Stacia Kane - Unholy Ghosts

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Aye, you do that, tulip. You think hard. And when you decide, you let me know.” He dug a scrap of paper from his back pocket and produced a pen from his boot. “This my number. Private number, dig? Call me when you know what you wanna do. Or if you decide you wanna let me see that ink, aye?”

“That’s not going to happen.” She took the number, folded it, tucked it in her pocket.

“You’d be surprised, tulip, what happens when you not expecting it. Surprised, indeed.”

“I’m not sure I want to go in there.”

“Safest way home, tulip. Lessin you want me to walk you down the middle of the streets. Only it’s hard to keep secrets, aye, when everybody seeing you.”

“But it’s a tunnel.”

“I do know what it is.”

Her skin crawled just looking at the narrow opening. Pale greenish light glowed from farther down the path, but whether it was safety bulbs or phosphorescent mold she didn’t know, and didn’t particularly care to find out.

“Didn’t figure a Churchwitch to be a claustrophobe.”

“I’m not!” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m not. But being underground…It’s, um, a respect thing. The City is underground.” Wasn’t the entire truth, but close enough.

He nodded. “Right. I get you. Still don’t have no choice, but I see the origin.” His warm hand circled her upper arm. “Them walls got iron bands, no worries. Let’s us go.”

She let him lead her through the slender mouth and down a long flight of cement stairs that gritted and scuffed under their feet. The temperature dropped as they got farther down, the air thickening with rot and smoke and something else, the pungent scent of cooking Dream.

They’d gone only half a block or so when the source of the odor presented itself. The needle lay on the dank pavement, its own er draped against the wall with his eyes half closed. By his bent leg rested the rubber catheter, the dented and oxidized spoon.

Lex nudged the crumpled form with the toe of his boot. “Ain’t supposed to be down here, Big Shog. You know these tunnels ain’t for shooting.”

Big Shog mumbled something and shifted position. His mouth hung open, dried spittle caked white in the corners. Chess looked away.

“What are these tunnels, anyway? I’ve never heard about them.”

Lex gave Big Shog one last glance, then started walking again. “They been here years. Since BT. The Church blocked them off, don’t want nobody sneaking around. You know.”

“When did you open them back up?”

He thought for a moment. They were farther down now, the ground sloping gently. Every thirty feet or so a weak fluorescent bulb in a metal frame fizzed at them from the ceiling. It made the whole experience even more unreal to Chess. She was actually walking underground on purpose, in a cold, dank cement tube that stunk of mold and offered no protection against anything. It was hard to remember the walls were banded with iron when it felt as if they were closing in on her, as if they could swallow her and turn her into another rust stain on their gritty faces.

“Three years past, four? Convenient. Nobody see where you heading, nobody know where you are.”

“Do they go all the way under the city? I mean, everywhere?”

“Now you asking for secrets. Secrets you don’t need.”

Unless she wanted to find out how someone could have disappeared from Chester Airport so quickly the other night. “I just wondered. Curiosity. Maybe I’d need to come talk to you, sometime.”

“You need to talk, you call.” He paused. “Lessin you want to give me a secret, I tell you what I know.” The gleam in his eye was definitely not related to the airport; in spite of herself, a little trickle of excitement worked its way up her spine. He was, after all, just her type: handsome, arrogant, and totally self-centered, as bad for her as her Cepts and just as appealing.

“Forget it.”

“Your choice, tulip.” He kept walking, forcing her to catch up. He may not have been the safest company in the world, but their footsteps echoed in the small space and she was overly conscious of how far underground they were.

The tunnel split into three separate shafts. Lex took the right-hand one, not breaking stride as he turned.

“How do you know where you’re going?”

He started to whistle. Right.

They made another turn, a left this time. It was like a rabbit warren, but spookier. Her neck started to ache with tension. “How long are we going to be down here?”

“Until we get where we’re going.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“I ain’t a helpful guy.”

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

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

“What’s that noise?”

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

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

“I don’t hear nothing.”

“That gurgling noise, like somebody talking.”

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

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

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

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

“Well?”

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

“But do you hear anything?”

“I hear you.”

“No, that’s not—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I lied.”

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

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

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

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

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