GHOST_4_Kindle_V2 (3 page)

The Junior Food cashier told me there was a little family owned pizza joint called Bambinos just around the corner. It looked quiet. Italian sounded good. I went in and sat down. A waitress came over. Maria, according to her name tag. Fifteen or sixteen, given the way she popped her gum while she chewed.
 

“What can I get for ya’, honey?” Cute Southern drawl. Probably called everybody,
honey
. Sweet kid.

“Water with three lemon wedges. And coffee. Definitely coffee.”

“You gonna eat?”

“I’m going to eat…a lot,” I said. “I just need to cool down for a bit with the water. Can you give me a minute?”

She seemed visibly relieved that I was going to order. Better tip that way, I guess. She was back in a hurry with the water, and she kept it filled for me while I waited and cooled down. She brought the coffee a few minutes later. It wasn’t stellar. But it was coffee…a blessed, wonderful thing.

I got extra napkins and wiped down the camera. I opened it up and took out the battery. I couldn’t see any corrosion or damage, but a few beads of water had found their way inside. I twisted up a napkin and shoved it in. Then I wadded the camera up in a bundle of napkins and waited some more.

“Okay, sweetie,” Maria said, appearing at my elbow. Her gum popped. “What can I getcha?”
 

“You recommend anything?”

“Depends. You like things spicy?”

I thought I did. “Sure.”

“Pepperoni calzone,” she said. “Ricotta cheese, peppers, our sauce—best around.”

“Sold,” I said. “And extra peppers please.”

Maria smiled and scribbled on her note pad. She popped her gum again and was gone.

I alternated sips of ice water and coffee, and then I unwrapped the camera. It was as dry as I could make it. I pushed the battery in and hit the power button. To my surprise, there was a faint musical tone and the camera came on.
 

Its default mode was photography. The lens telescoped out, and the restaurant interior appeared on the screen. The image was a little grainy, but given the swim in the Gulf, it wasn’t too bad. There was a silver knob on the back. I turned it until the lens sucked back into the camera.
Viewing mode.
I pressed a silver toggle to flip through the pictures—if there were any on the memory card…and they hadn’t been corrupted by saltwater.
 

There were pictures. Eighteen of them by the counter icon. The first one was blurry, too close to whatever it was and too out of focus to tell the subject. The second picture slid into view. A beautiful young woman. Red hair; very pale, porcelain-perfect skin; thin ruby-red lips.
 

A man stood behind her, but the top of the shot cut off everything above the tip of his nose. All I could see was his sturdy cleft chin, his full lips, toothy smile, and the tip of his nose.
 

It was a strange pose, and something about it bothered me. Their positioning, so close and intimate, faces so very near to each other, made me think of a carnival photo booth. But the photo lacked the silly spontaneity of a photo booth. And the smiles weren’t pleasant. His was a sharkish thing, full of know-it-all guile. And hers was lopsided like that of a TV zombie or a stroke victim…unsettling.

The third shot, I froze.
 

The fourth picture, I stopped breathing.
 

The fifth picture…
 

My throat constricted, and I seized the edge of the table. I’d tensed up so much that the nearly healed wounds on my back stung. I retched and fought to keep from losing it.
 

“Sir?” Maria the waitress called from behind the counter. “Sir, you all right? You need a doctor?”

She was at the table in a heartbeat. I flipped the camera flat so she couldn’t see the picture. “No doctor. I’m okay.”

“You sure? You’re about as pale as you could be. Paler than before, even.”

“No, I’m good.”

I stood up, shoved the camera in my pocket, and tossed a twenty on the table.

“What about your food? You want it to go?”

“No! No…thank you,” I said, tempering my voice. I grabbed my case and headed for the door. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to eat…for a while.”

Chapter 3

The camera burned in my pocket.
 

And, as I strode through the humid air up Highway 30, one thought haunted me: there were thirteen pictures left.
 

I am no stranger to blood. And I have experienced more of death than most, but the images I’d seen at the pizza shop hit me like sledgehammer blows to the gut.
 

Memory Washing cleansed me of these kinds of images, removing the specifics—the all-too vivid, mental videos of disturbing violence—from my conscious mind. But there was nothing I could do about the dreams.
 

Unbidden flashbacks while I slept: macabre images of torn flesh, gasping breaths, and lives seeping away in spreading crimson pools. These scenes of grief rarely failed to haunt my sleeping psyche. The nightmares left me no memories, but rather…an aftertaste, a faint reckoning of evil things. It was kind of like smelling the sickly sweet scent of decay in the woods. You don’t need to see the dead thing to know that it’s there.
 

But now, I had a cold sensation spreading in the pit of my stomach. Somehow, the kind of death I’d seen in the pictures was different…worse. It was a kind of intimate horror that hooked itself to my psyche and burned there. I couldn’t shake it.
 

Could it be a prank? Hollywood make-up, special effects? I didn’t think so. But I needed to be certain. I needed a base of operations, somewhere to analyze the photos in private. Somewhere to do research. For a moment, I thought…I thought I might have a place to go. Someone owed me a favor, maybe invited me—but that fast, it was gone. Gone in the wake of last night’s Memory Wash.
   

I found an F-Trans stop and waited for about fifteen minutes. When the bus came, I paid my three bucks and asked the driver, “Any hotels in the area? Any on your route?”

The guy scratched between his collar and his curly gray hair. “Two or three in Destin. Holiday Inn Express and a Motel 6 for sure, right next to each other.”

Motel 6,
I thought as I sank into a window seat.
We’ll leave the light on for you.
 

It might sound odd that I could remember a commercial slogan and not remember what I did last night, but it’s not. It’s the way the Memory Wash worked. It was the way things had to be for me to keep doing my job.
 

So I remembered Motel 6, and I liked the slogan.
We’ll leave the light on for you.
 

Turned out, the Holiday Inn Express was the first place on the route. They had plenty of lights on and high speed wireless Internet in every room, but their business center was closed for remodeling. No good for me. I have many tools in my suitcase. But I don’t have a computer. If the Motel 6 didn’t have computers I could use, I’d have to buy one. I had $1,593 left. It felt like a computer would eat too much of that.

The Motel 6 was a little less expensive than the Holiday Inn, but their business center was open and well stocked—computers, a printer, and a scanner. So, under the name John Spector, I took room 7 on the first floor. Sixty-seven dollars in cash.

I went straight to the business center, but there was an old guy in there playing solitaire on one computer. A little blond girl, his granddaughter maybe, was immersed in some panda bear maze game on the other. Too risky for what I needed to do, so I continued up the hall to my room.

I pushed in the key card, shoved open the door, and stopped cold.
 

The room looked clean, smelled clean. But it felt wrong.
 

There was a chill in the air, but not the kind any air conditioner could produce. The door whispered closed behind me and I scanned the room. I kept the lights off and my suitcase ready, just in case. Thunder rumbled outside. I moved slowly, making no sound the long roll of thunder wouldn’t mask.
 

Nothing in the bathroom or the shower. Nothing in the closet or in the gap between the wall and the bed. It still felt wrong.
 

The curtains.

Both the room darkening panels against the window and the decorative drapes were pulled shut. Light flashed up near the curtain rod. Thunder, deeper and more menacing, crashed outside and rattled the building. The curtains billowed but not from wind.
 

Netherview, definitely,
I thought. I willed the change in my retinas. The world changed before my eyes and I saw…really saw things beyond the curtain of the temporal. The four walls and furniture of the hotel room vanished. In its place, there was a stone chamber rendered like a negative photo image but in real time. On the far side of the chamber, beyond a device of tangled wrought iron that could only be for torture, I saw a
 
large arched window with a broken pane of glass. And clambering in and out of the jagged opening was a Shade. It noticed me now and hissed.
 

Not taking any chances,
I thought. I flexed the muscles of my neck and shoulders and slowly lowered my suitcase to the floor. I squeezed the handle with my index and pinky fingers. With a hiss, the u-shaped handle disconnected from the case. The particle nether emitters on either end shimmered a pale green. It was fully charged. I’d have two pulses or one maximum-strength burst.

I stepped toward the window.
It was just one, and a little one,
I thought.
But it might not be alone.

I took another step. The remaining shards of glass rippled in the window frame. I lunged, sliding to one knee. But the roamer was very fast. I caught just a glimpse of a translucent limb sliding away from the upper left corner of the window frame. I fired, but too slow. The pulse of the emitter passed through the windowpane but struck nothing else.
 

Just one, thank God.
They were known to collect in the strangest places, but usually in buildings older than this Motel 6. Unless something violent had happened here.
 

Or, unless they were sent.
 

That made me wonder if its presence in my room was related to the camera. I couldn’t see how. I had just found the camera. And I picked the hotel and room at random.
 

No, the Shade was just a roamer. Still, I’d need to be watchful. Even if it was just a random thing, the Shade might be indignant enough to tell others of its kind. Waking up to a throng of Shades is no fun.
 

The eerie chill was gone. It felt like a hotel room again. I switched from Netherview back to Earthveil. After putting the handle back on my suitcase to charge, I opened the curtains as wide as they could go and enjoyed the spectacle of the storm. Fat raindrops pelted the window. Wind whistled and howled. Lightning, sudden and white-hot, crackled above. Thunder had its way with the high rise condos on the Gulf shore in Destin, reverberating from building to building. I wished I could see the Gulf. The storm would color the water a potent slate gray-dark green mix and whip up miles of whitecaps. There’s nothing like a raging storm and a tempestuous sea.
 

Divine violence.
   

I turned away from the storm, took the camera out of my pocket, and sat on the edge of my bed. I found myself hoping the camera wouldn’t work. Not impossible, considering that the camera floated in saltwater for, who knew how long. Even if the water hadn’t damaged it, the battery might be dead now.
 

But no, I knew the camera had come into my possession for a reason. I was certain it would work.
 

I pressed the power button. The musical chime was a little louder this time. The screen on the back of the camera came to life. I passed the first photo, the blurry one, and came to the pretty redhead with the guy behind her. She wore a sheer white camisole that spilled down the contours of her body. The material was just a shade lighter than her pale skin. Her lithe arms were tight to her sides, and her hands were folded in her lap.
 

I took a deep breath and advanced to the next picture. The knife came into view. A very unusual knife. It was as long as a violin bow, but the double-edged blade was only four inches. The rest of the weapon was six inches of dark wood handle and at least a foot of a narrow brass sheath. Small studs ran down the shaft and three more dotted the handle. There was an odd knob at the bottom of the brass part. It was shaped like a butterfly wing, and I guessed that turning it would cause the blade to retract or extend from the sheath.
 

The man held the blade horizontally at the level of her collarbone. The woman smiled on. I blinked and cringed inwardly, knowing what was coming.
 

A twitch of my thumb, and the next photo appeared. He’d pressed the knife against her neck, the blade biting deep, and blood already flowing. Still she smiled.

The fifth photo, the knife had been pulled clean through. Her mouth had dropped open. Her eyes were rolling back. I hated to look, but I couldn’t turn away. If I was going to track down this killer, I’d have to study these pictures. Starting now. Thirteen photos to go.
 

Picture number six, he had his hand in her hair and had yanked her head back. The wound was a crimson waterfall down her neck and soaking the cami. The woman’s life’s blood seemed nearly spent. In the seventh picture, he’d let her head fall forward, and her long hair covered the wound like the wispy limbs of a weeping willow.

The eighth photo was blurred. Not out of focus, but blurred by the captured motion. The man was three quarters turned, his right arm bent and rotated like he’d just hit a tennis forehand. Judging by the angle and rotation of the woman’s head, the man had struck her…hard. I wondered why. At that point, she was already dead.

Photo nine was a peculiar collage of elements. The woman’s left hand and about six inches of her wrist jutted in from the lower right corner of the shot. A small table had fallen in from the left, spilling its contents on the dark brown carpet: a clutter of silver coins, mostly quarters; a tall fast food soda cup; and a rolled up newspaper. Filling the rest of the photo was the bottom of a darkened doorway and a blur of gray and black. Recognition danced elusively for a few moments.