Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Eve was not sure if they were frightened, or envious.

The amorphous thing in the spirit's grasp writhed, vaguely taking on the shape of the man it had once been.

"Listen to me," Graves said.

Eve smiled. The man's voice just oozed control. It was damned impressive that even dead, the guy could still exude that much authority. She remembered how the world had been captivated by this man when he was still amongst the living, never really understanding the attraction. But as Eve watched him now, she began to see what she had not taken the time to notice before.

The ectoplasm retained the shape of a man, reaching up to the ceiling, but Graves prevented it from flowing to where it yearned to go. The soul moaned, not so much a sound that was heard, but one that could be felt, a low bass vibration the she could feel in the center of her chest.

"You will talk to me," Graves told it. "What was it that you sought here?"

"The Eye," said the soul, what passed for its head staring toward the ceiling.

"Did you find it?"

The spirit made another futile attempt to escape Graves, but the ghost held fast. "Want to go," it pleaded. "Need to be away from this place."

Graves yanked it down further toward him. "I asked you a question," he roared. "Did you find it?"

"Please," the soul begged, stretching toward the ceiling.

With a grunt of frustration, Dr. Graves drifted to the floor, pulling the ectoplasmic remains of the dead man behind like a child holding a balloon. The soul fought him, but to no avail.

"I will put you back in here," Graves growled, forcing the soul toward the rotting husk that it had been extracted from.

"No!" it shrieked, the intensity of its psychic cries causing Eve to wince.

Graves would hear none of it, pushing the panicking soul stuff closer to where it had been imprisoned. "Did you find it?"

"I searched," the man's soul answered pathetically. "But I did not find the Eye."

Graves floated toward the ceiling, letting his prisoner have a taste of where it wanted to go. But just a taste.

"Do you know who did?"

"One of the others," it responded. "One of the others found the Eye."

Graves yanked the soul down again, pointing to the restless corpses who lay on the floor below.

"Was it one of these?" he asked.

"No, it was not," it answered immediately, afraid of what Graves could do to it. "One of the others has the eye… one of the others out there."

With one of its willowy appendages, the soul pointed outside the gift shop, out into the museum.

Graves turned his attention to Eve.

"Oooh, scary," she said. "But what the hell. It worked better than my approach."

The ghost released that tormented soul and they both watched as it hungrily swam toward the ceiling, passing through the white tiles, and then disappeared into the ether.

"Not really," the ghost replied despondently, drifting down toward their remaining zombie captives. "We don't know any more than we did before."

Eve watched as the ghost tore the imprisoned souls from their cages of decaying flesh, releasing them to the ether as well.

"We can only hope that Clay has been more successful," Graves said, drifting closer.

"So what do you think?" she asked him. "Should we grab a couple more and hope we hit the jackpot?"

Graves folded his arms across his chest. "I suppose it couldn't hurt," he said.

"So many dead guys," Eve sighed, moving toward the glass doors, looking out into the museum at the straggling corpses that still meandered about outside. "So little time."

The red mist that swirled outside the Ferrick house had its own strange luminescence. A crimson glow came in through the windows and though they were closed, from time to time the house whispered with a breeze, a draft from nowhere, and the candles in the living room flickered and threatened to go out.

Danny did not want the candles to go out. There were very few things he was certain of this night, but that was one of them. Without the candles there would be only that red glow, and he would have to wonder a little harder what was causing it.

He sat on the sofa in the living room with his mother beside him. She clutched his hands for comfort, but he wasn't sure which of them was comforted the most by this contact. It was weird to him. All the shit that he normally cared about — his skateboard, his tunes, his room, the latest video games, even the way he looked in the mirror — it all seemed so small now. What good was that new shirt from Atticus he'd wanted now? Little things had always been part of his mother's stress, too, but she'd always seemed to know the difference. Danny guessed they were both learning more about the big picture now than they ever wanted to.

Together they watched Arthur Conan Doyle pacing the length of the room. The man — the mage, Danny had heard him called — barely seemed to notice them.

From the moment Danny had returned to the house, magically transported here by Ceridwen, Mr. Doyle had been lost to them. Danny had been impressed by the guy in general, but he had not thought very much about the magic he supposedly wielded. Mr. Doyle seemed grim and courageous, but not really very intimidating.

That had changed.

Conan Doyle paced the room with his teeth ferociously clenched, prowling back and forth as though each step was some small victory. His eyes gleamed with dark purple light that coalesced into tears and then evaporated, trailing tendrils of lavender smoke behind him. The jacket Conan Doyle had been wearing was draped over a chair and his sleeves were rolled up. In the moments when he paused at one end of the room to turn and pace the other way, he reached up to run his fingers over his thick mustache. It was a pensive action, the unthinking gesture of a man readying himself for a fight. His whole demeanor, the marching, the rolled-up sleeves, contributed to that image.

He looked mean.

They weren't friends, the Ferricks and Mr. Doyle. They had not known each other long enough to be friends. But they were allies. Even so, Danny would not have interrupted him, even if the hordes of hell were crashing down the door. In the reddish glow from the mist outside and the flicker of the candles, Conan Doyle looked like a demon himself.

But he's not the demon, is he? That'd be me. His pulse quickened.

His mother leaned on him a little. He could sense her fear, practically taste it, and he understood. All she wanted to do was curl up with her baby boy, close her eyes, and pretend that the nightmare world that was seeping in through her windows and under the door, the monsters she had invited into her home, would just go away. But they weren't going to. And her baby boy was one of them.

No matter how she yearned to shut her eyes to what was happening, however, Danny knew she would not. Julia Ferrick was not that kind of woman. The world had thrown some real shit in her path in the last few years, and she had never let it stop her.

His fingers gripped her hand and he gave her a squeeze. "It's going to be all right," he whispered, his voice a rasp, almost menacing, even to his own ears. With the grotesque and malevolent atmosphere that had enveloped the city, he was becoming more of what he was. He knew he should be frightened, but it felt right to him. Even his thoughts were changing. His mind… he felt more adult, in a weird way. Smarter, even. It was more than a little fucked up.

When she glanced at him, there was a storm in her eyes almost as intimidating as the fury in Mr. Doyle's.

"You shouldn't have gone, Danny. You should have stayed here. When I think about where you were… the danger…"

Again his fingers tightened on hers. He narrowed his gaze and cocked his head, wanting to make sure their eyes were locked, that she would not turn away.