A Ghost of a Chance (16 page)

As he moved, his stomach was doing the mambo and he had to force it to stay still by squeezing hard. That fixed it. The thought of going deeper into this eerie ass church did not appeal to him, but he was committed, even with the primeval part of his brain screaming
run, you idiot, run for your life
! Try telling that to shut the fuck up.

When he got to the front of the nave, darkness and more rubble greeted him. Piles of broken stone covered the floor. He looked up and saw why; directly above the rubble the roof had caved in and rained debris onto the church floor. Water splashed from the hole and caught Keenan full on the face when he looked up. He stepped back sputtering.

Two ornately carved doors stood at attention on either side of the back wall. He moved to one and heard the moan again. It was definitely coming from behind one of them. He pulled on the first and tried to turn the handle. Locked tight.

Moving to the second door, he couldn’t stop the lady or the tiger feeling sneaking up his spine. That mixed with the cold water on his face added a macabre tinge to the scene. It was like walking through a Vincent Price movie. He expected wax monsters, pendulums, or psychopaths to jump out of every shadow. All he wanted to do was find Isabella and get the hell out.

The second door opened with a loud scrape against the floor.

Keenan put the lantern in first, just so the light could take care of any unforeseen adversaries. He needn’t have bothered.

The sanctuary was about half the size of the nave, but much more ornate. It was obvious no one had been in there since the closure. Everything was intact, from the dozen or so crooked oil paintings on the walls to the richly worn oriental carpet that filled the floor. Except for a thick coating of dust and long stringy cobwebs on everything, the room looked as fresh as yesterday.

Hundreds of lit candles cascaded down both sidewalls, filling the chamber with flickering lights that bounced against the expensive chandelier high above Keenan’s head and the saint crowded stained glass windows surrounding the arced ceiling. The chandelier was the most amazing thing Keenan had ever seen; the intricate web of wrought iron, braided wires, and hundreds of glistening crystals were outstanding. It belonged in a palace, not a church.

At the other end were three things Keenan had a hard time getting his senses wrapped around.

In the exact middle of the back wall was a big table with something dark on it. To the right of the table was a giant glass bubble. Swirling kaleidoscope colors filled every inch.

On the left, a looming black and gray cloud hung a few feet off the ground. It was very odd: a still photo of violence, caught in suspended animation. The only movement came from a yellowish glow that radiated along its edges. Keenan recognized it instantly as the thing that had attacked him at the restaurant.

He stopped cold.

The moaning was louder now and coming from the table. Keenan could just make out a dark figure lying there.

Cursing his curiosity, he found himself moving through glue as he approached the table.

When he got close, he stopped and took a step back.

This time he didn’t give a shit what his curiosity told him to do.

The succubus was a black shade writhing and moaning against the stone. A veil wrapped tightly around her obscured her features. He thought she was suffocating. The agony in her voice pulled at his heart and almost made him brave. Keenan didn’t move.

He tore his eyes away to study the clear balloon to his right. It wasn’t glass exactly; it was more like a giant child’s bubble, flexible, with prisms of color running over the surface where the candlelight hit it. Inside what he thought were swirling colors was something else completely.

The ghosts, what must have been all of them, crowded behind the transparent material, each fighting for position, their hands, elbows, heads, pushed out against the soft material leaving it lumpy and moving. At the very middle staring down at him in profound sadness was Constance. She was speaking, testing the translucent wall with her hands, pleading with him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He scanned the mass of spirits trying to find the one who had led him here. Reggie was decidedly missing.

The succubus’s voice was growing louder. Keenan barely got his legs moving. Terror was a new sensation he couldn’t get a handle on. Sweat soaked his sides, back, and neck; a hot blaze of fear made his heart a jackhammer; his hands shook.

Casting a suspicious eye to the lifeless cloud on the left, he took the two steps up to the altar and watched the creature groaning on top of it.

She was smaller than he remembered, barely five feet, he would guess. Without her magic (or whatever) she seemed tiny and almost human…but she was definitely not human.

Keenan could see the undulating skin beneath the shroud, the unnaturally long fingers, and thin waist. In this state, without her allure, the succubus looked distorted, twisted, like a woman stretched thin by some machine. It made his stomach do a flip.

The creature stopped her writhing and tried to move her arms toward him, but the shroud was a cocoon prison. Keenan reached to touch her and a deafening crack of thunder filled the space around his head. The next thing he knew he was soaring through the air.

Finding himself sprawled several feet away and the lamp shattered next to his ear, Keenan lifted himself onto his hands and shook his head. He could feel bruises rise on his left arm and hip. They hurt like hell.

Struggling to his knees, he looked up at the succubus then the cloud. It was glowing with more intensity.

“Keenan Swanson.” The booming voice filled the entire chamber and he had to throw his hands over his ears. He wasn’t sure exactly where it came from, but assumed it must be from the cloud. An idle thought went through Keenan’s head,
a voice from the burning bush
. A throbbing headache, aided by the recent spill, made the pain unanimous. Everything hurt now.

“Let them go!” he heard himself say. The ground shook under his knees.

There wasn’t an immediate reply, so Keenan took the time to get up. His feet weren’t sure whether he was staying or going, so they took a neutral position, turning him sideways. A high-pitched noise tickled his nose.

“They will stay.” The voice had better control. That statement just made Keenan a bit nauseous.

“Yeah?” He sounded weak against these bizarre circumstances, and he figured it all had to be a dream anyway, so thought he might as well go for broke. “You can suck my dick!”

There was a rumble that sounded almost like laughter. “Do you want to save them?”

For a moment, Keenan wasn’t exactly sure what it was asking. How the hell was he supposed to save them? Not exactly his forte.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“You can save them all. All it requires of you is a sacrifice.”

Keenan scowled at the response, not liking the direction the conversation was taking. “What kind of sacrifice?”

“A sacrifice of flesh.”

Keenan didn’t like that either. It sounded painful. “I don’t know what that means, asshole. You want to clarify it a bit?”

“Your soul you keep, your flesh you give to me.”

Well that cinched it. He needed his flesh, enjoyed it on a daily basis. Besides, it was where he hung his clothes.

“What happens if I tell you to go screw yourself?”

There was another distinct rumble/laugh noise. “Then the seraph and the spirits descend to hell.”

That made his heart stop for half a beat and he had to gasp to get air to it. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

Keenan shook his head, trying to get his brain to work. It was becoming more and more difficult. “What are you going to do with my flesh…uh, my body?” he asked, trying to buy some time to jump-start his thinking. “I mean, it seems all this puny bit of skin would do is slow you down. You’re an entity, for Christ’s sake. What do you need me for?”

“I need you to father a new world.”

“Oh.” Keenan humored the thing, not exactly sure what the hell it was talking about. He scanned the frustrated ghosts in the bubble, the writhing beauty on the table, and the open doorway behind him. The light from the entity was enough to drown out the candles now. It threw Keenan’s shadow against the back wall. All Keenan wanted to do right at that moment was get the fuck out of there.

“I want to talk to my friends,” he shouted at the chamber. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a kind of pulsation from around the cloud’s still form.

“No,” the voice said. “Decide…now.”

The pulse got stronger and the creature’s voice sounded almost nervous.

“Give me a break,” Keenan shouted back. “Can’t I at least talk to Constance?”

“Decide now!” The voice was decidedly nervous now, shaking.

All at once, as if it had blown off a tight restraint, the cloud exploded to almost twice its size. It darkened to deep gray edged with black and scared the shit out of Keenan.

He didn’t even realize he was doing it, but he suddenly found himself stumbling to the door and out into the darkness down the long aisle of the nave heading toward the kitchen. Not even sure what happened, he risked a look. Behind him was pandemonium.

Bright lights glowed from the open door accompanied by screams, shouts, and curses. Keenan didn’t stick around to see what came next. As fast as his feet could carry him, he was through the kitchen, out the side door, and yanking on the Jeep’s door handle with both hands. While he fumbled to get the car keys out of his pocket, the gray mass rose from the back of the church, casting blackness out from its folds that dimmed the distant streetlights.

Keenan gave it a fleeting look, crammed the keys into the ignition, got the jeep going, fastened his seatbelt out of sheer habit, and drove away like a bat out of hell.

Chapter Thirteen
A Bat Out of Hell

He was doing seventy, but the storm kept coming. Keenan was terrified he’d hit some poor homeless guy crossing Morrison. Fortunately, the streets were vacant except for him, the cloud, and a single police cruiser with its lights and sirens at full blast.

Keenan had no idea where he came from. Thompson was bringing up the rear trying to keep up. At least he hoped it was Thompson. All he could see was a large silhouette in the car.

Hitting the Morrison Bridge at about eighty, the car bounced, caught air, and came down with a thud. Sparks flew. The seatbelt throttled him good. His chest shouted at him madly. Keenan was thankful the airbags didn’t deploy. The cloud was still gaining. So was the cruiser.

The grates on the bridge hummed a thunderous melody against his teeth and ears, numbing his face as he sped past.

Keenan knew he had to find open road, somewhere he could outrun the creature. Clamping his teeth against the stupidity of his actions, he cleared the bridge and took a quick left onto Grand, a disregarded red light steady against his guilt. The tires screeched and the car tilted toward its side. Keenan instinctively leaned to the right. Thank God for American engineering and cast iron Jeep frames. The car righted and banged against the street nearly running into several parked cars.

The turn cost him. When he looked into his rearview mirror, the creature filled it. He couldn’t see the pulsating blue and red lights anymore. Getting his thoughts together with a shake of his head, he floored it, catching a possibility straight ahead.

He so suddenly took the freeway exit, the creature had no time to turn; it went right past him.

The next part was tricky; taking a thirty mile per hour curve at seventy was not an especially good idea. Keenan figured he had nothing to lose, so cranked the wheel and hoped for the best.

Providence had to be with him that night. The car didn’t flip over, he managed to miss the side railings, and he had a clear straight road in front of him. He floored it again and hit a hundred before he left the ramp.

He mustered enough courage to peer into the mirror again. The creature was still behind him, but now the cop was between them. Before they went out, the bursting glow from the streetlights illuminated the cruiser’s windshield and Keenan recognized Thompson immediately. He was so relieved to see the gruff cop he could have kissed him. Thompson was furiously pointing to the right, trying to get him to pull over.

Fuck that
, Keenan thought. He wasn’t about to give this thing the “sacrifice” it wanted; joining his ghost friends for eternity wasn’t exactly what he had in mind as a way of life.

A pang of remorse traveled through his chest when he glanced back at the frantic officer. The cloud was catching up with the cruiser and Keenan had no idea what the thing would do to Thompson to get to him. None of the alternatives appealed to him. It was one thing to condemn a bunch of ghosts and a succubus to hell; it was another to be responsible for a cop’s death. Especially Thompson’s.

On impulse, he saw a wide section of turnout and stood on his breaks to make it.

Gravel flew up on all sides of him. He heard something go
bang
. The jeep careened back and forth for several hundred feet, raining more rocks onto his windshield, and bouncing him around a like a Bozo Bop Bag. A shower of sparks suddenly covered the hood. They flowed over the windshield like a river. When the car came to an abrupt stop against something at the side of the road, the airbag burst open and smashed Keenan’s skull into the headrest. Stars ignited behind his temples followed by a crushing throbbing in his chest.