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  Chapter Thirty-three

  All the ghosts backed up against the walls of that bedroom in terror. It was a good thing it was so large a room because it was pretty crowded with lost souls. Although I had the sinking feeling it was about to be thinned out.

  Beale moved into the room. There was no sign of the creature anywhere. “It’s possessed him,” Ellen said.

  “Super. You don’t happen to have any bug spray, do you?”

  “Keep talking to him. It possessed him because you were making progress.”

  “So, Beale, is this how your illustrious career ends? Slaughtering a bunch of innocent souls? Your pledge of honor, duty, and courage come to this?”

  “How do you define ‘innocent,’ Whitehall? Most of them took their own lives and the others, well, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Collateral damage? Real nice justification, buddy.”

  He moved further into the room as the souls parted, their faces even paler now with fear. “I don’t count myself as innocent, either.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t judge. Not them or yourself. Why don’t you leave that up to God?”

  He grimaced. “Do you really think there is a God, Whitehall? That He would allow all this misery in the world? That he would allow war in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe He lets us make our own messes and waits for us to learn how to clean them up. Maybe that’s the whole point of redemption. Do you have any idea what it will do to you if you let all these people be destroyed by that thing?”

  “It saved me, from my own darkness,” he murmured.

  “It used you. It used your weakness.”

  Around me I heard the whimpering of terror in frightened voices: “Please,” “No,”, “No more.”

  “Stop it,” I shouted at them. “Stop being afraid. That’s what it wants. It feeds on it, on your sorrow, misery, and fear.”

  The little boy that had talked to Ellen in the hall stood up and walked over to me. His eyes were so large and knowing for such a little face. “It’s a monster.”

  I looked at Beale, “You see. This kid can see it for what it is, but you can’t. It’s a monster, Beale. A grubby parasite of a monster, not your commanding officer, not your savior. Just a skeeter stuck to your flypaper of self-pity.”

  Beale stared at me almost transfixed. And then I said the only other things I could think of. “Come on, man, you’re better than this. You are an officer in the U.S. Army. You are a soldier.”

  With a rasp, the creature separated from him. Beale stepped away from it, staring with horror in his eyes. “Oh, God,” he whispered.

  And then the thing jumped up in midair and crashed itself against the wall. It felt like a sharp pain through my stomach and I could see that everyone else in the room reflected the pain as well. Somehow it had solidified, or maybe this ethereal plane had become real.

  “Ellen, Ellen what happened?” I said in panic.

  Her voice sounded shaky to me. “It almost ripped a hole into our reality.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Some Big Easy vacation.

  I was stuck in a room with a bunch of terrified ghosts facing off against a soul-eating insect monster and my wife had just told me it was trying to rip a hole in my world. Well the one thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want that bastard running around on my turf. I was still looking forward to a bowl of dirty rice and crawdads, and I didn’t want some Amityville Mosquito spoiling the fun.

  “You have to stay calm, Monty. I saw the ceiling actually buckle from an impact. Clearly that’s its goal.”

  “To come into our world?”

  “Pretty big feeding ground.”

  Beale had backed against the wall, staring at the thing with a look of horror. “That’s not what I saw, that’s not what I saw,” he stammered. “Colonel, where did you go?”

  “It tricked you,” I yelled. The thing was rasping, practically slithering around the room. The ghosts had gotten up and were scampering desperately away from it.

  The creature reached out its long arm and grabbed one of the women with a claw. She screamed just before it literally ripped her head off, distended its jaw, and shoved the ragged head into its demonic mandibles.

  “Ellen, any suggestions before it picks us off one by one?”

  “You’ve got to get out of that room, Monty.”

  Great, the obvious. I headed to the doorway that Beale and the creature had abandoned, and I tried to step into the hallway. But it felt as though I’d smacked into a brick wall.

  “It’s blocked.”

  “No kidding.” Turning around, I saw the thing standing right in front of me. I backed up right against the invisible brick wall. Its breath was hot and stank like dead maggots.

  “Beale!” I yelled.

  “I can’t do anything,” he said. He was standing right behind it. “It’s too strong.”

  “Well, you could try. Service to country and all that. I’d hate to go down in history as insect food.”

  It reached out with its horrible claw and sunk it right into my arm. “Ahh!” It burned like acid.

  And then the claw yanked back. Beale’s hands were on the creature. “Get away,” he yelled. He was struggling with the thing, pushing it to the floor, but it was rasping and tearing at him with its awful appendages.

  “Ellen.”

  “The ghosts are making it stronger, their fear. Get them to cross over.”

  “Cross over? Where?”

  “The French doors, there’s a bridge opening there.” I felt it on my back a warmth now, a warm breeze where there had been cold before. Beale was still struggling with the thing on the floor. It was hissing and rasping and slicing into him wherever it could. I turned to the terrified ghosts. “It’s time now. It’s time for you to move on to somewhere really safe.”

  None of them moved an inch, just stared at me wide-eyed in terror. “They’re still afraid.”

  And then I saw the little boy and I held out my hand to him. “Hey, little guy,” I said. “I need you to be brave. Your parents are waiting for you. All you have to do is walk through those doors.”

  He stared at me with the wisdom of an old man and then said quietly, “No more monsters?”

  I nodded, “That’s right, buddy. No more monsters.” I took his hand and walked him to the doors and he moved forward without looking back. And more followed, first the children, and then the older spirits.

  Loretta stared at me with terror in her eyes. “It’s all right,” I said. “Ellen said she wants you to be free.” But she shook her head and backed away, then quickly ran through the door in the hallway. It wasn’t blocked anymore.

  “It’s been weakened Monty. But Beale is weak too. I don’t know how much longer he can hold it off.”

  I guess it was a fifty-fifty deal. Half moved onto another plane of existence and the other half ran back into the house, scattering—still too filled with fear to choose anything else. It seemed like forever but it was only moments, moments for all of them to choose. I went to Beale, who was still pinning the thing down on the floor. “It’s time for you to go, Josh,” I said. “The war’s over.”

  His hand was on its throat and the insect demon twisted furiously in his grasp. “If I let it go it will never let you out of here, Whitehall,” Beale said. “Go home, and let me stay here and clean up my own mess.”

  I was stunned. “I don’t know what will happen to you.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You already saved me. You freed me to make my own choice.”

  “Monty, hurry. I can get you back now. But it has to be NOW!”

  I took one last look around the room, which was now devoid of spirits, except Beale and the demon struggling on the floor.

  “Get out of here, Whitehall,” Beale said. “And that’s an order.”

  I headed for the stairs. It felt hauntingly as though I was leaving a comrade on the battlefield. And I didn’t like that feeling on
e bit.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  I don’t remember when I first learned that every story didn’t have a happy ending. I think I was pretty young and I think it was a bit of a shock. But my Dad explained it to me in the best way that anyone could. Not every thing turns out happily but it usually turns out the way it’s supposed to.

  When I came back Ellen’s arms were around me and she was crying—crying for Beale, crying for the few spirits like Loretta that didn’t cross over, and maybe crying for me a bit. She knew I had a heavy heart, and I didn’t feel good leaving that guy behind like I did.

  She told me there wasn’t anything left here for us to do. From what she could sense, the ghosts who hadn’t crossed over scattered across the base, probably picking different buildings to occupy. As far as Beale and the creature, she could sense nothing. They’d just vanished into some void somewhere that seemed unreachable to us.

  I could only imagine them locked in grim combat for eternity, Beale sacrificing himself so his comrades could make a safe retreat.

  “You know, I’m still uneasy,” she said as we loaded our stuff into the rental car.

  “I don’t think there’s much about this that doesn’t leave me uneasy.” I said, holding up the ragged rip in my shirtsleeve where the creature’s claw had grabbed me. “Now I know what you mean when you said you leave a piece of yourself at every investigation.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “That creature was a mindless beast, and it wanted to get in our world.”

  “You said the feeding was better here.”

  She shrugged, “I guess it could be that. We’re alive, and we still have a shot at redemption. Ghosts have already chosen their paths. They’re like bread and water and we’re like a seven-course buffet.”

  I shut the trunk and eyed her speculatively. I’d lived with Ellen long enough to know when she wasn’t saying exactly what she was thinking. “And what else could it be?”

  “I don’t know, Monty. I just have a bad feeling that the insect demon was being used, just like it was using Beale, by something that wants into our world.”

  My heart sunk just a notch lower as if that was at all possible. “Well, let’s get the hell out of here. I am done with the dead until I get some gumbo.”

  She smiled and nodded. Just as I was about to get into the car, I heard the soft, melodic drift of piano music coming from Number Four. “Did you hear that?” I said to Ellen, who was already buckled in the passenger seat.

  “Hear what?”

  The music had stopped by then, the last haunting notes falling away to silence. That tune seemed familiar, but my ear kind of stopped at Beatles and Stones. Anything classical was all Greek to me.

  “Piano, from inside the house.”

  “Monty?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There wasn’t a piano in there. Now come on.”

  I slid behind the wheel and started the engine. I pulled away from Number Four.

  “You know, they call New Orleans the city that care forgot,” Ellen said.

  I sighed, “Yeah, wonder what Beale would think of that.”

  My last thoughts as we headed to the front gate were of Whitehall’s old comrade. He’d gone down as a hero, not a coward. I wonder if Whitehall had been as brave. I sure wasn’t.

  As Number Four shrank and vanished in the rearview mirror, I gave Captain Joshua Beale a final salute.

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

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  Ghost Fire

  The Ghost Files #3

  by Eve Paludan

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  The Ghost Files #1

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  Treading on Borrowed Time

  A paranormal novel

  by Evelyn Klebert

  (read on for a sample)

  Copyright © 2011 by Evelyn Klebert

  Chapter One

  It was difficult listening to the murmurs around her. She concentrated, trying to shut them out. Perhaps it was a mistake to come out today. But it was the first sunny day in so long and the heavy weight of the camera strap around her neck reminded her that she hoped to get pictures.

  Her head throbbed, a bit, but she hadn’t eaten much for breakfast. Not the smartest move for a Type I diabetic. But she couldn’t be bothered by it, not today, not while other things were pulling her. She kept drifting down Decatur Street. It was a Saturday morning and close to summer, end of May. The French Quarter was buzzing with activity. She’d parked at Jack’s Brewery but had no specific destination in mind. So she took a turn onto Madison Street not pausing to question, simply following the flow of energy.

  It was disconcerting what he felt—a distinctive presence, one that felt connected to previous lifetimes. Christian Montamat strode with purpose out of the front lobby of the Royal Orleans hotel into the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter. There was business to deal with—business for which he had traveled all the way from his homeland of England. He stepped outside into the warm humid morning. The thickness of the air hit him palpably as did the acute wave of agitation from the street ahead. He deliberately turned a corner moving away from Bourbon Street.

  As he crossed over to Conti Street and began a trek toward the river the rush of anxiety subsided. It was clear there was too much humanity in turmoil in that area and he didn’t need the distraction. Attempting to clear his mind, he focused on the task at hand but again the awareness surged up—the familiarity that tantalized him, compelled him. Someone else was walking these streets today. Someone he’d known long ago.

  Whispers egged her on. She reached into the pocket of her blue jeans pulling out a mint and popping it into her mouth. Hopefully the quick sugar would hold off the inevitable plummet for a bit longer. She had no business being out here today in the heat. She loved New Orleans. It was home, but the summer weather, and by all intensive purposes it was summer now, was brutal. And not even to mention the pile of work waiting for her back home. Being a freelance commercial artist was an ongoing tap dance of deadlines, juggling, and canvassing for work.

  It was a toss up to say whether she was truly an artist or just a slave to the public’s vacillating tastes. But that was another consideration that was not to be settled today.

  Her feet led her to a quick left turn then a right onto St. Ann’s Street. It certainly wasn’t an area she frequented, nor was the quarter for that matter. She lived in a small wood frame house off of City Park Avenue that had been left to her by her parents. They’d died nearly five years ago now in a car crash. And having no siblings they’d left her an orphan—an orphan at twenty-nine.

  She paused, speculatively before she continued. It was odd in the midst of the swirling humanity she’d walked through earlier how remarkably deserted St. Ann’s was. There were only one or two persons and an eerie quiet that felt completely out of step with the franticness of the rest of quarter and its weekend crush. A draft swept down the lonely street. She scanned for its other occupants she’d seen moments before. The woman had disappeared perhaps into a doorway, perhaps down a connecting street. But the man was still there, across the road about a half a block away. She slowly continued her trek on her side of the street noting even the cars parked along the way were few and far between. Glancing to the side again she noted the man had not moved; an elderly man but dressed strangely, unseasonably warm for this weather—an ill-fitting tweed suit and a nearly matching sloping hat perched across his white hair.

  Again a cool breeze that came out of nowhere swept down the street running a curious chill up her spine. She thought perhaps it was her blood sugar out of sync but truly chills weren’t her usual symptoms.

  She was now directly across the street from him and she felt drawn again to inspect the curious figure. Hopefully it wouldn’t be interpreted as some sort of rude
ness. But he hadn’t stirred from his spot. His back was a bit stooped from age and he supported himself on a cane.

  Perhaps it was foolish but it wouldn’t be the first foolish thing she’d ever done. She crossed over to him until she stood in the middle of St. Ann’s Street staring directly into the eyes of the old man. It was as she suspected. She saw fear and confusion. “Have you lost your way?” she asked quietly.

  He glanced about furtively and then nodded. There were tears in his eyes and she felt his pain pass into her.

  Perhaps it was the heat of the day or her blood sugar threatening to plummet that had caused her to misinterpret the situation. What was clear was that this poor lost soul was a wandering spirit—a ghost if you will. Because among other things, Julia Moreau could see the dead.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Clear like the air, but dense, reverberating focusing energy.”

  “Where can I find it?”

  “It travels, merges, but must always end up near the water—turbulent, living waters.”

  “Is it bigger than a bread box?”

  The channeller’s eyes flickered open, piercing into his with deep gray orbs. “Are you not taking our guidance seriously?”

  Christian frowned. It bothered him being forced to seek outside help. He was not without his sensitivities. In fact his own psychic powers were formidable but oddly enough in this matter, this very important matter he seemed, well, blocked. “No, no believe me I’m taking your guidance extremely seriously. It’s just not too specific.”

  Again the eyes widened. The woman’s counsel he’d sought came highly recommended. She was in her late seventies, early eighties. Well established as a medium but clearly as eccentric as the electric blue fringed sarong that she had draped herself in. Unfortunately Christian did not have the temperament to tread lightly where egos were concerned. “I can only impart the information that is given.” And then the gray eyes narrowed, “It seems deliberately non-specific. This conductor you seek is shrouded by old magics.”