what do we do now?"

"Maybe we could try going—"

He'd meant to add around the back but Billy called to them from the far end of the porch, waving his phantom arm.

"Hey, guys! This window's open."

Ben and the Beadles approached Billy, who pulled the window up as far as it could go and slipped inside before anyone could advise for or against it.

"I can't count the number of times I went through that window," Stan said with a wistful grin.

"You came back to this place a lot, huh, Dad?"

"I told you, Sam: this House is my Moby Dick."

Sam gave him a serious look. "You know Ahab got pulled into the sea by his own harpoon in the end, right?"

"He still caught the whale, didn't he?" Stan tapped his temple, then climbed through the window with a grunt and groan. Sam shook her head amiably and followed her father into the House.

Ben peered through the open pane into the dining room, where a large turkey dinner had been laid out, fresh from the oven and smelling delicious, not rotting and crawling with maggots the way it had been when he was last in this room, with the dead family feasting on it. He couldn't see Sam and the others from where he stood.

"Guys?"

No one responded.

"Sam? Stan?" His voice echoed in the seemingly deserted dining room. Worried he'd lost them, he stepped through the wall rather than bother climbing through as the others had.

"Whoa."

It was no wonder they hadn't heard him. The four of them stood in the covered entrance of the Merchant Brothers' big top tent, not in Garrote House at all. A pungent mélange of smells struck him all at once: hay and manure, candy apples and popcorn, cigars and oiled dirt. The bleachers were empty. Dozens of metal pillars and ropes held the striped canvas peaks in place, but remnants of the House featured throughout. Stone corbels with Gothic designs like those found in Garrote's garden archway held up the tent in each corner, while scuffs in the arena dirt revealed hints of the marble tile from the library. The two tapestries from the foyer hung like medieval flags above the ring, and what looked like the main staircase with its ornate wooden balustrades and oil-lamp sconces led up through the bleachers. One of Clayton Odell's machine-man statues stood sentry at the foot of the stairs.

Within the ring itself were several painted boxes and hoops, seesaws and empty cages, piles of loose hay, and an above-ground pool made of wood (Ben assumed this was meant for the trapeze artists whose swings hung lifeless above), along with other circus equipment. It felt like the show had been hastily left behind just before it could begin.

"Looks like there's an exit on the other side," Sam said, pointing to a door under the bleachers that looked suspiciously like the walk-in freezer Ben and Lilian had used to escape the library tunnel.

As they crossed the ring, Ben said, "We need to be hypervigilant. The House is gonna try to separate us. We can't let that happen."

"Tell me about it," Stan said.

Four spotlights blazed to life from the bleachers and swung toward them, lighting Ben and the others individually, stopping the foursome in their tracks at the center of the ring.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" a voiced boomed from the rafters. It was Garrote, of course. He ruled this corner of the Dark Rift just as surely as he'd controlled Ghostland. He'd been waiting for them, just as they'd suspected.

"WELCOME! WELCOME, ONE AND ALL, TO THE MOST CAPTIVATING CARNIVAL SHOW YOUR EYES WILL EVER BEHOLD!"

Stan stepped out of his spotlight. The light followed him, and he shaded his eyes to squint into the darkness beyond. Sam and Billy closed their eyes, attempting to leave their own spotlights, only to encounter the same issue as Stan.

"How are we supposed to see the show with all these lights in our eyes?" Billy moaned.

"Pretty sure we are the show, kiddo," Stan grunted.

Ben's own light was far too bright to see anything but a dark haze. Instead, he tried to get a look at who was focusing the spotlights on the others.

From the darkness, a lion roared. While an unseen calliope began playing a jaunty tune, the sounds of the Big Top filled the tent: a sputtering car engine, klaxon horns, the trumpet of an elephant, and the cheer of an excited crowd.

The survivors drew closer together until they huddled back to back. Ben couldn't see a thing. Was there really a lion out there in the dark? Did the horns belong to murderous clowns, eager to twist their victims into balloon shapes and smash them with prop hammers?

"I CALL THIS NEXT GRISLY PERFORMANCE, 'CARNIVAL CARNAGE,'" Garrote said gleefully over the megaphone.

"So this is how it ends," Sam muttered. "Not with a whimper but a bunch of corny dad jokes."

"In the words of Roosevelt," Stan said, holding out a hand to her, "'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'"

Sam took her father's hand, offering her free hand to Billy. Ben took Billy and Stan's free hands, his mind racing. After everything he'd been through, were they really going to let it end here, to a bunch of clowns?

"MARVEL AS OUR DARING PERFORMERS DEFY DEATH, FACING THE LARGEST ASSORTMENT OF VILE ETHEREALS EVER ASSEMBLED UNDER ONE ROOF!"

Garrote was toying with them. Ben had no doubt the man intended to destroy them, but he realized Garrote could just as easily be elsewhere in the House as here with them, under the Big Top. He could be taunting them telepathically, using fear—as Stan had said—to prevent them from moving forward, from following him to the Spring.

This realization gave him an idea. The spotlights couldn't follow them if whoever operated them didn't know where their targets were going. If the others followed his lead only Billy would be at a disadvantage, and Ben could only hope he and the Beadles could create enough of a diversion that it wouldn't matter.

"Do you all remember where you saw the door?"

They all agreed that they did.

"Billy, when I say 'go,' you gotta run as fast as you can to that door, okay? Sam and Stan: I want you to close your eyes and picture yourself in front of it."

"What's that supposed to do?" Stan grunted.

"Hopefully, I'm gonna teach you to wink—"

The roar of the lion interrupted him, infinitely closer than before. A whip cracked nearby.

"Can you picture the door?" he asked, ignoring the distractions. "It's a walk-in freezer with a shiny chrome handle and the bumpy white surface. Right under the awning. Picture the distance."

"Got it," Sam said.

"Me too," said her father.

The clown car sputtered by in the shadows, close enough Ben could smell its exhaust. Maniacal laughter erupted from within, trailing away from them.

"OOH! THAT WAS A CLOSE CALL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!"

Ben refused to let it faze him. "Now all you have to do is imagine yourself standing in front of it," he said.

"That's it?" Stan asked.

"That's it. You ready?"

"Ready," all three said.

"Get set… go!"

Stan's hand disappeared from his grip, followed by Billy's. He heard the thud of Billy's shoes as the former quarterback dashed across the ring. In their absence, their spotlights danced away, Sam's and Stan's circling madly, Billy's trailing slightly behind him, leaving only Ben's still in place.

Ben shot up both middle fingers.

The roar of the lion nearly split his eardrums. He felt the swish of its big paws as he sped away, grabbing Billy just as the clown car—without the light in his eyes he could see the clowns bunched close together through the windshield of the rusty jalopy—bared down on him.

The four of them ended up in front of the freezer door at almost the same moment. Sam and Stan gave each other impressed looks.

"MY HOUSE IS VERY HUNGRY," Garrote bellowed. "AND IT MUST FEED!"

Silhouetted by the big spotlights, the clown car, the lion, the elephant and several menacing-looking clowns closed in on them.

Billy tore open the door and the four of them piled inside. The lion struck it with a pained growl just as Ben and Billy pulled it shut, enclosing them in the dark.

"It's not cold," Sam said.

She was right, though it did feel slightly cooler in the dark, smelling of cement and industrial cleaner rather than the pungent aroma of the circus. It was too dark to tell exactly where they'd ended up. All Ben could see was a tiny red light up in a far corner, though he did sense that the room itself was long and narrow, possibly a hallway.

"I found the door," Billy said. "Should I open it?"

"No, let's stay here in the dark a while," Stan said.

"Dad."

"I'm serious. At least there's nothing trying to kill us in here."

A small electronic buzz came from the vicinity of the red light. Now that Ben's vision had adjusted better to the dark, he could see the red light belonged to a security camera. Its lens twisted to focus.

"Welcome back," a familiar voice said over a crackling intercom speaker.

A heavy ka-chunk signaled the opening of a magnetic lock, followed by a sudden pneumatic hiss as the door came open, letting light spill into the corridor.

The walls around them were cinderblock. As the man over the intercom had implied, Ben had been here before. The last time he'd stood in this hall he'd run for his life. The last time he'd been in the room beyond, he'd been taken there by Garrote himself.

Ghostland's control room looked just like it had on opening day, prior to the Garrote Code letting all of the ethereals out of their loops. No sign of the mess it had been when he'd last visited remained. The rows of computer monitors were turned on, as well as the bank of screens on the far wall, currently displaying bizarre scenes Ben assumed were from elsewhere in the Dark Rift.

Harrison, the computer programmer, looked just like he had that day, down to the dandruff-flecked glasses—no longer filthy and sweaty, nor missing his head as he'd been in his final moments. He stood in the aisle between computer stations with a somewhat portly older man dressed in a dun-colored three-piece suit from a different era, his dark hair slicked to one side. Ben recognized him, though the last time he'd seen the man he'd been missing the top half of his head.

Harrison looked relieved, taking a step toward them. "I never thought I'd see your face again."

"Stay where you are," Ben said, prepared to defend himself and the others if it came down to it.

Harrison tried on an awkward smile, holding up his hands in surrender. "I know what you're thinking, but I can explain…"

"Explain what? That you were working for Garrote the whole time? That you led us right to him, knowing I'd burn him alive? Or that you killed a bunch of innocent psychics to help him open the Dark Rift?"

Harrison lowered his hands and stepped back. "I'm sorry. He misled me. He promised me everything but he took everything away. He ripped off my head!" He demonstrated by removing his head from his shoulders and holding it out to Ben. "Take it!" the head pleaded. "I'd give anything if I could take it all back, you have to believe me."

The older man cleared his throat, stepping forward with a well-manicured hand held out. "Please forgive my colleague's histrionics," he said. "You must be Master Laramie. I'm Oliver Hedgewood. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Strike up the band, the gang's all here," Stan said. "Where's Ms. Amblin? Or did she not get the memo?"

"Present," came the woman's voice. She appeared from a doorway in the back of the room, wearing the same pencil skirt she'd worn that day, and marched up the aisle with a tight smile to meet her companions. "It's good to see you, Benjamin."

"What is this?" Ben asked.

"We've fashioned ourselves a little enclave within the Rift," Sara Jane Amblin said. "We've been randomizing our location, so Rex won't find us."

Harrison returned his head to his shoulders. "We've been changing the configuration of the House," he said, moving over to his computers. He leaned over and typed something. Lines of code flashed up the screen. "I created an algorithmic interface to react to Garrote's manipulation of his House. When he changes one thing, we change something else."

Sara Jane directed them toward the monitor wall. "We believe he's trying to reach something called 'the Spring,'" she said. "We've yet to pinpoint its location—"

"We're close," Harrison interrupted, then bowed his head when his former superior frowned at him.

"—but Harrison's clever little program—which I suspect isn't a program at all, merely a representation of a computer program, since none of this truly exists, at least not in a way our minds perceive it. But I digress," she said with a self-conscious chuckle. "Regardless, we've been throwing obstacles in his path every step of the way, but your friend Lilian is quite the maze runner. Every time we change the map—"

"Lilian invents a new one," Harrison finished for her.

Ben and the others followed Sara Jane, Harrison and the first Hedgewood to the front of the control room. As they neared, he saw people he recognized in various locations throughout the Dark Rift. Thea sat slumped over what looked like a pink horse (Is that Taffy? Ben wondered, marveling at the thought), hugging its neck as it trotted through the hydrotherapy wing in Bright Falls Sanitarium. Andy and Lamb stood at the foot of the floating asphalt path leading up to Garrote Mountain. The existing Hedgewood staggered through the dirt in Ghost Town USA, a gun gripped in one hand, still wearing his sickly smile.

"I know this House better than anyone," said the Hedgewood at Ben's side. He looked very little like his ancestor aside from their similar purplish lips. "Even so, I would be unlikely to navigate it with the dexterity this young girl possesses."

Ben found Lilian on a monitor near the center, climbing a spiral staircase in a stone tower with Garrote following closely behind. The image held long enough before panning to follow them that he caught a glimpse of dark, jittery movement on the stairs below, causing a prickle of terror to crawl up his spine.

Several Dark Rift entities, giant black insectile things similar but not quite the same as the entity that had tried to devour him in the Hedgewood Facility construct, pursued Lilian and Garrote up the stone steps.

"Those things are right behind them!"

"She's safe, for now," Sara Jane said. "It appears Rex is using what he calls the Living Dark to keep her in line. Once he gets where he's going—"

"If we can't prevent it," Harrison said.

"—I can't say how much longer she'll be safe," Sara Jane finished with a scowl at her former employee. "And I'm relatively certain we won't be able to hold him off forever. Sooner or later, he'll get to this Spring of his, and when that happens—" She looked each of them over ominously. "—he's certain to make what he did on opening day look like a walk in the park."

"So to speak," Stan said with a morose chuckle.

Ben and the others gave him dour looks.

The elder of the Beadles shrugged. "What? I can't be the only schmuck thinkin it."

The House Feeds

WE'LL GET YOU as close as we can to the Spring, once we pinpoint its exact location," Harrison said, seated at his workstation with the monitors reflecting on the lenses of his glasses. The one to his right showed an endlessly scrolling feed of code. The one in front of him had what looked like a blueprint of Garrote House, but the rooms kept changing positions, expanding and shrinking, stairwells appearing out of nowhere, whole new wings growing off of one another, spreading across the screen like a cancer. Every so often a white blip would show up among this chaos only to vanish again. This, Harrison told them, was the Spring. A red blip, indicating Garrote and Lilian, flashed on one of the random staircases, in a tower that hadn't existed in the House outside of the Rift.

"The only problem is," Sara Jane said, leaning over the programmer's shoulder, "the Spring keeps moving along with the rest of the House. It's almost as though this realm we've found ourselves in has a mind of its own."

Ben nodded. "I thought the same thing."

Harrison looked up at them. "Which means we'll be able to get you close but that pathway might shift the moment we open the door. There's just no way to know for sure, until you actually get there."

"The science is a touch sketchy," Sara Jane admitted. "If it's science at all. But it's a work in progress."

"What you're saying is we could walk through a door hoping to find one place and end up in another," Sam said.

Stan grunted. "Right back where we started."

"Not exactly," Harrison said. "There's a much higher probability you'll end up where you need to be with my interface and locator."

"I have no idea what any of this stuff means," Billy said. "But I just wanted to say, it's cool as heck."

"Imagine, if you will, how I feel," Oliver Hedgewood replied.

Stan and Sam chuckled. Harrison sat back in his chair and pushed up his glasses with a pleased grin.

"So this program locates the Spring and this one—" Ben pointed to the code monitor. "—changes the House based on the Spring's location, to stop Garrote from reaching it?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Except it seems like the Dark Rift is also reacting to any reconfigurations we make, and Garrote is responding to the changes in the Rift, making his own adjustments to the environment and the ghosts within it. It's just like when he was in control of the park from his lifepod. It'd be a helluva lot worse if Sara Jane and I weren't working against him, though."

Looking perplexed, Stan crushed his hat back on his head. "Anyways, I'll let you all get back to it. If anyone needs me, I'll be at the bar."

Sam shook her head in amusement, watching her father saunter down the aisle to the door Sara Jane had emerged from.

"How long will all this take?" Ben asked.

"Not much longer. We've been getting pings more and more frequently since I booted up the latest build of the locator software."

It was true. Ben saw the white blip pop up on the blueprint as Harrison said it, vanish again, then reappear somewhere else. The interval between its appearances seemed to be getting shorter by the second.

"What do we do when we get there?"

The programmer, the inventor and the master of the House faced each other.

"I'm afraid that's beyond our tacit knowledge," Sara Jane said. "We can only get you from point A—here—to point B. What you do once you get there is up to you." She gave him another tight smile. "But I'm sure you'll think of something. You and Lilian made it further than anyone else that day. They say you're a hero."

"I'm no hero," Ben said, still feeling the sting of shame. "It's my fault Garrote escaped."

"And it's my fault you were put in that place to begin with. Guilt is a wasted effort, Benjamin. All that matters is what you're doing now to make up for it. That's why we're here," she said, indicating her companions, who nodded gravely. "To atone for the parts we played in this unforgivable mess." She pointed at the screen with Lilian and Garrote, scaling an ivy-covered trellis on a stone wall with the Swarm creatures at their feet. "And to stop that monster from becoming infinitely more deadly."

They watched Lilian and Garrote climb through an open window in what looked like a bell tower. The camera—or whatever it was—followed them in, but they had already vanished.

"He's getting closer," Harrison said, pointing at the locator screen. The red and white dots were only two rooms away from each other. The rooms around them shifted, expanding outward, changing shape. The Spring and Garrote remained equidistant.

Harrison returned his attention to the code monitor. Something he saw made him sit up abruptly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "The window is open!"

Sam shouted for her father. Stan came bustling out of the back room, eating a Snickers bar from the wrapper.

"I'm comin, hold your horsies."

"What now?" Ben asked.

Sara Jane's eyes flashed with excitement, and Ben thought he knew what it meant: that all of the work they'd done here, everything they'd done to keep the Spring and this room hidden from Garrote, would soon prove its worth… or fail disastrously.

If it fails, what happens to us? he wondered.

The end, that's what. The end of everything.

"Now?" Sara Jane nodded toward the door. "You open that door and pray to God you reach the Spring before Rex does."

Ben had no intention of praying, but he wondered if he might soon reconsider. The four of them assembled in front of the exit door, Stan holding his hat against his belly, Sam with a hand on her father's shoulder, Billy clenching and unclenching his phantom fist meditatively. Ben tried to think of Lilian, and what she must be feeling with Garrote and the Living Dark holding her hostage. She appeared to be holding her own for now, but once she got him to the Spring, Garrote likely wouldn't hesitate to throw her astral to the Swarm.

And that would be the end of her, Ben thought.

"Ready?" Harrison called from his workstation.

The others nodded. "We're ready," Ben said, reaching for the handle.

Sara Jane gestured toward them. "Open the door."

Ben hesitated only a moment, the chrome handle cool in his grip. Then he pulled open the door to a blinding white light.

Is this the Spring? he wondered.

"God speed," Hedgewood said behind them.

The four of them stepped through the passage, one after the other, into the white haze.

Ben heard the hiss and thud of the door slamming behind them. He spun around, only to find the door had vanished.

So too had his companions.

"Sam? Stan!" he called out into the endless haze. "Harrison! Where am I? Where did my friends go?"

He tried to wink back to the control room but his attempts were futile. It was likely as hidden to him as it was to Garrote and the Living Dark.

He was lost.

And he was alone.

* * *

Stan and Sam had been holding each other's hands when they stepped through the passage, and when the bright light dimmed they found themselves in Rex Garrote's library, exactly as Stan remembered it from the last time he'd been here, aside from the fact that the octagonal room had no way of getting in or out. There wasn't a single door that he could see.

"The scene of the crime," he said, looking down at the black smudge on the tiles, where Garrote had burned a man alive.

"Where's Ben and Billy?"

Stan looked up from the scorch mark. "Christ, they were right with us, weren't they?"

"I don't like this. It's too… convenient."

"Convenient how?"

"This. You and me ending up here, of all places."

Stan scratched his head, giving her a glum look. "Where it all started," he said.

"Where it all started," Sam agreed. "Where you lost Mom and me. The respect of your peers."

"No need to pour salt in the wound, Samantha. You know how awful I felt."

"I know. And I feel terrible myself. How I treated you after—"

"Hey." He took her hand again, fixing her with a grin and wiggling his ears, the way he had when she was little. She couldn't help but smile. "We've all done things we regret. It's like the boss lady said, all that matters is we make good on our mistakes."

The light began to shift, the flicker of the oil lamps moving away from them, rising. They both looked up to see the shelves stretching away into infinity, the books multiplying into the hundreds, the thousands.

"Convenient," Stan said again, nodding up at the endless array of knowledge and fiction.

"You're thinking what I'm thinking?"

"The Great Detectives' final case."

"Things come full circle, don't they, Dad?"

"That they do, Samantha. That they do."

A horrible sound came from above, like twigs snapping in a dark forest, the crackle of maggots on a festering corpse, the scuttle of carrion beetles on a collection of bones.

Sam took her father's hand. He turned with his goofy, awkward smile. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he said again.

Sam repeated the phrase, finding it oddly comforting.

As they watched, awaiting what came next, darkness began to spill down from the top of the towering bookshelves, as if someone had doused the walls with thick, black oil.

"What is that?"

"I don't—" Sam stopped. There were things in that darkness. Living things. The darkness itself, appearing to ooze down the shelves toward them, was actually crawling with hundreds, if not thousands of pitch-black creatures. The awful clicking and scuttling was the sound of their countless limbs.

"Jesus," Stan said. "What are those—"

The things started dropping from the shelves before he could complete the thought, and in moments the room was filled with them: horrible nightmare entities of depthless black with shimmering carapaces, each the size of an average human, crawling over the tiles, the books, the ladder. An insect-thing with a birdlike face pushed Stan to the floor. Sam called out to him but was silenced by a second creature leaping on her shoulders, dragging her down.

"The only thing to fear is fear itself!" Stan shouted, the giant insect crawling up his belly, its beady eyes reflecting his fear in a hundred dark mirrors. "The only thing to fear is fear itself!"

A barbed claw flicked out and slashed across Stan's exposed throat, cutting his mantra short. White light began to pour out of the wound, a trickle at first, then gushing like a water fountain.

Pinned in place, all Sam could do was try not scream as the creature on her father's belly lowered its jaws and drank the light pouring from his wound.

"WE ARE FEAR," the Living Dark said in a strangely human voice.

They fed.

* * *

Billy blinked furiously, trying to clear the impossibly white light from his vision. When it finally dissipated, he found himself in a large room decorated with all kinds of cool stuff: a standing globe, samurai armor, mounted animal heads. At the far end was a desk, with a typewriter and a gargoyle on the blotter, in front of a set of inlaid bookshelves. It was an office.

"Cool," he said, and spun the globe with his phantom hand.

What wasn't cool was that Ben and the Beadles hadn't made it to the same place as him. They'd been separated, which was exactly what Ben had warned them about.

"Hello?" he called.

The desk moved as if in response, thumping against the rug. Billy jumped in fright, then chuckled at himself and approached the desk cautiously.

Ka-thump! Ka-thump!

The typewriter fell backwards with a clatter as the desk shook again. This time, Billy saw the feet of the desk actually rise from the floor, as if something was underneath it, trying to get out, like a zombie battering against the inside of a coffin.

Maybe it's them, he thought. Ben and the Beadles.

As Billy neared, the typewriter, lying on its back, started making weird clunky noises. He'd only seen them used in movies—everything seemed to clunk or grind from those days, sometimes both—but he knew it meant someone was typing, even though there was nobody there to type. The machine dinged cheerily, then made repeated grinding noises, the paper rolling out the top and onto the blotter.

Billy picked it up and read the three words typed in the center of the page:

Bye-bye, Billy.

A watermark on the bottom read FROM THE DESK OF REX GARROTE. Startled, Billy dropped the page and looked around wildly, certain Garrote was here in the room with him, a ghost he couldn't see despite being able to see Ben and the Beadles and all of the others he'd seen since the Rift opened.

As the page fluttered to the rug, the desk made one final thump behind him. Billy turned in time to see it flip over onto its face, the drawers tumbling open, spilling their contents onto the floor.

In the next moment the trapdoor beneath it blew off its track, smashing against the wall, and the first of those freaky insect creatures he'd seen on the TV screens came clambering out from the passage below.

* * *

"We've done all we can," Sara Jane said, watching as the Living Dark overtook the monitors. "We can only pray they'll be able to stop him."

The men nodded, Hedgewood standing beside her with his hands clasped behind his back, Harrison seated in his ergonomic chair at the computer.

"It was a, uh… an honor to work with you, Ms. Amblin," the programmer said awkwardly.

The inventor gave him a tight smile, and held out her left hand. "You as well, Harrison. I'm sorry it wasn't on better terms."

He looked at her hand for a moment, seeming to ponder the social cue, before wiping a sweaty hand on his pants and shaking it. "Me too," he said.

"Thank you both," said the master of the House. "Perhaps we'll meet again someday."

Sara Jane's smile broadened. "I hope so."

The dark monitors bulged. Cracks split them down the centers and the Living Dark poured out, mandibles snapping, claws pinching, their fat bodies plopping to the control room floor, climbing the walls, crawling over the ceiling.

A plump creature the size of a rottweiler dropped onto Harrison's head, knocking him out of his chair. He hit the floor with a cry of pain and the creature's feathered proboscis immediately pierced his stomach, filling its belly not with blood but with a bright white fluid leaking from the wound.

Two of the hideous beasts attacked Sara Jane, a winged one gripping her shoulders, a squat, beetle-like creature tugging at her legs with its pincers. She fought them off as best she could, kicking and punching their hard, smooth shells, but the human-sized fly pushed itself down her throat, causing her to gag and drop her hands to her sides, all the fight drained out of her.

Oliver watched as the same white fluid that had poured out of the programmer's abdomen spewed from the inventor's lips into the creature's mouth.

As the remaining creatures closed in on him, Oliver backed away into a corner of the room. He was not afraid of death. He'd never been reunited with his wife and children in the afterlife. It was a privilege he'd been denied, and one day hoped to obtain by setting things right, undoing the damage he'd done when he'd ignored the warnings and insisted on building his Infernal House on unhallowed ground.

What truly frightened him was losing himself to the darkness once more, as he had in his final years living within his terrible House.

He suspected this time he would never return.

"HELLO AGAIN, OLIVER," the creatures before him chittered en masse. "DID YOU MISS US?"

He most assuredly did not.

Nor did they miss him, when their many sharp claws and gnashing orifices tore at his flesh to suck out all of the light that remained within him.

The House Wins

ANDY AND LAMB had just climbed to the top of the asphalt path leading up to Garrote House when the porch boards suddenly snapped beneath their feet and they dropped through into the cool, dank-smelling darkness below.

When the dust settled, they were standing in the back room of Lamb's mother's shop. The Behemoth and the Swarm hadn't arrived with them, giving Andy a moment's respite before he realized he and Lamb weren't out of trouble just yet. Le Mon, Leonard and Niko, who'd been following them since the Close, must have been left behind at the House. They were on their own.

"Where'd everybody go?" she asked, looking around the small, darkened room where her mother had done her readings. The only light came from candles burning down to nubs on the table and shelf, the familiar smell of incense drifting up from the burner on the round table.

"I dunno." Andy pushed a hand through the beaded curtains and spread them open, revealing an exposed brick wall where the hallway had been the last time they were here. "Look," he said.

Lamb came over, resting her chin on his shoulder. "That ain't supposed to be there."

"You think?"

She squeezed his shoulder. "Aw come on, punkin. Don't get down. We'll figure this out. We just gotta put our heads together."

Andy turned back to the room, exasperated. They'd come so far only to be derailed now, everything he'd been through these past few days had been for nothing. His gaze fell on a Ouija board, laid out on the table beside the incense burner. "That wasn't there before, was it?"

"Nuh-uh." Lamb crossed to the table with him. They both peered down anxiously at the board. "You think we should play?"

Instead of the torn beer coaster they'd used during their séance the night of her mother's death, this board came equipped with an actual planchette, esoteric symbols engraved in its wood surface.

"I feel like something is nudging us in that direction," Andy said. "I just don't know if it's a good something or bad."

Lamb gave him a hopeful look. "What if it's Mom? Trying to send us a message?"

"What if it's him trying to trick us again?"

"Well, whatever it is, doin something's gotta be better than standin around starin at the walls."

Andy agreed. Lamb sat at the table. Andy moved to the other side and sat across from her. She laid her fingers gently on the planchette. He did the same.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Ready," he said.

"We wish to speak with the presence or presences in this room." Like the time before, Lamb spoke while the two of them moved the planchette around in widening circles. "Speak to us with the b—"

Before she could finish the planchette zipped out of the circle, resting the viewing aperture over the B. They both looked up at each other, as it zipped to the E, the H, the I. After a moment, it had spelled out BEHIND, then moved toward the Y.

Andy turned, not needing the last two letters. Lamb followed his gaze, the planchette still marking the last two letters without their fingers to hold it steady.

A slot machine with DEADLY DICE spelled out in flaming letters on its face stood beside her mother's small shelf of psychic paraphernalia. The moment they noticed it the machine started trilling. Andy felt the familiar, exciting call of Chance, the almost irrepressible Nudge toward good luck or failure.

He stood.

"Andy, I don't think you should—"

"It's fine," he said, cutting her off as he approached the machine. "I'm just gonna take a look."

Someone had stuck a sticky note to the glass screen, partly obscuring the instructions: PLAY ME scrawled on it in black ink. He peeled it off and cast it aside. The machine itself was an old single-coin, an extremely rare find on the Strip these days. Three reels with only skulls and golden keys visible, a quarter slot—this covered by duct tape, which Andy assumed meant the play was "free"—a single lever, and a coin tray.

He read the instructions aloud, basic as they were: "'One pull of the lever decides your Fate: Three Keys to Freedom, One Skull—Too Late! Man of Faith or Man of Vice: who dares to roll the Deadly Dice?'"

Lamb had approached him while he spoke. She laid a hand on his shoulder. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Neither do I," he said, downplaying not only his anxiety but what was clearly anticipation. This was put here especially for him. Whether good or bad, he knew it was important that he play it. "But it's gotta be better than standing around staring at the walls," he added.

She scowled at him. "Don't go usin my words against me like that."

"I'm just saying, we could win this, Lamb. We really could!"

She narrowed her eyes. "Is that you talkin, or your Nudges?"

Andy opened his mouth to reply but found he didn't know the answer. If it was his addiction, would that decide the outcome? Man of Faith or Man of Vice seemed like a pretty clear indication that it might. And if he didn't know, where did that leave them?

'Too Late,' Andy, my man. Whatever that means.

"You pull it," he said.

Lamb scowled. "Me?"

"If you pull it'll be pure."

"How come?"

"Because you're not an addict."

"In case you didn't notice, I'm not a man, either. Of faith or vice."

"Maybe that's the trick. Maybe it wants me to put my faith in you. I'm all in, Lamb. I already won the jackpot when I met you. Whatever comes next, if the House wins this time…" He shook his head. "…at least we'll die together."

"Aww, punkin…." She held his face in both hands and kissed him. "Okay. I'll do it."

Andy moved aside, allowing Lamb to step up to the machine. She flicked out her hands, loosening her wrists, her bracelets jingling. "Here's goes nothin," she said, and reached for the lever.

She grasped it. Andy held his breath.

The machine made a heavy clunk as she pulled the lever. The reels started spinning, so fast it was impossible to make out the symbols as the keys and skulls blurred into one another.

Lamb took his hand. After a tense moment, the first reel fell into place with a thunk.

Andy let out his breath. "Key," he said. He could see Lamb's anxiety reflected in the glass surface as the final two wheels spun round and round.

A moment later, the second reel stopped.

"Another key," Lamb said, hopeful.

"Come on…" Andy breathed.

The third reel thunked home.

Andy felt his heart sink. Lamb's shoulders slumped and she leaned into his embrace.

Everything had been riding on one pull. The skull grinned up at them with Xed-out eyes.

Lamb gave him a desperate look. "I'm sorry, Andy."

"It's not your fault. I should've never asked you to do it."

Behind them, a door creaked open, light pouring into the room from whatever lay beyond. They both turned with anxious looks to face the brightness streaming in through the beaded curtain.

"Why couldn't we just stay here?" Lamb said, taking both of his hands. "Can't be long until the end, anyways, whatever comes next, right? We could just sit here an' hold each other while the walls come down out there. While the whole dang world falls apart."

Gotta admit, Andy, my man: the thought is tempting.

He shook his head. "I lived my whole life following someone else's instincts, taking the easy way out, the cowardly way out. When I met you, I told myself I wouldn't do that anymore. I wouldn't be that man." He pointed toward the curtain. "Heaven or Hell, wherever it leads, I have to go through that door. I could never ask you to lose everything for me, Lamb. But I can't stay here when Ben and the others are still in danger."

Lamb considered it a moment, looking over the small room she'd lived above for fifteen years, had dusted and cleaned its velvet curtains and furniture, and peered through those same curtains Andy wanted her to walk through countless times, watching her mother work.

It wasn't like she'd be leaving her mother behind if she followed him. She'd already left the real version of this room hundreds of miles behind her in the desert. And her mother, at least the essence of Sonya Eleanor Curtis, was still somewhere inside that awful House, her powers drained to fuel Garrote's twisted nightmares.

"Okay," Lamb said. She took Andy's hand and he smiled at her, hopefully neither for the last time. "Let's go. Together."

Andy smiled and nodded. With his free hand, he parted the curtains, and the two of them stepped through, into the light.

* * *

While Allison and Demont stayed behind, leading the woman who'd unintentionally assumed Lamb's form into All Hallows' Close, Le Mon, Leonard and Niko had joined Andy and Lamb. Once they reached Garrote House, the two lovebirds skipped hand in hand from one asphalt block to the next all the way to the top, not missing a beat. The Odell Family monstrosity, the lobotomized mental patient and the cloud of black smoke hovered closely behind them. Lamb didn't seem too thrilled about it. Nor was anybody else. But Andy seemed to have a good handle on them, or at least, they weren't wandering off or trying to murder anybody for the time being.

By himself, Le Mon could have easily swift traveled to the top of the moving stones. But carrying Niko, with Leonard holding his battle buddy's other arm, made the trek far more treacherous and potentially deadly. Le Mon would have preferred Niko to have gone along with Allison and Demont, but Leonard had been adamant Niko come with them, assuring Le Mon he'd get better along the way. He hadn't, which made him a liability.

Le Mon had met some spirits who could carry many times their own weight. That would have made it much easier on all of them, but incredible strength was a gift he'd unfortunately not been granted in the afterlife.

John Fier wouldn't approve of that anyhow, he thought, grinning despite the aggravation. Not without exercise and a balanced diet.

"What the fuck?" Leonard said from Niko's opposite side. "They're gone!"

"Who's gone?" Le Mon grunted, stretching to step on the next piece of pavement and helping Leonard haul Niko up.

"The lovebirds. They were standing on the porch one second, then poof, gone—just like that."

Winked out, Le Mon thought, but of course that wasn't possible for Andy, so it had to be something else. Once they got Niko up onto the chunk of asphalt with him, Le Mon got a good look at the porch. Andy's spirits were still there, but sure enough, Lamb and Andy were gone. Without Andy to temper the entities, they were no longer harmless. The last time they were loose Le Mon had nearly lost everything.

"You sure they didn't go into the House?"

"I was lookin right at em when it happened. A big cloud of dust or something sucked em right in."

"That don't make any—"

"Stop right there!"

The woman's voice carried from the bottom of the stones, where she stood at the foot of the precipice, dark hair spilling from a tight ponytail around her pale face. Judging by the slash on her cheek and the tears in her black uniform, she'd been through Hell to get here. In her hands she gripped something that looked like a compact black bullhorn, pointing it at the three of them.

"I don't like the look of that," Leonard muttered.

Before Le Mon could ask him what he meant, both Leonard and Niko vanished, leaving him alone, caught between the woman below and the entities on the porch. The pavement chunk he stood on shifted again, moving him closer to the ground.

"Where did they go?" the woman barked.

Le Mon was just wondering the same thing, but he didn't let his own confusion reach his eyes. "Where did who go, Miss?"

The woman gave her head a flustered shake. "What happened to the others?"

"It would help if I knew what others you meant."

"Ben Laramie. Lilian Roth. Ollie Hedgewood." She shoved the bullhorn thing at him menacingly. "Where is Rex Garrote?"

"I s'pose they in the House there." He nodded toward it. "But this place don't seem to work that way, does it?"

"Take me to them," she said.

"That li'l toy of yours s'posed to frighten me? In case you ain't noticed, I'm already dead."

"It's a sonic neutralizer," she said through gritted teeth. "Now are you going to take me to them, or am I going to have to use it?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that, ma'am."

"Can't? Or won't?"

Le Mon shrugged. "Bit a both, maybe."

The woman frowned at him. She cocked her head, weighing her options. Then she pulled the trigger.

Le Mon squeezed his eyes shut. A low hum emanated from the weapon but nothing seemed to be happening to him. He heard her curse and opened his eyes just as she tried the weapon a second time. Again, it failed to do anything. He chuckled. "Looks like your li'l toy ran outta juice."

"The power's fine. It's the range."

She leaped onto the closest chunk of pavement, pinwheeling her arms as she lost her balance. She found her footing again and leaped to the next one.

Le Mon wasn't about to wait around to see if her weapon would work at close range. But the entities were still on the porch. He was caught between a rock and a hard place.

The woman leaped one stone closer.

This time the edge of the paving crumbled and the toes of her boot slipped right off. She fell quickly. The neuterizer—or whatever she'd called it—dropped from her hand and struck the closest stone down, splintering, before it plummeted into the hole. She grabbed the stone with both hands and held on, her square jaw working as she struggled to pull herself up.

"Well, shit," Le Mon grunted. He supposed he couldn't just let her fall, despite the fact that she'd only just meant him harm.

"Hello, Nurse."

The woman's eyes widened in surprise as a severed head hovered up from the void below, a white guy with ginger stubble and wavy auburn hair, and what sounded like a Scottish accent.

"Never got to thank ya for the lovely sponge baths," the man said. "Least I could do is give ya a little head."

With that, he headbutted the woman so hard it sounding like pool balls cracking against each other. The woman's eyelids fluttered and her fingers slipped off the stone. She dropped into the chasm without a sound, knocked unconscious before the darkness swallowed her whole.

"Man, you didn't have to do that."

The floating head seemed startled by Le Mon's voice. "Believe me, after what she put me and the young lad through, I surely did. Speakin of, he didn't happen to pass through here, did he?"

"Who's that?"

"Yay high, skinny fella, hair like a haystack."

"This friend of yours, would his name be Ben Laramie, by any chance?"

"Aye," the man said, cautious.

Le Mon grinned. "Then I guess we all goin in the same direction. Folks I come up with vanished, I could sure use a hand or two."

"I could use a hand or two myself," the head said, flashing a smile. "Name's Jeremy. Jeremy Cruikshank."

"Pleasure to meetcha, Jeremy. Name's Le Mon. Now we really should get mov—"

But suddenly he was back in Shawna's hospital room in Metairie. "—ing," he finished, surprised by the sudden change in scenery. He turned around wildly, wondering how he'd gotten here, how in the hell to get back. The first thing he noticed was that the room had no door. Turning back to face the room, he saw the mint-green curtains had been drawn across both beds. The only point of egress was through the wire-mesh windows.

He tried winking back to where he'd been, outside the House, with Jeremy Crankshaft or whatever his name was, but he found he couldn't even swift to the other side of the room, let alone leave it.

A strange mewling sound came from Shawna's bed. Not quite a human sound. Not quite animal either.

Whatever's behind them curtains, seems like it wants me to look.

The last time he'd been in this room, he'd seen the love of his life at her most wasted away, clinging to the last vestige of life.

She was just a bag of bones, he thought. Can't be worse than that, can it?

Le Mon pulled open the curtain and staggered back in horror, knocking over the IV stand. The IV bag hit the floor and burst open, splashing clear fluid on the tiles. He slipped in it and fell back into the chair. Gripping the arms, he pushed himself quickly to his feet, unable to take his eyes off the thing in the bed.

Squirming on its back where Shawna had spent her dying days was the most horrifying thing he'd ever laid eyes on. If it had been entirely insectile, he could have stomached it. But the creature had incorporated bits and pieces of Shawna at her sickest into its anatomy. Her wispy, chemo-balding hair hung over its flat, mottled head. Her tired green eyes stared out from gaunt holes between its toothy mandibles. Her frail arms and legs, riddled with varicose veins from the chemo, scrabbled amid the squirming limbs of a beetle.

"Shawna," he gasped. "My sweet Shawna… What happened to you?"

The pitted eyes fell on him and the creature began flapping its wings beneath itself, trying to flip itself over. Le Mon did not want to be in the room when it did but there was nowhere left to run.

"I tried, Shawna," he said, hoping contrition would appease the awful creature she'd become—this thing he'd made her. "I did my best, baby, but I failed you."

The plump creature with Shawna's eyes and hair and hands that had held him and caressed him in places he couldn't think of now without wanting to vomit, flopped onto its insect belly and human limbs and scuttled around to face him, wings fluttering, peering up at him with her eyes.

That was the worst of it: the eyes of the woman he'd loved staring helplessly—not malignantly—from that indecent, half-vermin form. His pity for the thing she'd become manifested in tears.

The Shawna-thing leaped off the bed and skittered across the floor toward him, its mandibles opening and closing, Shawna's eyes registering the same horror in his heart.

"You come take me," he told it. "Come take me now, if you have to."

The Shawna-thing sprang off the floor, limbs grabbing and wings abuzz, and attached itself to his face.

* * *

Ollie Hedgewood looked up at what had once been his childhood home, thinking about truth and fiction.

He was eleven the last time he'd stood before it, and though it looked nothing like the House he'd lived in for less than a year, it felt the same. As beautiful as it had been on the outside, it had always been ugly in its heart. Its bones had always been cancerous, rotten to the marrow, the soil it was built upon leaching poison into its foundation, a sick house, killing everyone and everything it touched.

Only a few had ever survived its wrath. Ollie himself and Rex Garrote had been among them, though the House had taken Garrote in the end. Or were they one and the same now? Garrote and his Infernal House, joined at the rafters and the bones, the heart and the hearth, like that novel of his, the one with the writer and the sentient house. Ollie had read all of Garrote's novels in the time since the Tragedy, certain he would find some clue to the writer's whereabouts, or at least learn enough about his enemy to best him in this final confrontation.

All he'd learned was that Garrote was a troubled man, deeply affected by what he'd gone through in Vietnam. Perhaps his mind had already been polluted by the horror of war, and the Evil within that House had merely tapped a spigot in it, spewing its awful sap onto the pages of his novels. But perhaps Garrote could have lived a relatively normal life if he'd never set foot in that House, traumatized but sane.

Surely it had inflicted its damage on prior residents. It had murdered its architect's entire first family, warping him into a drunken pervert, obsessed with reopening the "schism" to this realm he'd only ever just glimpsed. It had convinced Ollie's great-aunt to poison Christmas dinner, watching as her husband and children excreted blood from every orifice, before taking her own life with the carving knife. It had made Clayton Odell, darling of the Seattle art scene, brutalize his family and sew them onto his own body, making himself into a living—for a brief time, before the sculptor himself bled to death—work of art.

Others had befallen similar fates over the years. Only Rex Garrote had managed to live in that House of his for longer than a few years. It was as if the House had been awaiting his presence.

As if, as in the novels, Writer and House were made for one another, their destinies inextricably intertwined.

The House had fallen into a hole in the earth, and here it was again, made whole. More than whole. The enmity in its dark heart had been exposed, laid bare. This was Garrote House as it always was: a malignant tumor of a House, a virulent pustule of plaster and wood, an infected lesion festering in the epidermis of reality, its hateful toxin spiraling down through the generations, family to family, death to death, giving birth to this, its Final Configuration.

Ollie vowed right then and there to destroy it. First its Owner, then the House itself.

He leaped over the chasm onto the first chunk of asphalt and began to climb, scrabbling up.

"HEDGEWOOD!"

The voice startled him, ragged and thin, yet surprisingly vehement. He pulled himself up onto his elbows, Louboutin loafers dangling over the abyss, and turned to his pursuer.

Thea Petralia lay slumped over the withers of a cotton-candy-pink horse—only this horse bore a single horn on its forehead, long and sharp and drenched in blood. More gore streaked its coat, and Thea's hands, entwined in its mane, were soaked with it.

"I've come for you!" she howled. It was clear she was gravely injured. Ollie would have thought seeing this would bring him pleasure but it only served to make him more resolute. However she'd been wounded, her death would be yet another claimed by the Infernal House.

No more, he thought, grunting with the effort to keep himself from falling off the stone.

"I've no quarrel with you, Ms. Petralia," Ollie called to her, as the unicorn trotted toward the chasm's edge. "We're here for the same reason. We both want to stop this. To stop him."

"I don't trust you," Thea moaned. Just the motion of shaking her head looked difficult.

"I understand that. I'd feel likewise if our positions were reversed. But please, you must believe me: I mean you no harm. It's Garrote who—"

"Rex Garrote is dead."

"Precisely. But we can stop him. You and I together."

"There is no you and I!"

The pink horse stopped at the precipice.

"Of course," he said, trying to diffuse her anger. "But perhaps with our interests aligned, we could… look past our differences, for the time being. If you'd just let me help you up…"

Ollie pulled himself up onto the stone, stood warily, only to turn and leap down to solid ground. Thea was watching him, her eyes glassy. He approached the horse cautiously. It snorted and backed away a step, hoofs clacking on the asphalt as it shook its head.

Ollie held out a hand. "Ms. Petralia," he said.

It only then occurred to him she hadn't blinked since he'd landed. He reached out again and took her hand, felt her wrist. It was cool to the touch. No pulse.

Thea Petralia was dead.

* * *

Every time the House changed its shape, Lilian had to adapt. From the winding stone staircase to the hallway that rotated like the vortex tunnel at Rocky's Fun World, from the tower trellis to the shrinking stairwell, which ended in a door so small they'd needed to crawl through it on their hands and knees, Lilian holding a vain and fleeting hope the Living Dark would be too big to follow. Unfortunately, their bodies were not as solid as she'd thought, and they'd cracked and squished themselves through the aperture into the old elevator, which led to the asylum's basement morgue, which in turn led through the stinking interior of a train car and out through the front door, back into the foyer at Garrote House.

All the climbing, the mental gymnastics, the crawling and pleading and begging for her life had taken its toll. Each geographical shift further disoriented and angered Garrote. Each new doorway discovered made Lilian weaker. She felt like the walking dead—as if, like his psychics, Garrote was using her, draining her energy. Like she was a battery-powered compass about to lose her charge forever.

None of that mattered anymore. They were here. After such a struggle, to have finally found the Spring in the foyer of Garrote House seemed like a cheat. Yet here it was, a well fashioned out of brightly illuminated stone, shimmering liquid splashing within, rising from the floor in the middle of the rug as if it had been there the whole time.

Garrote grinned at her as his pets cluttered around the large room. "I knew you could do it. And now, here we stand, on the precipice of Immortality." He held out a hand. "Ben rejected my offer, but perhaps you'll make the wiser choice. Being a god is such lonely business, Lilian. I could use someone at my side. My girl Friday, if you like. Join me."

She sneered at him. "Gross."

Garrote chuckled, lowering his hand. "I admire your chutzpah, have I told you that? I suppose if you'd prefer to stay behind and take your chances with my pets rather than rule the world with me, that's your prerogative. I'd just like you to be sure you know what you're rejecting."

Lilian sank to her haunches in the light of the Spring. Then dropped to her butt on the floor. She was tired. What was the point in fighting any longer? He'd won. All he needed to do was step into the Spring and he'd be immortal.

Infinite.

Then there'd be no stopping him. How could you fight a god?

Garrote raised an eyebrow, looking down at her.

"You're right," she said, heaving a dramatic sigh. "I should think it over. I have to admit it really is a…" She struggled for the right word. "…a generous offer," she finished.

"I—what?" Garrote blinked at her, his grin waning. Her response was clearly not what he'd expected to hear. It wasn't what she'd expected to say. It had really just come out of her, and now that it was out she decided to run with it.

She needed to stall for time.

All she had to do was create one last door, a door that would open in multiple places at once, each one leading here. The Door to End All Doors.

No biggie, she thought.

"Yeah," she said. "You know, I've been thinking about your plan. Kill everyone. Start from scratch. Build a new world in your image. It's very… noble isn't the right word, is it?"

Garrote's smile returned.

"No," she said, "what's the word I'm looking for…?"

"Benevolent?"

"No, that's not it, either." She popped her eyes at him. "Oh! I got it! It's fucking insane, that's what it is."

Garrote glowered down at her.

"By the way, Hitler called. He wants his ego back."

Garrote grabbed her by the shoulder, hauling her to her feet. "I wouldn't fuck with me if I were you!"

Lilian dug her heels into the rug as he dragged her to the well. "If you were me, I'd kill myself! Actually, you were too much of a coward to do that, weren't you? You had to get Ben to do it for you!"

Her feet left the floor as Garrote lifted her into the air, holding her over the Spring, her black Converse dangling over the bright fluid bubbling like a cauldron.

"Go ahead!" she cried, trying not to look down. "Do it! Throw me in! The first thing I'll do is come back here and tear this whole damn House down! We did before, we can do it again!"

"Enough of this nonsense." Garrote let go of her with a sneer of dismissal. She fell to her hands and knees at the foot of the well. "Do with her what you will," he said to his pets. "I've no use for her anymore."

Exhausted, Lilian could only watch from the floor as the creatures plopped down from their perches on the stair railing, the balcony and tapestries, scuttling toward the center of the room, closing in on her.

Ben! she cried out in her mind, knowing it was futile, that nothing she said or did or even thought would help her now.

There was no door. There was no future. There was only death, forever and ever on an endless loop.

I need you!

The Living Dark skulked past Garrote and the well, circling Lilian, saw-toothed mandibles snapping, black eyes gleaming mindlessly.

Unable to stop him, she watched as Garrote climbed up onto the wall of the Spring. He stood up carefully and turned, beaming down at her. "Well, it's been grand," he said. "But I really must be—"

The sound of the door opening behind her was barely audible over the snapping jaws, the buzz of wings and clicking of chitinous limbs.

But she'd heard it.

And so did Garrote.

The End

BEN SPED THROUGH the dense white fog with no clue which direction he was heading. It was entirely possible Garrote had reached the Spring and this fog was all that was left of anything, his friends already devoured by the Living Dark. All he knew was that the fog seemed to go on forever, like a particularly dull loading screen between levels in a video game. Time drew out as he ran, flew and winked in an out, moving forward or backwards or in circles, with no indication one way or the other if he was making progress or only heading further away from his objective.

Lilian would know. She'd find a way out of this.

Lilian had always been the navigator. He suspected that was why Garrote needed her. Nobody Ben knew could run a maze the way Lilian could. The Dark Rift was unlike any maze Ben had ever encountered, but it was still a maze. If anyone could lead Garrote to the Spring, it was her.

Which was good for Lilian, at least in the short term. As long as Garrote needed her, he'd want to keep her alive. Bad for everyone, in the long run.

Finally, a slash of darkness emerged in the distance. At first he wasn't sure if he was imagining it, an oasis in the white desert, but still he sped toward it, feeling more confident with a goal to head for, whether it turned out to be benign or malignant or not even there at all.

The closer he got, the more detail he could make out. It was painted blood red, in such a stark contrast to the vast, white emptiness surrounding it that he'd at first mistaken it for black. On its surface were two shiny, goldish fixtures, just about waist-high.

It's a door.

He reached the door and stood before it, wondering where it had come from and where it would lead. It had a brass handle with a skeleton keyhole and a knocker with the head of a lion. It stood like a monolith in its frame, nothing holding it in place, like an illusionist's prop. He circled it, until he stood again at what he thought of as the "outside," though there was no indication which side was which, nor even if it mattered in which direction he walked through. The door appeared to open both ways.

He halted with his fingers touching the handle.

What if it's a trap?

So what if it was? If it led him to Garrote, that was exactly what he wanted. If it brought him elsewhere, at least it would get him out of this never-ending whiteness.

Thinking this, he turned the handle and drew open the door.

The foyer at Garrote House lay beyond, only visible within the confines of the door frame. Ben saw several things simultaneously: Lilian on the floor, bravely holding back several Living Dark entities with a heavy silver candelabra, and Garrote standing on the wall of some kind of shimmering white structure, the smile fading from his face.

It's the Spring. I'm too late.

"STOP!" Ben shouted, as loud as he could.

"Ben!" Lilian cried, but he could only hope she'd hold off the monsters a little longer. His priority was Garrote. He couldn't let the writer enter the Spring.

But it was already too late. Smiling his joyless smile, Garrote tipped an imaginary cap… and leaped off the stone wall of the well.

Ben winked out.

He reappeared right in front of Garrote, so close the writer startled. Ben grabbed him around the waist, the two enemies hovering over the rippling Spring, bathed in its warm glow, Ben opposing Garrote's downward pull with all the strength left in him. Garrote gritted his teeth and tried to break Ben's grip, but Ben held firm. He held on harder than he'd ever held on to anything in his life, or his afterlife.

"I'm not letting you go!"

"You can't stop me," Garrote roared. "NOTHING can stop me!"

Garrote was right. He was far stronger than Ben. He'd proven it in his control room six or seven hours ago. The only reason Ben had gotten the upper hand now was due to the element of surprise. Eventually, inevitably, Garrote would break Ben's hold on him and enter the Spring and when he reemerged…

What then?

Then he'd finish this story, the whole tragic, violent human drama. He'd leave no thread unsnipped as he tore the world asunder.

"Look out!" Lilian cried.

Ben startled as a coarse-haired limb grabbed hold of his leg, distracting him just long enough for Garrote to break free of their embrace.

A grin spread across the writer's face. He snapped a quick salute.

Ben reached for him but Garrote's cardigan slipped through his fingers, and the man himself plummeted into the bright waters and vanished.

Only the insectile limb gripping his ankle prevented him from following Garrote into the Spring, the waters rippling beneath him, then finally growing still.

"Ben!"

He turned, seeing his own despair mirrored in Lilian's expression, the weight of their loss—so much worse than any that had come before it—heavier than the creature clinging to the wall of the well, still gripping his leg, now dragging him down.

They'd lost it all. Every death, every moment of hope, every small victory, everything they'd done had been for nothing. Ben could find no point in fighting any longer. Might as well just let the Dark drag him down. Follow Garrote into the Spring. Let it destroy him, scatter his particles across the Rift.

* * *

"Falcons are five minutes from the target," Colonel Martin said over the radio. "Are you on the move?"

General Zaydan had made no attempt to get up from where he sat. "Affirmative. Just keep that count running, Colonel. I'll be maintaining radio silence until this is all over."

The truth was he barely had the strength to talk. All of the energy had been drained out of him. He felt as light as the air around him, yet still somehow unable to move even an eyelid.

That was fine. No problem at all. He'd have a front-row seat to all the action from here. He'd watch the F-16 Fighting Falcons roar overhead in air strike formation, unleashing their payload on that godforsaken House, and he'd use his last remaining strength to salute those brave men and women as his whole world became an inferno.

"My, my, what have we here?" a tempered voice said from above.

Zaydan looked up at a man dressed in a wool three-piece suit and round horn-rimmed glasses. A civilian? At Ground Zero? Now? The man drew a gold pocketwatch from his jacket, glanced at its face, then returned it to its home.

Zaydan didn't know what to say. He wasn't sure he could speak even if he'd wanted to. He suddenly felt very, very sleepy.

"I've a patient in an hour," the man said, daubing under his nose with a monogrammed handkerchief, leaving a streak of blood. He flashed a tight smile. "But I believe I could just squeeze you in."

* * *

This is it, Lilian thought. It's all over. I opened the door and Ben found me, but Garrote still won.

"Lilian!"

She looked up at the voice, striking out with the candlestick again as another of the nightmare creatures advanced on her.

The couple she'd met the day of the explosion, Andy Park and Lamb Curtis, had just entered through the front door. Behind them were entities Lilian hoped she would never see again, especially in what could very well be her final moments on Earth: the Behemoth stood hunched in the open doorway, Morton Welles—the man of her bad dreams—slouched and gaping to its left, and the Swarm hovering on its right.

"Oh, awesome," she said, swinging out at the Living Dark, the burnished silver pinging off the closest creature's beetle brow. "I was just wondering how could this get any worse!"

"This is it!" Andy said in a clear, commanding voice. "It's your time to shine, Clayton!"

Suddenly the Behemoth—it seemed even bigger than the last time she'd seen it, if that was possible—ran full stride past Andy, heading straight for Lilian.

She saw it coming and backed away as far as she could, swinging out at the Living Dark entity that had taken her moment of distraction to scrabble forward, closing the distance.

But the Behemoth wasn't interested in her. Or at least, not interested in harming her. It slammed a muscular shoulder into the nearest entity, the one with the seemingly heavy head, launching the thing into the air. The creature hurtled through the stairway railing, turning it to kindling, shattering one of the lit sconces, and smashing through the adjacent wall. Kerosene splashed on the carpeted steps and caught fire.

Two of its sisters leaped onto the Behemoth, which struggled to shake them off, thundering toward the other side of the foyer with its heads down.

"It's on our side!" Lilian called to Ben.

She saw Ben perk up, and immediately begin to fight off the creature attached to him, grabbing it by its forelimbs.

Lamb waved at the Swarm, shouting: "You heard 'im, get movin!"

The Swarm did indeed get moving, hurtling toward Lilian. For a moment it seemed to hesitate, as if trying to decide whether to strike her one remaining attacker or Lilian herself. Then it wrapped itself around the neck of the praying mantis with the bulbous, many-eyed head and squeezed until she heard it snap.

The creature in its grip—the one Garrote had called Brutus, she thought—opened its mandibles and let out chittering cry on a noxious breath.

Lilian turned, watching as the Behemoth shook Brutus's sister, Medusa, off its shoulder, launching it into the hearth. The fire consumed it quickly, starting with its delicate wings, like black lace, its carapace crackling in the flames, black jelly oozing from the lesions.

Still hovering above the Spring, Ben threw all of his energy into the creature in his grip, slamming it against the edge of the well. Even from where she stood, ten feet from them, Lilian heard the crunch of its body breaking against the shimmering stone.

The Behemoth threw the last creature off its back. It grabbed the closest of its metal sculptures—the thing looked as much like a helicopter as a man—and brought it down in a smooth arc, obliterating the scrabbling insect on the floor.

Lilian hurried over to Ben and grabbed one of the Dark creature's flailing, slashing limbs, the coarse hairs pricking her fingers, helping Ben push it into the Spring.

"We've almost…" Ben gritted his teeth. "…got it!"

The hairy creature plunged into the bright pool. Ben winked out and reappeared at her side. The two of them watched the drowning monster thrash, shrieking, until it disappeared into the Spring and the water grew still.

Andy and Lamb joined them. "Should we go in after Garrote?"

Ben shook his head. "Living people can't go into the Spring. It'll tear you apart."

"It can't be over just like that," Lamb said, standing alongside Andy. "Can it?"

No one answered her. Nobody knew.

And then, with a splash from the Spring, the answer came in the form of a sodden head breaking the surface of the white water.

* * *

Rex Garrote gripped the edge of the well and climbed out of the Spring, savoring the looks of dismay worn by the fools who'd gathered here to stop Him, who'd dared oppose Him. Genuine joy spread across His face for the first time in as long as He could remember as the bright fluid sloshed from His hair, His mustache, His cardigan and trousers to the floor.

It worked, he thought. It WORKED!

He poked himself in the chest, felt fabric and flesh and meat and ribs beneath his finger—felt His finger!—more of Himself than He'd been able to feel since He'd stepped into the lukewarm liquid in His preservation tank, connecting His consciousness to Harrison Greely's ingenious little computer program.

"I. AM."

His throat gurgled, and He nearly choked on the mouthful of bright white fluid that spilled from His lips. Not exactly how He'd wanted to reintroduce Himself to His brave new world, but it didn't matter. These puny insects would soon be annihilated—None of them worthy to stand beside Me not a single ONE—their memories of His awkward rebirth lost to the ether.

I am what? He thought, distracted by the interruption. A god? The God? YOUR God?

"INNNNFINITTTTTE!" He roared, the word—THE WORD—echoing throughout his House—the First House the Only House the ALPHA and the OMEGA—rattling the rafters, rumbling the floorboards, causing the lampshades and chandelier to jingle and the tapestries and paintings to flap against the wall. The roaring fire guttered out and the puny creatures gathered before Him dropped to their knees.

In rapture?

No, only pain. But pain was enough for now. They would learn to grovel at His feet before He extinguished them. Before the Living Dark absorbed their energy and reconstituted it into whatever form might delight their Master, their God.

He could feel the power rising inside him, simmering just beneath the surface of His skin like a volcano on the verge of eruption. He required time to acclimate to these powers, to fine-tune them and shape them to His Infinite will.

Infinite?

No, He was much more than that.

He saw six F-16s flying toward Him from eighty-four miles to the southeast, loaded with enough firepower to wipe not just Ghostland but the entirety of Duck Falls off the map, and the hatred in the heart of the dead general who commanded them. He saw the meddlesome but unintentionally helpful Mrs. Speer hidden away in her Close, ushering her followers through burgundy curtains into an endless ocean of bliss. He saw Harrison Greely and Sara Jane Amblin and the House's architect, Oliver Hedgewood—the face that had greeted Rex through the opening in the Rift—in a resurrected facsimile of His control room, their energy already absorbed into the Living Dark. He saw the coward Ollie Hedgewood climbing the asphalt path to His door, a pistol gripped in his clammy palm. He saw families hidden within their homes, awaiting rescue that would never come, blissfully unaware of the death rocketing toward them at thirteen-thousand miles an hour.

He could spare them all if He wanted to. He could detonate the missiles while the jets were still thirty-five thousand feet in the air, obliterating the pilots but saving countless others. But to what end? Why save them now only to torment them later?

That would be exactly the point, wouldn't it? So that they would know Me, so they would see Me for what I AM. I AM THE DOOR I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD I AM THE RESURRECTED I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD I AM THE GATE FOR THE SHEEP I AM WHAT I AM AND I IS WHAT I IS I AM I AM I AMMM.

These musings delighted Him, but they were not The Word. They were trivial. He would show these mortals His Mercy and then he would show them His Wrath.

But first, before anything else, He'd need to deal with the infidels.

He would make them FEEL His Divine Wisdom, they would feel His Compassion before they felt His Judgment, they would hear The Word and they would witness His Miracles and they would believe and shudder and grovel, and then, only then, would He show them His MERCY by obliterating their puny, mewling existences.

"ARISE," He told them, extending his arms and His Mercy.

And lo, did the first of these pathetic sheep rise to stand before their God.

And was it Good? He asked Himself. Was it GOOD? You'd better Believe it, Jack.

* * *

Bright liquid dripped from Garrote's hair, flesh and clothes as he hovered feet above the floor, his dark smile shining like a beacon, and though Ben had seen this face many times before, he knew he was witnessing the True Face of Evil. It seemed he could see the world turning in the burning pits of Garrote's eyes.

Ben and the others had fallen to their knees from the sheer force of Garrote's voice, louder than the explosion that set all of this into motion, louder than the infrasonic barrier that kept them prisoner in the Recurrence Field.

Garrote marveled at his own body, running his hands down his forearms, touching his chest. All the while the galaxies swirled within his eyes.

Is he a god? Ben wondered. Does he know everything? Can he see everything?

Whatever he was now, Ben knew what he wasn't. He'd been resurrected in the Infinite. Transubstantiated. He might not be mortal, his flesh and blood might very well be impervious to conventional hazards, but he was still just that.

Flesh and blood.

The Last Living Ghost.

The Shōki.

Mrs. Speer's words came back to Ben in that moment of clarity: A living being cannot enter the Spring.

If he were to step into it, she'd said, unaware of the dangers, perhaps charmed by the immense power it might present to him, he would be stripped apart to his very atoms within moments.

The twin universes swirled away and Garrote's eyes swam back into focus. He looked down on the four of them, still on their knees, and his smile actually appeared benevolent.

"ARISE," he bellowed in his new god-voice, his arms extended as if to embrace them all.

Ben pushed himself to his feet.

"Benjamin," the writer said, genuine pity in his eyes. "Are you ready now? Are you willing at last to accept my blessing?"

Without hesitation, Ben launched himself at Garrote once more. Caught by surprise, the writer grabbed him by the arms and stumbled back two steps closer to the Spring. His smile dropped and the darkness returned to his eyes as he gripped Ben's arms, his bright fingers pressing into Ben's energy, searing it like fire, holding him firmly in place.

"IT'S TOO LATE, BOY! I'VE ALREADY WON!"

The floor shook. Ben assumed it was in reaction to Garrote's roar, until a massive fist shot over his head, so close he felt his hair ruffle, and thick fingers grasped Garrote around the throat.

Ben felt Garrote's right hand leave his shoulder as the writer gripped one of the Behemoth's children by the head and squeezed. The child's soft skull burst like a pimple, oozing gore and brain between his fingers. The Behemoth trumpeted its rage directly in Garrote's face, nearly deafening Ben.

"YOU CANNOT STOP THE INEVITABLE," Garrote said through gritted teeth.

"Now!" Andy shouted.

The Swarm swam around the Spring and curled itself around Garrote's waist, squeezing him like a python. Garrote stumbled—Not a god after all, Ben thought, just a man with a god-sized ego—the Behemoth throttling him with both of Clayton Odell's hands, Ben still gripping his arms.

The thick wire holding up the chandelier snapped, and the entire structure came crashing down, crystals shattering on the floor barely a foot from Lilian and Lamb, both of them jumping to their feet, joining Andy.

In his peripheral vision, Ben saw Lilian approach the well. She gripped a stone on the edge of the wall, glowing between her hands, and pulled.

Ben kept pushing, wisps of his arms flittering away like smoke as Garrote's fingers burned him.

"Hey, guys!"

Billy sounded in strangely good spirits. "Throw me, lad," came another voice Ben recognized. If he could have turned around, he would've seen Billy step through the doorway with Jeremy Cruickshank tucked under his phantom arm like a football.

Lilian was still struggling against the well. She put a foot up and pulled, and with a rending of stone against stone she finally pulled it free.

"Duck!" Billy shouted.

Ben ducked.

"Heads up!" Jeremy shouted, rocketing toward them.

"Yes!" Andy cried, laughing and pumping a fist excitedly.

Jeremy struck Garrote's forehead dead on. The writer stumbled back a step, growling in rage.

Lilian hauled back with the stone and hurled it. The stone split against Garrote's skull very near where Jeremy had struck him. Bright light poured from the wound.

Garrote's gaze fell on Lilian and he backhanded her, sending her skittering across the floor on her ass. "YOU WILL FALL BEFORE ME!"

Lamb had pulled another stone from the wall and charged at him. "You killed my mother, you asshole!" she wailed, and cracked the glimmering stone against his back, causing another stream of light to spill from his body.

Garrote roared. The House trembled again.

"Mr. G!"

Ben looked up, saw Bram standing on the balcony, gripping the railing with one hand, a gun in the other, pointed at them.

Garrote didn't even turn, merely planted his feet into the rug. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, BRAM. SHOOT THE GIRL!"

Bram flicked the gun toward her. Lilian scrabbled across the floor, her soles squeaking on the boards, and ducked behind the well wall.

"This ends here, Garrote!"

Annoyance flashed on Garrote's face. "OH, WHAT NOW?"

Ben recognized the voice of the man in the robin's-egg blue suit, and remembered the sickly, purplish smile that had spread across his face as he tortured Ben and Jeremy in the Nevada facility ten stories below the earth.

"YOU WANT TO GET EVEN, BEN, HERE'S YOUR CHANCE. I'LL EVEN HOLD THE BASTARD DOWN FOR YOU."

"You poisoned my ancestors' minds!" Hedgewood shouted, entering the foyer. "You murdered my family!"

"YOUR FAMILY KILLED THEMSELVES. THEY WERE WEAK, LIKE ALL THE REST."

"Lies!" Hedgewood cried, and the crack of a pistol erupted.

The projectile obliterated Garrote's right eye. More bright fluid poured from the exploded socket, spattering Ben. Where it landed it was like battery acid, sizzling through his clothes and skin. Still, he held fast. Garrote was backed against the well now, the Swarm and the Behemoth eking him further, Ben himself just doing his best to hold him.

"SHOOT HIM, YOU INCOMPETENT APE!"

Bram's gaze flicked from Lilian to Hedgewood, who was advancing across the foyer, gun held ahead of him.

He fired three times in succession. The first shot caught Hedgewood high in the chest, and he spun on his heels, the gun flinging from his hand. The second went wild, plunking into the wall. The third struck Hedgewood on the shin, shattering bone, and he fell to his knees. A red stain bloomed on his lapel like a corsage, and he grabbed at his chest, blood streaming through his fingers. It was clear from his expression he hadn't expected to lose. The sickly smile drooped, and his mouth fell open.

"WORSHIP ME AND I'LL LET YOU LIVE!"

Hedgewood nodded, tears spilling down his baby-smooth cheeks. "Yes," he said, his voice trembling. "Yes, I'll worship you. Please, show me mercy!"

Garrote let go of Ben's left arm and with a flick of his wrist the metal sculpture lying over the battered body of his pet rose from the floor and shot across the room. It struck Hedgewood, launching the weeping man off his knees and slamming him into the far wall, by the doors.

His crying ceased. He slumped over the sculpted metal, gasping his final breath.

"GOOD SHEEP ARE SO HARD TO FIND," Garrote said, and bellowed laughter in Ben's face.

Ben reached up and jammed his fingers into Garrote's already-healing eye socket. The bright—blood?—fluid burned him but he fought against the pain, pushing his hand in further, reaching for the meat inside.

Garrote howled in rage. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Rafters snapped. The floorboards shook. He grabbed Ben by the throat, his scalding fingers squeezing.

Lamb pulled another loose stone from the well and hurled it at him, striking Garrote's shoulder. With a flick of his remaining eye—the dark galaxy still swirling within it—he sent her flying across the room. She struck the door beneath the stairs and landed hard on the floor.

"You dick!" Andy cried, and ran at them.

"Andy, don't!" Lilian shouted. But Andy kept running, hands clasped above his head as if to spike a volleyball, and Garrote sent him flying toward the stairs. Andy hit what was left of the railing and sprawled next to Lamb on the floor.

A sound broke the momentary silence, a clattering of hoofs on the wooden floorboards. A horse? Here? Ben didn't waste time speculating, he only dug his hand further into Garrote's ruined eye socket, in up to the mid-fingers, digging his nails in Garrote's spongy brain.

"Thea?" Lilian gasped, still on her hands and knees, hiding from Bram below the well.

"Oh, my God," Bram himself said from the balcony.

Ben still couldn't see Thea, and had no idea why her entrance to the House would sound like hooves trotting toward him.

"YOU!" Garrote bellowed.

"Me," Thea said, defiant.

"SHOOT HER, BRAM!"

"I'm already dead," Thea said. "Shouldn't you know that? Why don't you know?"

She's right, Ben thought. Is he losing his powers already? Are we doing that?

"I AM INFINITE!" Garrote roared, the frustration evident in his booming voice even as it shook the House around them, threatening to tear it down.

But in the next moment the backs of his legs butted up against the well. He looked down with a flash of anger and thrust forward, pushing the Behemoth back, the rug sliding under their feet, gaining him an inch, maybe more.

The hoofs sped into a gallop and Thea called out, "Move, Ben!"

He twisted out of the way as best he could, leaping onto the glowing stone wall, Garrote's hand still clutched around his throat, his own hand buried up to the knuckles in Garrote's skull.

He saw a tusk, a long, pale spiral of bone, plunge into Garrote's chest. The Pepto-pink flesh of the horse—unicorn—it belonged to was already streaked with blood. Thea herself gripped the animal's mane.

"I hope you burn!" Thea said through clenched teeth, her unicorn—Taffy, somehow she'd made Taffy real—burying itself deeper into Garrote's chest, pushing him back.

Garrote tipped over the edge of the well.

The Behemoth let go of the writer's throat and used all of his remaining hands to give Garrote one final push. The Swarm pulled around his waist, itself slipping into the sloshing waters of the Spring. Garrote roared as he fell flat against the surface, and the shimmering water sucked him under greedily, pulling Ben down with him.

Lilian called out his name.

But the Spring had already claimed him, smothering all but the roar of Ben's own terrified thoughts.

* * *

"Two minutes, General," came Colonel Martin's report.

But General Zaydan didn't hear. He was back on the battlefield in Kandahar, repeating the incident where the civilian dressed as an Afghan Army soldier had shot him in the head on an endless loop, while Dr. Hammersmith noted and absorbed his patient's emotions.

Forty-five miles to the southeast, the F-16s adjusted their flight path, a deadly payload fixed to their bellies, ready to birth an inferno.

* * *

The immediate effect of Garrote's disappearance into the Spring went largely unseen by the occupants of his foyer, survivors of the writer's not-quite-so-infinite wrath.

The sky over Duck Falls changed more rapidly than any freak weather pattern this area of Maryland had ever experienced. The Dark Rift withdrew from the horizons like an oil spill in reverse, allowing the sun's final rays to brighten this very long day as it dipped below the Duck Bill. The mist that had crept over Ghostland's rides and exhibits and eventually stretched all the way to town finally dissipated. Ethereals within its vicinity that had been visible to the living vanished from sight.

While the contents of the Dark Rift returned to the rupture in Garrote's library, the House collapsed in on itself like a corpse in rapid decay, extraneous rooms and stairwells crumpling into walls and ceilings, gabled roofs and towers and glass domes deflating like expired lungs, floor after floor, room after room shriveling away, household items and furnishings and knickknacks simply absorbed into the walls, the floors, the baseboards, existing no more.

The foyer itself remained largely unaffected during the House's transformation, aside from the rumble and rattle of the walls and floorboards, and the disappearance of the Spring's glowing well.

When the rumbling stopped, a shot rang out from the balcony. Bram Merritt slumped over the railing, his eyes bulging, gore pouring from a gaping wound in his left temple. The small gun, still smoking, fell from his hand and clattered on the floor below. He expelled his final breath, and departed his body once and for all.

Still sitting on the rug, Lilian gave a forlorn look to the place where the Spring had been scant moments ago. She spoke Ben's name with regret, with sadness, with love. On opening day, he'd given his life to hold the door for her and countless others. He'd sacrificed his afterlife here today, to defeat Garrote once and for all.

She could only hope he was at peace.

In the silence that followed Bram's unexpected death, Lilian wept. For Ben. For her father. For every friend she'd lost to that terrible, miserable man.

"Mom!" Lamb called out, breaking her melancholic embrace with Andy, immense relief brightening her face.

Sonya Curtis, local-famous Vegas psychic, pushed herself hesitantly to her feet as her daughter rushed across the foyer to greet her. Sonya's confusion quickly became delight. She smiled as Lamb threw her arms around her. "Oh, my Lamb," she said, laughing. "Oh, my sweet, sweet Lamb."

Others had appeared around them when the Spring disappeared, ethereals abandoned by the Living Dark and returned to their former selves. Lilian recognized Miss Delyse, the Caribbean psychic with the colorful headwrap, climbing from the hole in the wall above the stairs with a frown of bafflement. The Rock N' Roll Psychic stepped out from the hearth and blinked, looking around himself.

"Holy crap!" Andy said, clearly unable to believe what he saw.

He'd spotted a young family near the library door, a man and a woman, each holding a curly-haired toddler. Lilian recognized the father from the Ghostland guide as Clayton Odell, the once-famous sculptor, and lower half of the entity known as the Behemoth. The couple smiled at Andy, then at each other.

A white light as bright as the Spring appeared under the stairs, widening like theater curtains. Squinting and shading her eyes, Lilian saw the light arose from ethereals standing beyond what she now saw were curtains made of indigo velvet. An elderly woman in a black Victorian dress and veil had opened them, standing in stark contrast to the brightness within. She was smiling and beckoning with a withered hand to the people in the foyer.

All Hallows' Close, Lilian thought. It's real. It's really real.

The Odells went first, their ethereal forms beginning to glow as they stepped through the passage to join the others. After a moment, the remaining psychics followed—all but Sonya Curtis, who apparently had some catching up to do with Andy and her daughter.

Lilian watched the ethereals move on to whatever came next through a sheen of tears, thinking of everyone she'd lost, and hoping they were there among the light.

"You must be Lilian." The man with a Scottish accent startled her, shaking her from her thoughts. She turned to regard him, middle-aged with luxurious auburn hair and stubble, wearing a tweed jacket and a dazzling smile.

Lilian nodded, wiping her tears briskly with the back of a hand.

The man nodded to where the Spring had been only moments before. "He was a good lad, your Benjamin. Spoke nothin but praise for you, so he did."

Lilian smiled. "Thank you."

"Aye. S'pose I'll be steppin into the light with this lot. Care to join us?"

Lilian shook her head. "I'm still alive," she said, then frowned. "I think. Thank you, though."

He nodded. "Lad," he called to Billy, who was standing in the doorway, looking in displeasure at the stump of flesh several inches below his shoulder. "You may have lost your arm again, but don't lose your head."

The auburn-haired man tipped an imaginary cap to them both, flashing a charming smile, then strode toward the Close, beginning to glow as he stepped through the curtains.

As she watched him become shimmering light along with the others, a hand descended over her shoulder. She looked up, startled, and shrank back in fear.

The man who'd chased her through the mirror maze into the beating heart of a giant gorilla so very long ago smiled down at her. He wore normal clothes—or at least, normal for the 1940s. His hair was neatly combed, and he no longer bore the jagged lobotomy scar on his forehead.

"Hello, Lilian," Morton Welles said, his voice no longer holding a trace of his speech impediment. "I'm sorry for frightening you. I wasn't quite myself, you see. But I believe I can return to your family, if you'll let me."

Lilian wanted nothing more right now than to return to Blake and her mom, but could she trust this man? After all the people he’d murdered? After what he'd done to her, and the half year of nightmares that followed?

The Odells had redeemed themselves. Even the Swarm had, though Lilian suspected it wasn't entirely sentient, only helping because Andy had demanded it. Did Morton Welles not deserve the same chance? Technically, it was Dr. Hammersmith who'd made him kill—he'd been just another of the so-called Bright Falls Zombies, no more able to help himself than the Odells had as the Behemoth, when they'd murdered her father. Dr. Death had poisoned his mind as surely as the Living Dark had poisoned theirs.

Besides, it wasn't as though Bram could bring her back to the bunker, not with his brains still dripping on the Persian rug.

She turned to the old woman at the curtains, looking for guidance. The woman nodded, smiling benevolently. It wasn't a guarantee, but it would have to be good enough.

Lilian reached up and took the man's hands, aware of just how much faith she was putting into forgiveness. The ethereal pulled her to her feet without incident. He didn’t attempt to reach into her mind as he had in the mirror maze, nor mutter her grandmother's no longer so nonsensical rhyme about All Hallows' Close.

"Are you ready?" he asked, holding her gaze.

"I'm ready," she said.

In the next moment, he whisked her away.

* * *

Andy and Lamb remained in the foyer with her mother. There was so much to share, so much had happened since they'd last seen her, but Andy didn't know how much time he had left with either of them. The thought terrified him. Soon, he knew, Lamb and her mother would want to join the others in All Hallows' Close. The curtains remained parted for them, its beautiful light still shining into the foyer.

"I'm sorry I got you two sucked into all this," he said.

"Don't be," Sonya told him. "I'm just pleased my Lamb saw in you what I did."

"She sees the best in us," Andy said. "She is the best of us."

Lamb smiled and put her arm around his waist. Andy pulled her in and hugged her close.

"Hey, guys," said the boy with the missing arm, standing in the open door. "You hear that noise?"

Andy listened. He didn't hear anything at first.

"Yeah, what is that?" Lamb said.

Then Andy heard it, too: a high whistle, almost like a tea kettle, growing closer by the second.

"It sounds like jets," the boy said with a frown.

Andy thought he saw a look of understanding cross Sonya's face just then. Whatever she'd sensed, she laid a gentle hand on his and Lamb's shoulders and smiled.

"Just hold on to each other," she told them. "Hold on to your love, and don't ever it let go. It's the only thing that matters."

* * *

Lilian snapped awake, sucking in a deep breath as if she'd just emerged from beneath the water. Blake and her mom, Ben's parents and her family doctor hovered over her. They looked at her expectantly. She took a moment to acclimate to her body, which felt strangely foreign.

"You're back," Dr. Uxbridge said. "We were getting a little concerned there." He looked over his shoulder at the others. "Weren't we?"

All of them—Blake, her mother and Ben's parents—nodded. They wore looks of relief and elation, and in the case of the Laramies, relieved exhaustion.

"How do you feel?" the doctor asked.

"I feel…" She cleared her throat. It had been seven hours, according to the digital clock on the wall, since she'd used her vocal cords. "…sad. But I think it's gonna be okay."

The doctor smiled. "You could probably hug your daughter now, Maddie."

Lilian's mother let out a relieved laugh and knelt to hug her. She squeezed so tightly Lilian almost lost her breath, but Lilian didn't mind. She was just so glad to see them again, to be able to hug her mother back.

Maddie moved aside and let Blake approach her. "We were so worried about you," he said.

"Me too," Lilian said. "About you all."

Blake nodded awkwardly.

"Come down here, you dork."

Blake leaned down and hugged her, not quite as tightly as her mother had, but warmly. He kissed her cheek and she turned his face toward her and kissed him several times.

"Do you have any idea what happened to you?" her mom asked once they'd broken their embrace. "It looked like you were having a nightmare near the end there."

"It's a long story," Lilian said, all of them watching her, desperate for answers. Then she smiled. "I guess you could say… it's infinite."

The Laramies shared a confused look and shrugged.

"Whatever happened to you, it looks like you're perfectly healthy. But I'd like to send you in for some tests as soon as the roads are reopened, if that’s all right."

"That's fine," her mother said for her. "Thank you, Doctor."

He shrugged. "To be honest, it was just nice to be able to get out of the house for once."

Everyone in the bunker chuckled at that, all but Lilian.

What if this was all a dream? she thought. What if Ben never came back, and Bram never kidnapped me? What if Rex Garrote’s still out there, about to open the Dark Rift?

A series of thunderous booms from the north rocked the bunker, shaking further thoughts of dream or delusion from her mind.

"What now?" her mother asked.

There was plenty of speculation—yet another sonic blast, a drone strike, a nuclear weapon—but nobody would know for certain what happened until they left the bunker, which Lilian determined to do soon, nuke or not.

Whatever it was, she had a feeling the people of Duck Falls wouldn't need to worry about Ghostland any longer.

Epilogue

Here, After

Saturday, November 16th , 2019

FOR A LONG time, there was nothing but silence.

After the Dark Rift had sucked back into itself, and ethereals eager to move on to what came next passed through the velvet curtains in All Hallows' Close into that warm, blissful light beyond, the grounds at Ghostland lay quiet as a tomb for days.

Complete radio silence was next to impossible—if anyone knew that, Le Mon did. Still, it seemed as though ethereals who'd stuck around this close to town avoided the place like the plague. And who could blame them? Nothing but bad memories lingered there. The Evil might have been destroyed—Or at least, the face it wore this time, Le Mon thought darkly—but trauma had a way of sticking to places, like spirits caught in a loop.

With Thea Petralia no longer leading them—death would've made it a touch difficult to communicate with her followers even if she hadn't moved on with the other ethereals—the remaining Gurpies decided to leave Duck Falls. They no longer felt welcome, if they ever really had been. Their interim leader, Cooper Dawley, directed the mission, making sure everything was packed up from the church on Kubler Road and the Gurpies themselves headed on their separate ways that evening, most of them likely to never return.

Le Mon stayed behind.

He wasn't yet ready for eternal bliss, and he'd never felt the need to follow any sort of leader. With Shawna at his side, these things meant even less. Still, none of this was why he'd stayed.

He had a hunch.

On the seventh day after the quarantine lifted, after the Rift was closed, after Rex Garrote had been erased from the world, that feeling paid off. Amid the rubble and swirling dust that remained of Ghostland, Le Mon heard a noise.

And not just any noise. It was a signal, louder than any he'd heard since the dead writer's thoughts—more lethal than a hundred airstrikes—finally fell silent.

The signal was loud, but far from evil. If it was what he thought, Le Mon knew it well. He'd searched for it before, and not too long ago. He followed it now, with Shawna at his side, to the nearly three-hundred acres of razed concrete and warped metal, to the dust and destruction left behind by a military airstrike the likes of which most American citizens had never seen outside of news footage from some faraway land.

"Earth to Leon," Shawna said, waving a hand in front of his face as they crossed the expanse of barren farmland where the Gurpie camp had been.

"Huh?" He'd been so lost in thought he'd forgotten for a moment she was there.

"This is big, isn't it?" she asked.

Le Mon nodded. "Bigger than big. If this is what I think…" He shrugged. "It's everything."

They fell back into a reverent silence for several minutes before they reached the park wall. Much of it had collapsed during the airstrike, but portions remained, crumbled like the ruins of an old city.

The section directly ahead of them stood mostly untouched, with a split down the far end of a scrap of hastily spray-painted graffiti, so what once had ominously proclaimed Rex Garrote Lives now said:

REX GARROTE LI ES

That's more like it, Le Mon thought. Or 'Here Lies Rex Garrote. And good riddance.'

They moved past the wall, to a massive hole in the earth where the remains of the poisonous old house had finally settled. Not much beyond the wall was recognizable. Here and there something distinguished itself from the rest—a carnival prize coated with concrete dust, a discarded rifle, scattered bones, a tram car—but mainly it was rubble. Military and police search and rescue crews had combed over the entire grounds in the past week, looking for survivors. They'd found plenty of bodies, but not a single living soul.

The signal was strongest here, down in the dark of the hole.

"I gotta go down there," Le Mon said.

"I'm coming with you."

He shook his head. "If I'm wrong, if it turns out it's him instead—"

"Then we'll face him together," she said, holding his gaze. Her fingertips grazed his cheek, her touch electric. "I'm not gonna lose you again."

He smiled, took her hand and kissed her fingers. "All right."

They dropped down into the hole. The bottom was thirty, maybe forty feet below the surface. Concrete dust sifted down along the ridge high above, creating a haze against the cold autumn sun.

They moved over the rubble. Objects down here, protected from direct assault, were easier to distinguish: a piano key, a broken shard of vase, the head of one of Clayton Odell's sculptures, cutlery and scraps of books. Le Mon stopped among the rubble and pointed.

"Right here," he said. "Help me dig, will you?"

He and Shawna dug for several minutes, tossing aside chunks of concrete, split wooden boards, drywall studded with nails, shards of glass. Eventually they had dug a good-size hole within the pit, and the signal he'd followed was almost deafening.

"Hello?" a voice called out.

Shawna's eyes went wide. "A survivor?" she asked, excitement and fear in her voice.

Le Mon didn't answer, just kept digging. "I'm here," he shouted at the voice in the rubble.

"Le Mon?" the voice called back. "Is that you?"

"It's me," Le Mon said, still digging. "We got you."

Shawna joined him, lifting and throwing, until finally they'd revealed a deep pit in the debris. Two hopeful eyes blinked up from the darkness.

Le Mon smiled, relieved. "You been waitin long?"

Ben shook his head. "Not long. A few hours, I think. How did you know I'd be here?"

"I've always had a nose for sniffing out newbies," Le Mon said, and winked. He knelt at the edge of the pit, stretched out, and took Ben's hand.

Once Ben was back on the ground, Le Mon gave him a good once-over. The first thing that struck him was that Ben was covered in concrete dust from head to toe, his hair disheveled. Ben coughed and more dust expelled from his mouth.

"Ben," Le Mon said. "Do me a favor."

"What?" he asked, blinking and wiping his face, creating a streak in the dust on his cheek.

"Pinch yourself."

"What?"

"Just humor me, man."

Ben reached up again and pinched his cheek. "Ow!" he said. Then realization dawned on him. He took several deep breaths in and out. "Le Mon…" he gasped.

"I know."

Shawna frowned, looking back and forth between them. "I'm missing something, aren't I?"

"The last time I saw Ben, he was dead."

"You—" Shawna's eyes widened again. "But he's alive."

"The Infinite," Ben said.

Shawna's hand went to her heart. "Oh my God."

"Garrote pulled me in with him. I must have…" Ben shook his head, disbelieving. "I'm alive."

"You a lot more than that," Le Mon told him. "If the Infinite really is what Mrs. Speer said."

"What does this mean? What now?"

"Now?" Le Mon looked up at the wedge of blue sky shining in through the mouth of the chasm. "I don't know. But I'd say you've got your whole life to figure that out, Ben. And then some."

* * *

Fall, 2021

In a booth near the back of the 86 Diner, a young man and woman in their early twenties sat across from one another in a long, not uncomfortable stretch of silence. The young woman's dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, cascading over the back of her jean jacket. The young man's brown hair was slightly messy, as it often was, as if he'd just gotten out of bed.

Maddie Roth finished serving a pair of flirty elderly men near the front and came back to check on them. She pulled out her notepad. Carl Young, the diner's former owner, had retired not long after what Duck Falls folks called The Occupation, just about two years ago to the day. Maddie had bought it with a decent mortgage, but she still liked to serve patrons now and then, especially her regulars. "You want your usual?" she asked them.

"Give em a few more minutes, okay, Mom?"

Maddie grinned at her daughter, as if she knew a secret. Lilian smiled back, her hands clasped under her chin, elbows rested on the Formica table. Her mom wandered off to the next booth, asked if they needed their coffees freshened up.

Lilian turned back to Ben. He'd been watching her, smiling.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing. Just thinking about how weird all this is. Being back here."

"At the diner?"

Ben shook his head. "In Duck Falls."

She looked around. "It is weird, isn't it? It's like it hasn't changed at all."

"Aside from the lack of ethereals and a fresh coat of paint on the church." Ben chuckled. "But seriously. After everything these people went through, you'd think the scars would be more visible."

"They're there," Lilian said, scanning the faces of the other diners. "They haven't forgotten. But you can't hold on to the past forever, can you? You have to keep living."

Ben laughed. "Yeah. Even if everyone you love has to pretend you're still dead."

Lilian laughed with him. Then her expression grew serious. "You never did tell me what happened to you." She said the next part cautiously, aware of its weight. Ben had, after all, come back from nearly seven months in his grave. His previous body was still rotting six feet under the Pleasant Hill Cemetery. He'd seen it for himself, unable to live with the suspense, having dug it up late one night before he left town. Yet here he was, very much alive, older, a university student with no heart problems or any health issues at all that she was aware of. He'd even grown himself a somewhat unfashionable goatee. Things like that didn't just happen every day.

"In the Spring," she clarified.

Ben looked off, toward the far wall studded by photos of Duck Falls throughout the decades. His expression darkened, and he stroked his goatee in thought.

A jingle above the door caused him to look up, and Lilian to turn. Ben hadn't expected to see Skylar or Blake for another ten to fifteen minutes at the earliest—he'd told them two PM, it was twenty to two now—but they entered together, Blake holding the door, Skylar spotting the two of them in the booth almost immediately, waving happily, sparing Ben from revealing to Lilian exactly what had happened to him after Garrote had pulled him into the Spring.

What he'd seen there, what he'd experienced, still haunted him. The scar was well hidden, like the scars on the hearts and minds of the citizens of Duck Falls, but still very much present. He suspected it always would be. In a way, Ben thought, the human body was much like a house. They held on to traumas like hauntings.

But what haunted him far more than what happened within the Spring was something Mrs. Speer had told him at All Hallows' Close. She'd mentioned it almost in passing, while explaining her role in the opening of the Dark Rift.

The final time, she'd said, whereupon your Mr. Garrote thrust me into the Rift and summarily shut the door, trapping me here, I believe he passed words with an older version of himself. Perhaps from the future. Perhaps from a different reality altogether.

Ben had seen Garrote die twice. The first time, he'd burned him alive. The second, he'd watched as the Infinite tore the writer apart molecule by molecule, an end far more agonizing than immolation, worse than anything Ben could imagine. Still, he wondered about what Mrs. Speer had said. He worried that Garrote's energy hadn't been destroyed, that it had merely shifted to another world, another reality.

And if so, what would happen if that world couldn't stand against him? What if this Otherworld Ben Laramie made a different choice, pledging allegiance to Garrote as Harrison Greely had, and Bram Merritt? What if Rex Garrote managed to conquer that reality and planned to return to this one with an entire world full of ghosts at his command?

The Shōki reborn.

These were the fears that fueled Ben's writing, which came mostly after dark, in a fever dream, the same way Garrote had described his own books. He'd started writing to cope with his trauma, and the temporary isolation he dealt with, having to pretend to be someone he wasn't. He'd written three novels in the years since his return, publishing them under his assumed name. He wrote of heroism and courage, kindness and comradery standing in the face of immense, unfathomable evils. He wrote from what he'd seen and what he remembered, the friends he'd lost, the love he'd discovered. The casualties were high but the victories were immense and deserved. Unlike a typical Rex Garrote book, he sometimes left loose ends and events up to interpretation, and he'd determined that novels with his new name on the covers would always end with hope.

He and Lilian slid over to allow Skylar and Blake to sit with them. Skylar smiled and squeezed his knee. He put his hand on hers and smiled back.

"So," he said to his friends. "Who's hungry?"

A Note from the Author

I drew inspiration from many different sources while patching together this Behemoth of a series. I can only hope the seams don't show. My love of the Jurassic Park novels and the original Ghostbusters films, as well as the 2007 video game, informed many esthetic choices. Stephen King's The Shining and Clive Barker's Imagica. Richard Matheson's Hell House. Thirteen Ghosts. Lost. The Matrix. eXistenz. Interstellar. Black Mirror. Twin Peaks: The Return. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and the series incarnation on Netflix. Even late-'90s, early-2000s Star Trek. All of that went into the Spring inside my head and came out… well, I'll leave that for you to decide.

Before I go, I'd like to thank you all for taking this journey with me. When I started writing Ghostland back in 2014—hard to believe it was that long ago—I could never have imagined it would end up being as successful as it has, nor that the first book would have spawned two sequels, let alone some of the spinoffs I have planned.

I've got a ton of material already written for a Garrote House prequel novel, and plenty of ideas for other spinoffs set in the Ghostland "universe." We haven't seen the last of Rex Garrote, at least the Garrote from the past, who will feature in the prequel novel. I've got a good chunk of a novella completed featuring Deputy Logan Lovett from Afterlife, and what happened to him while Duck Falls was under quarantine. I've also been tinkering with a sort of Choose Your Own Adventure version of the events of opening day called Survival at Ghostland.

So, if you're a fan of the Ghostland Trilogy—and I imagine you are, unless you've been hate-reading them, which is also valid—there's more in store for you.

I hope the journey and conclusion to this trilogy was satisfying for you. I had a ton of fun writing it—in addition to the usual frustrations, sweat and tears—and I tried to give each of the major characters an important role to play in the events leading up to the final showdown, or the showdown itself. Whether you loved it, were cool on it, or felt like it was a bit of a letdown, I'd love to hear your thoughts in a brief review wherever you purchased it, or on social media.

Before you go, there are some people I need to thank. My wife, Sherri Catt, who won't let me off the hook for plot issues, and my parents, Carol and John Ralston, who've read everything I've ever written whether they should or not. Excellent writers Steve Stred and Chad A. Clark. Beta readers Corrina Morse, Marie Kirkland, Frank Spinney, Mylene Tardif, Kourtney Kvenbo, Kurt Boylstein, Leanne Pert, Doreen Fernandes, Billie Wichkan, Alexandra Marie, Christine Meyer, Nicole Burns, Emily Haynes, Kathryn Childress, John Lynch, Lyndsey Smith, Abbie Sinclair, Jenee Haviland, David Stack, Sue Bower… thank you all!

Until next time…

DR

October, 2021

A Sample from THE MIDWIVES

Prologue: Mother

Barrows Bay, 1978

THE GIRL LEFT a trail of blood behind her, glistening as she passed under streetlamps lighting her apparently aimless trek. Blood flattened the blonde hairs on her slender legs and pooled in between her toes. Her bare right foot tattooed red on the ragged pavement over and over, like a stamped signature falling back into dark oblivion.

Sunken within bruised pits of flesh, her green eyes stared frantically ahead through tangles of wet and straggly hair. Fresh blood dribbled from a rope of purplish flesh dangling below her pink nightgown, soaked through the crotch with a dark, wet stain.

In the distance, the ocean sound beat against the shore. Here, on this lonely stretch of island road closed in by skeletal black pines, a baby cried joylessly.

Closer by the second, the old women stalked her.

She felt their invisible presence in the darkness surrounding her. They had yet to show themselves since she'd dashed from the house with the baby in her arms, but she knew they were close behind. She heard the intermittent scuttle of their feet out there in the dark.

My name is Rosalee, she'd told the old woman, and the old woman had nodded and said, We know who you are, dear child.

She could have hidden from them in the woods, if not for the boy. It would be impossible to keep him quiet. His cries were much louder than they had any right to be, considering his size.

He was premature. Purple and slimy and fresh from the womb, his wriggling limbs so small and frail. She held him away from her body, as if in offering to a nameless god watching from the darkness.

Up ahead the county road sign, a single 8 in a white shield, rose out of the dark like a glimmering beacon.

From there the road forked three ways. One road gave way to gravel and eventually plain dirt the further west you traveled. The other widened as it led east toward town. Both weaved through pine and spruce and cuts of sheer granite on either side, pitch black under the starless sky.

Eventually, both led to the ocean, as did most roads on the island.

County Road 8 continued its northbound trek until it reached the ferry docks. The last ferry was her only chance to escape. If she could just flag down a passing car. She didn't know how late it was, if the ferry was even still running. But she had to try.

A knife-wound throb between her legs doubled her over. She caught her breath, focusing on her breathing.

Not on the pain.

Not the old women gaining on her every moment she wasted standing still.

She knew they would tear little Stephen from her arms. She couldn't let them.

Everyone knew what happened when a young girl got pregnant in Barrows Bay. Hadn't they all heard the rumors? Hadn't they witnessed firsthand how much Yolanda Macken changed when she returned from her birthing? Yo was a cheerleader before Kenny Simms knocked her up in the bed of his Chevy during the Hallowe'en dance two years back. After the birthing, she no longer had any use for cheers, for the school or herself.

The baby girl was being raised by her grandmother in Narragansett while Yolanda finished school, though there didn't seem to be any point in it. She was depressive, lethargic, her beautiful blonde hair, often compared to Farrah Fawcett, now stringy and falling out in clumps. She barely scraped by with a D average. And the parents of Barrows Bay did not ascribe to "the cult of pharmaceuticals and psychiatry the rest of the country does," at least according to Rosalee's father.

Rosalee's right foot painted the yellow line red. As Stephen continued his plaintive wail, she pulled him close to her small breasts and shook him lightly in her arms.

"Hush little baby, don't you cry," she sang tonelessly. "Shhh. Shhh. 'Cause Grandpa loves you and so do I. Shhhhh."

A sharp snick! of metal against metal stopped her under the blazing yellow light of a streetlamp. Night bugs flitted on its cover, drawn by the light.

She peered out into the blackness. Heart racing, pumping blood that maintained its steady course down her legs.

She knew the sound. Everyone in Barrows Bay knew that terrible sound by heart.

The knitting needles.

The Midwives.

An elderly woman's laughter. Echoed by a second.

Them.

She whirled, concrete biting into the soft pads of her heels. Her wide, tear-rimmed eyes chased the sound as she whipped herself round and round, the dizziness barely noticeable above the pain between her legs and the creeping dread.

Squinting into the darkness, she finally saw it. Two glints of light in the black. A hungry animal, lured by the smell of blood to prey on her helpless child? Or the cold, murderous eyes of her pursuers?

The light became wider, brighter. She heard the engine. Not eyes, but headlights. A car up ahead on the road—coming this way!

She laughed, joyful laughter for what might be the first time since she saw the dark brown ring on the in-home pregnancy test she asked Auntie Jean to purchase on her behalf, so as not to alert her father.

As she waved her free arm, the headlights caught her for a moment like an actor on a stage. Blood a stark contrast to her ghostly pale skin.

The station wagon swerved. It was still far enough away it seemed not to be caused by her being in the road but something else. One of them?

She waved frantically. "Please! Please help me!"

The engine grew louder, close enough she could hear the crunch of gravel under its tires.

In those few seconds as the familiar station wagon passed by, Rosalee recognized the look of sheer terror in his eyes and knew, she knew, he wouldn't stop—even though it was his duty to help her, as one of God's children, this man of the cloth, his white clergy collar visible in the streetlight as the young reverend's station wagon blew past.

Rosalee screamed after him, a desperate scream of fear and frustration. Having never let up his cries, Stephen became her chorus.

Laughter filled the silence left by the retreating vehicle, coming from all around her, several voices at once, filling her ears and entering her mind, a cackling chorus echoing between her ears.

She pulled Stephen close to her bosom, his tiny presence like a talisman against evil. She was afraid she was losing her mind.

"You can't have him!" she shouted at the darkness. "He's mine!"

A woman's voice, thick and gruff, called out, "You're wrong, sister! He belongs to the Mother!"

"I'm his goddamn mother!"

The heavy clunk! of wood on asphalt made her turn.

A figure in a white hooded cloak stepped out of the darkness into the circle of streetlight, materializing as if from the black void of a distant galaxy. A face made entirely of darkness and little glints of light in the eyes was bathed within the hood's shadow.

Another clunk! of the cane—Rosalee knew it by its actual name, shillelagh, because her grandfather had one much like it held up by nails on the wall by the front door. The cloaked figure held it clenched in one withered, spider-veined hand.

When she spoke, her voice was much different from the first woman's, soothing and very Irish. The others had called her Mother, as if they were her daughters, though they all appeared to be the same age.

"Give us the boy and all will be forgiven," Mother said. "You belong with us, dear child. You'll catch your death out here."

Rosalee hugged Stephen tighter. His wails grew more desperate, as if sensing the danger they were in. "No. Please. This is unfair! Can't you see this isn't fair?"

"Fair's got nothin to do with it, girl!" the gruff woman barked.

A shrill voice this time: "Hand over the boy!"

More figures emerged from the shadows. Five in all, dressed in the same pristine white cloaks. Rosalee thought she could make out more in the darkness beyond, closing in around her.

Dozens more. Maybe hundreds.

She was surrounded. Trapped.

In her desperation a pet phrase of her father's came back to her: If you're short on options, go with the flow. He said it when the stomach cancer finally took her mother back to Jesus. He said it again when Rosalee finally admitted her predicament to him. Being Catholic, the "flow" dictated she carry the baby to term.

Seven months ago, she would've given anything to get rid of the alien presence growing inside her. She'd thought of it as an annoyance, something like the tumor that ended her mother's life and possibly worse—it was a farting, kicking, living thing that would end her life as surely as the tumor ended her mother's.

During those seven months she hadn't felt a single twinge of what her aunt called the "mothering instinct."

It wasn't until the old women lifted Stephen from the birthing pool, a wriggling little creature struggling for air, that she found herself understanding everything Auntie Jean said about having a child of her own.

This baby was hers. His name was Stephen and she was his mother—not this old hag. She would protect him with her life.

Go with the flow.

Those words again. Ringing in her ears as the old women circled her.

It took a moment for their meaning to sink in. She was no use to Stephen dead. Alive, she could plead with her father to get a lawyer, to fight these evil bitches and win him back. In her confusion and terror and all of the other emotions swirling around in her mind, it seemed like the most reasonable choice.

If these women—these hags—wanted Stephen, she would give him to them. They would take care of him, as they took care of several children whose mothers had abandoned them or died, according to rumor. Offered them to good families on the mainland who gave them a better life.

By the time she was finally able to win him back, she'd be an appropriate age for motherhood.

Suddenly this plan seemed more than reasonable. It was the most mature, rational decision she'd ever made in her life.

Go with the flow, baby girl.

She could almost feel her father's voice in her ear, prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. The image of the coiled black snake lunging at her from the pulsating stones came to her bright and clear, like a movie flashing before her eyes.

Entering her.

The shock of pain.

The terror and confusion.

The blood—so much blood.

She whimpered. The memory of the standing stones made her decision easier.

With great care, she held out the boy, still tethered by the fleshy umbilical cord which had nurtured him into being.

The ancient woman whose face Rosalee had yet to see, even during the birthing ceremony—always in shadow, ever watchful—tucked the shillelagh under her arm and snatched the boy up in her crepe-paper hands.

"Please don't hurt him," Rosalee said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"You know what must be done," the ancient woman said.

And she did. She supposed she'd always known, just as every living soul in Barrows Bay must, in their hearts.

She knew what must be done.

For the good of the people. For the good of the town.

Stephen wouldn't be given a good home. He'd be sacrificed. A profane ritual older than the town itself. A gift of blood to appease the caretakers of this godless island.

"Please," she said. "Please, just do it quick. Don't make it hurt him."

The lady to the old woman's left removed her hood. Beneath was a gorgeous mound of beehive gray hair that had gone out of style before Rosalee was born, set atop a pleasant, rosy-cheeked face with penciled-in eyebrows. She could easily have been a grocery store clerk or a secretarial temp. The others had called her Helen.

She removed something from her purse. A knife with a wavy blade, a green medallion in its shaft. Greener than Rosalee's eyes, which widened as they caught its reflection. It twinkled with a glint of streetlight.

"No..." she said. "Not now, please not now. I don't wanna see..."

"How would you have us remove the cord, dear child?" the ancient woman with the shillelagh asked. "Shall we gnash it with our teeth?"

She demonstrated, clacking her ancient yellow teeth together: clack-clack-clack-clack-clack! They gleamed in the unnatural light, the rest of her face still awash in darkness. All but those terrible, all-seeing eyes.

The other women laughed hysterically.

Rosalee joined them, startled into it, bullied into it, looking around at all their laughing faces and wondering why she was laughing with them when she was terrified to her bones.

Helen reached out and pinched the umbilical cord with one hand, carving with the dagger. Dark fluid oozed out onto her Mary Janes. "Yech!" She stepped out of the dribble.

"Hush, you ninny!" the ancient woman said, holding Stephen under his tiny arms, her bony fingers encircling his narrow chest.

With a final cut, the cord snapped against the blade.

"About blessed time," the ancient one said. She passed the boy into a gray blanket held by another. This woman swaddled him in it, folding it like origami with her dainty white gloves. Military-style, the way Rosalee's father made his bed. At the birthing, the others had called her Geraldine.

Finally, mercifully, little Stephen stopped crying.

It was only then that Rosalee realized how eerily quiet the night was. Not a croak of a frog, a chirp of a bat, nor the mournful howl of a loon to be heard. As if the animals themselves were afraid to make a sound in the presence of these hags.

And how cold it suddenly was, as though it wasn't midsummer at all but the dead of winter.

"There," the ancient one said. "Safe and swaddled. Isn't that better, child?"

Shivering and uncertain, Rosalee still managed a nod.

Snick! She turned at the sound. The awful sound. The deadly sound.

A fourth woman approached, holding a pair of silvery knitting needles like weapons. She was ruddy-faced and plump, her eyes full of mischievous glee. During the birthing, she'd been wearing a fancy hat. They called her Mavis.

The ancient woman said, "Deal with her."

Helpless, Rosalee backed away. She tripped. Her legs tangled in the umbilical cord still spooling from her insides. She landed on her butt with a startled exhale.

Baby Stephen resumed his cries.

Rosalee looked back over her shoulder, watching the ancient woman's white robe recede with her child into the darkness. Clarity returned. Sanity. She couldn't let them take him—how did she let them take him?

"No, please! Please! Don't hurt him! Don't you hurt my Stephen!"

Swollen, weeping from the pain and the loss of her son, knowing she would soon lose her own life, Rosalee turned to face her adversaries.

Eight menacing eyes fell upon her, their lined and wrinkled faces scarcely visible under the hoods. Each woman scraped a knitting needle over and under the other like sharpening knives as they approached.

Rosalee crawled backwards on her hands and feet. The slippery, veined umbilical cord dragging along beneath her, slithering like a snake, chasing her like the memory of the thing that ravaged her among the stones.

Someone grabbed her by the hair. Her scream echoed. A white-gloved hand covered her mouth, smothering her cries. Baby powder-scented silk against her lips. She struggled, kicking out at them with what little strength remained.

No use. Despite their age, they were far stronger.

"Hold on, kiddo," Helen said in her ear. "This is gonna hurt like hell."

A knitting needle swished out in the gloved woman's hand, glinting as it caught the light.

Rosalee's pretty green eyes—eyes her father described as "perfectly Irish"—widened in sheer terror. The needle pierced the soft tissue of her left temple, gouged through bone and into the tender meat of her brain.

She slumped sideways on the asphalt. Blood trickled down her cheek into her Irish eyes, the left bulging against the pressure of the needle.

Rosalee looked up with her remaining eye, not at her killers but past them, past the insects flitting against the streetlamp to the dark cosmos beyond.

Blinking blood from her good eye, she searched the heavens for any sign of the God children who grew up in Barrows Bay knew had turned a blind eye toward them.

All she saw was an endless galaxy of lifeless, indifferent stars.

As her vision waned along with the last of her breath, the Midwives broke the circle, vanishing into the chilly midsummer night.

Like what you’ve read?

Get the full novel here.

Also by Duncan Ralston

Gristle & Bone (collection)

Salvage (novella)

Wildfire (novella)

Woom (novella)

Where the Monsters Live (novella)

The Method (novel)

Video Nasties (collection)

Ebenezer (novella)

Ghostland (novel)

The Midwives (novel)

In Every Dark Corner (collection)

Afterlife: Ghostland 2.0 (novel)

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