Brian Keene - Ghost Walk

“Magicians. Powwow doctors. Priests. Warlocks. Witches. There are more of us than you think. There are different disciplines and social orders, of course. Some of us are loners. Others have their own little groups and clubs. Black Lodge. The Kwan. Things like the O.T.O. and the Starry Wisdom Sect. Teenagers playing at satanism. Senior citizens giving their money to charismatic leaders.”

“I thought Black Lodge was a division of the CIA?”

“That’s what they would like you to believe.”

“All I know is they’re a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Levi said. “My point is, there are a lot of us—most of whom can’t be trusted. LeHorn became convinced that others might try to kill him for his copy of the book, so he hid several of the most important pages, rendering the rest of the book incomplete and, hopefully, worthless. My father told me of the hiding places that he knew of. One of those pages—the one we need to stop this—was hidden in LeHorn’s copy of The Long Lost Friend . He thought it would be extra safe there. And he was right about that.”

“So you need to find his book?”

Levi nodded. “And that’s why I need to speak with Adam Senft. He was the last person to have LeHorn’s book. I need to know where it is now. It might be in his possession, though I doubt it. Senft was certainly dabbling in magic before his wife’s murder, but I don’t think he’d progressed far enough to secrete something like a page from the Daemonolateria on himself while in a psychiatric hospital. Not without it being detected. It’s more likely that the book—and the page—are hidden somewhere on the outside.”

“What if he doesn’t know where it is, or he doesn’t remember? What then?”

“There are other ways to find it. Divining would work, but that takes weeks and we don’t have time. So we’ll just have to make him remember.”

“You said ‘we’ again. I’m not a part of this. Like I told you before, I’m only interested in Senft for my book. That’s why I’m here. God didn’t bring us together. It was just a coincidence.”

Levi sighed. “You don’t believe what I just told you?”

Maria chose her words carefully. “I believe that you believe it. But, look—I don’t believe in God in the first place. I don’t believe that He created the Earth, so why would I believe that He destroyed another universe to do it and that it’s been covered up ever since? And even if I did believe any of that, it’s not God. It’s Allah.”

“I told you before. Allah and God are the same being. Names have power. Those are just two names for the same divinity.”

“So you say. And so have others. But how do I know that?”

“You take it on faith! Just like any other belief.”

She shook her head and sat in silence.

“Maria,” Levi begged, “I can’t do this alone. I…I don’t have anyone else.”

“I’m sorry, Levi. I really am. You seem very nice. But I’m not some occult avenger. I wouldn’t mind interviewing you some more, specifically about powwow and your father and LeHorn. But that’s all.”

“Interviewing me?”

“If you don’t mind, that is?”

“Would it matter if I did?” Smiling, Levi nodded toward her digital voice recorder. “After all, you’ve been secretly taping our conversation since we started.”

“I…” Maria felt her face flush. “I’m sorry. It made me feel better, just in case…”

“Just in case I turned out to be crazy after all?”

“Yeah, if you want the truth.”

“Go ahead and play it back.”

“Why?”

“Humor me.”

Slowly, Maria picked up the recorder, pressed the stop button and then played back their conversation. Except that instead of Levi’s voice, somebody else spoke to her. A different voice boomed from the device. She couldn’t distinguish its sex or age. There was no accent or distinguishing characteristics. It had a hypnotic, musical quality, and flowed like water.

“ MARIA. PLEASE HELP .”

Maria’s jaw went slack. Her fingers tightened around the recorder until her knuckles turned white. The voice was replaced with a feint, electronic hiss—white noise. Maria advanced the recording, but there was just more silence.

“How…” She turned off the recorder and looked at Levi, her eyes wide. “How did you…your voice?”

Levi’s smile grew broader.

“Let me guess,” he teased, mimicking her earlier taunt. “You heard the voice of God?”

Maria started to respond, but couldn’t. Her mouth felt dry, her tongue swollen. She tried licking her lips. They seemed puffy. Heavy. Her ears rang. She struggled to sit up straight, but the car’s interior began to spin. Her fingers grasped the seat, but she couldn’t feel the upholstery.

“Maria?” Levi reached for her, concerned. “Are you okay?”

Levi’s voice sounded far away, as if he were speaking from the other side of a long tunnel. Maria tried to answer him but had trouble forming the words. She felt weak and her senses seemed deadened. She bowed her head, grasping for something to hold on to. Her hand felt heavy—made of lead. It suddenly seemed very hot and stifling inside the car, yet she was shivering.

“N-no… I…”

Then her eyes rolled in their sockets and she fainted.

Ken went through the masks and costumes, making sure everything he’d ordered was there. He ticked them off in his head. Werewolf. Gorilla. Boar with tusks. Witch. Evil clown. Phantom of the Opera. Both Boris Karloff’s and Robert DeNiro’s versions of the Frankenstein monster. A leering jack-o’-lantern. A gargoyle. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings . The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Pinhead. A few zombies, including Bub from George Romero’s Day of the Dead . Several different mutants and aliens. Leatherface. The Fly. A man with one latex eyeball hanging down his cheek. Another man with a hard foam axe jutting from his latex head. And Ken’s personal favorites, masks of veteran horror actors Bruce Campbell and Michael Berryman, cast from molds of their faces. Two of his volunteers were going to dress like the actors’ characters in Army of Darkness and the original version of The Hills Have Eyes . For the former, they’d even built an attraction that looked like the inside of the windmill from the movie. Hopefully, the attendees would recognize it. In any case, these masks would cap the ensembles off perfectly. Satisfied with the results, Ken then double-checked the costumes and found they were all in order, as well.

“All set?” asked the clerk, a college-aged kid who still hadn’t outgrown the curse of teenage acne.

“Yeah,” Ken said. “I think we’re good to go.”

“Sweet. I’m glad you picked these up early. We’ll be busy tonight.”

“Because of Halloween?”

“You got that right. We make nine months of rent during the month of October.”

At the counter, Ken grabbed a few compact discs of Halloween music and added them to the pile. He already had dozens of sound effect and ambience recordings, but a few more wouldn’t hurt.

“Want to add a fog machine, Mr. Ripple? I can give you a discount since you bought so much.”

“That’s okay. To be honest, the ones you guys have here are too small for my needs. The Ghost Walk has a creek that flows through one part of it. We’re gonna use dry ice. Drop it in the creek and place buckets of it at intervals along the trail. According to some haunt enthusiasts I’ve talked to online, once it starts evaporating, the dry ice should have the same effect,”

As he handed the salesclerk his credit card, Ken’s cell phone rang, playing the main orchestral theme from Young Guns II . While the clerk rang up his charges, Ken glanced at the phone and saw it was Terry calling.