The problem with being psychic is you never get a day off.
I guess I should give context for this. My name is Kia Awara, professional exorcist. When you’re born with psychic powers, you’ll be encountering ghosts pretty much your whole life. Since basically any ghost powerful enough for you to see is also powerful enough to hurt you, you’re basically forced to learn some defensive measures. Some people just figure out the basics and try to avoid getting involved. Others – like me – figure that if we’re stuck in this situation anyway, we may as well make some cash off it, and go for more formal exorcist training.
Normally, it’s a good deal. Exorcists get paid very handsomely, and as a self-employed psychic I don’t have to answer to anyone (well, except the government licensing people). The downside is that, as a licensed exorcist, you’re technically always on duty. If the government finds out you were aware of a dangerous spirit and didn’t take any action against it, you can lose your license – and if the spirit goes on to hurt people, you might even get criminal charges. Of course, it’s hard for anyone to prove that you knew there was a ghost and chose to ignore it, but it’s still not worth risking. And honestly, if my inaction caused an innocent person to get killed, I don’t think I could live with myself.
Anyway, the point is that what was supposed to be a nice vacation didn’t quite go as planned.
OK, last luggage check. I think to myself. I’m not really the sort to own a ton of stuff, so packing for vacations shouldn’t be that hard, but I still can’t help but feel like I’m missing something important.
Clothes, check. A selection of shirts, shorts, skirts, underwear, and one nice dress in case I eat somewhere fancy.
Toiletries, check.
Pain medicine, bandages, antiseptic, check. I’ve been thrown into a disturbing number of walls by angry spirits lately and I want to be prepared in case it happens again. Or in case I trip over my own feet and fall on a rock, because that happens depressingly often too.
Phone charger and spare battery, check. I don’t know what I’d do without my phone, even if it is a cheap knock-off piece of shit. I dunno, I’m attached to it.
I glance at the drawer under my desk, thinking of the mysterious wooden box under it. I’ve never been able to open the box, and my powers don’t tell me anything about it. For all I know, it’s empty. Still, I don’t feel safe with it in sight, and I don’t feel safe getting rid of it, so it stays locked up. I consider taking it with me – the note did say I’ll “know what to do when the time comes”, so having it stolen would probably be bad – but I decide against it. I always pay my protection fee, so it’s unlikely I’ll be robbed.
That’s everything, then. I close the suitcase, head out the door, and make it halfway to the parking lot before heading back to get my car keys out of my room.
The vacation isn’t going to be anything too fancy. Just some nice slow-paced activities. I figure I’ve earned it after my last job. Legally I can’t go into too many details on that one, so let’s just say it involved a swimming pool, a meat-packing plant, and an inheritance dispute. Point is I’m still not feeling fully recovered after dealing with the spirits responsible for that, so I want as little stimulation as possible.
The agenda is pretty simple. I spend the first day just driving, listening to the same few songs on loop, and occasionally cursing at my GPS for leading me the wrong way down a one-way street or trying to redirect my destination to Kansas.
I know I need to get a non-bootleg phone; I really do. I just feel weirdly emotionally attached to this one, we’ve been through a lot together.
Either way, after one last incident in which my phone tries to get me into a car crash by randomly setting off its alarm (a loop of Aku from Samurai Jack laughing) as I’m turning into an intersection, I finally arrive at the town I plan on spending the next week. It’s one of those tourist-trap towns that stays intentionally old-fashioned looking, while still managing to have all the common forms of modern entertainment. A nice contrast from the city, where giant skyscrapers blot out the sun and every road somehow feels like a cramped back alley. Not that I dislike the city, but sometimes it feels overwhelming.
I check in at the hotel, grab some food at a little diner across the street, and collapse into bed.
My research on the town indicated that one of the main local points of pride was the Montclair Memorial Gallery, a sort of combination museum and art gallery near the center of town. I’m not a huge fan of art, but I enjoy visiting the gallery back in the city sometimes, if only to marvel at the ego required for Princess Aki Nōne, the local mob boss, to commission a twelve-foot-tall obsidian sculpture of herself.
The pamphlets I read said that the Montclair Memorial Gallery was originally built by the town founder – who, unsurprisingly, was named Montclair – as a showcase of all the odds and ends he had collected on his travels around the world, but was turned into a proper exhibit hall a few decades after his death. Now the gallery boasted of having a giant collection of paintings and sculptures, as well as a number of valuable gemstones in the museum portion of the gallery.
One odd thing about the gallery was that they didn’t allow guests to simply wander – instead, they had guided tours three times a day, where a gallery employee would show visitors around the exhibits and provide information about them, along with anecdotes and history about the gallery and the town as a whole.
After eating a nice breakfast at the same diner as last night, I make my way to the gallery, where the first tour of the day is beginning.
The entry room is not what I was expecting. The room is oddly rounded – the walls, floor, and ceiling are all curved, giving the feeling of being inside a large ball. Everything is painted a dark blue shade, and the lights do a poor job of properly illuminating anything. That last part, at least, is explained when the tour guide apologizes and tells us that the electricity in the building has been acting up.
Upon entering, I feel a strange buzzing in the back of my mind. I’m sensing something, but at first I don’t know what. This sort of sensation is usually important – most often a sign of something dangerous – so I start scanning the room as best I can without looking like I’m staring.
Looking over the room at the other tour guests, I suddenly notice the source. My eyes land on a girl standing near the back, and it’s like a firework went off in my skull.
She looks about my age, maybe a few years younger. Short, with a thin but athletic figure. Her straight black hair reaches down to her shoulders, and her left eye is covered by a large black eyepatch. Her appearance isn’t what strikes me, though. My focus is on the psychic power I feel from her.
She doesn’t feel anything like any psychic I’ve met before. Even my own mentor, who was exceptionally skilled as an exorcist, is nothing compared to her. The sensation from her is like a raging storm, or a massive whirlpool, dragging me in. I know my own psychic power isn’t anything special, but compared to her I feel like I wouldn’t even qualify as spiritually sensitive at all. Comparing myself to her would be like comparing the little whirlpools that form in your sink to a black hole.
Sensing me looking, she turns to face me. Her right eye is a strange, deep purple.
“Ah. Sorry.” I mutter. Just looking at her makes my brain itch, and I feel my muscles becoming strangely tense.
She tilts her head slightly as she looks at me. “You’re psychic, I assume?”
I nod. It’s not unusual for psychics to sense each other’s presence and use that as a conversation opener.
“I should be the one apologizing, then.” A faintly mischievous smile plays across her lips. “Psychics tend to get headaches around me.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I…well, it’s true I’ve never sensed anyone as spiritually strong as you.”
She makes a strange face when I say that, but quickly masks it behind a neutral expression. Maybe I put her on the spot. “A-anyway, it’s fine. I’m Kia. Kia Awara.” I extend my hand.
She examines it briefly, then extends her own and shakes, causing a strange chill to run down my spine. “Haley Vector.”
“Are you an exorcist too?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Astronomy student.”
“Oh good.” I breathe a small sigh of relief. “Normally when I run into other psychics it’s because I’ve stumbled onto somewhere they were hired to exorcise.”
She chuckles softly at that. “No, just here on holiday break.”
Any further conversation is prevented when the tour guide starts speaking. “Thank you all for coming.” He begins. Some people just have the sort of voice that makes you want to pay attention to everything they say. This man does not have that sort of voice, but I force myself to listen anyway.
“We’ll be beginning our tour now, and I need to go over some safety precautions first. The gallery has an unconventional layout, having been built piece-by-piece over several decades. Montclair would have new chambers added whenever his collection grew and built without a general plan. When space was limited, he had underground rooms constructed, some of which were only discovered a few years ago when expanding the town sewer system!”
I wonder if the museum ever got flooded with sewage. That happened at an apartment I used to live in.
“He was known to have doorways opened or sealed up on whims, reflecting a childhood fascination with stories of secret chambers, and even today there may still be some rooms here that have yet to be found. This also led to some trouble a few years back when the fire sprinklers went off, because the pipes ended up leaking into some of those unknown rooms and almost flooded them.” The guide continues. “Because of how the building was constructed, the layout is rather confusing, and it is easy to become lost. As such, I’ll need everyone to stay close with me as we go. And with that, it’s my pleasure to guide you through our wonderful exhibits!”
For the first few rooms, I do my best to listen to the tour guide and ignore the buzzing in the back of my mind. He guides us through several rooms and hallways, all strangely round, all painted a dark blue, and all badly lit. The walls boast numerous paintings – still-lifes, portraits of fancy-looking old people, landscapes, and so forth, but I’m finding it harder and harder to listen to the tour guide over the buzzing. Finally, in the fourth room, the realization hits me.
The sensation has been getting stronger as we’ve been walking further in. I’m sensing something other than just Haley’s own psychic power.
I turn and find Haley looking at me. “You feel it too?” She asks. I nod.
She lowers her voice. “I don’t like it. There’s something…old…here.”
I agree. And unfortunately, that means I’m required to investigate. “You think the tour guide knows anything?”
She shakes her head. “He doesn’t. And if we ask, he’ll probably just make us talk with the management.”
“So…” I know where she’s going with this.
The same mischievous smirk plays over her face again. “We sneak off. It’s dark enough.”
Technically, as an exorcist I can get away with trespassing. Police tend to respect it when your excuse is “Here’s my exorcist license, I was busy using it to save people from having their souls devoured by a screaming mass of faces with fingers for teeth.”
Haley, on the other hand, has no such excuse. Looking at her, though, I get the feeling she’s used to this. I guess the stronger your powers are, the harder it is to ignore when you sense something.
Sneaking off turns out to be quite easy. The rooms are dark with numerous exit doors, the tour group is preoccupied with the paintings, and the guide is busy with a rambling story about the town’s first bus stop. Haley darts quickly into one of the darkened doorways, her small frame vanishing into the blackness, and I scurry after her.
The light vanishes almost instantly once we’re in the hall – some trick of how the building is constructed. I can’t see Haley, but I can easily sense her a few feet further ahead, making her way down the hall. Her movements are surprisingly confident. I guess her powers are giving her a clearer view of our destination than just “there is something bad somewhere around here”, which is all I’m getting. I figure it’s best to just follow her.
Haley leads me through several more seemingly identical rooms of miscellaneous paintings before comings to a stop.
“Is something wrong?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “We need to go down.”
“Down?” I focus my senses, but I’m not getting any clear direction. That’s kind of strange, actually – normally my senses aren’t this vague. It’s almost like the building itself is interfering. I open my eyes to see Haley looking at me. The shadows cast by the room’s dim lighting form strange patterns on her, making it appear almost like she’s not quite in the same reality as her surroundings.
I shake my head. “I’m not sensing it as clearly as you, sorry.”
“I’m not sensing it.” Haley replies. Her left hand unconsciously touches her eyepatch. “I just know.”
She looks around the room. “This building…there’s something wrong with it.”
A shudder runs down my spine. She just verbalized my own speculation, but with much more certainty.
“So…this place actually is interfering with our senses?” I ask. I don’t even know how that would be possible, but the thought makes me feel extremely claustrophobic. What if this whole place was constructed as some sort of “psychic trap”?
Haley shrugs. “I think so…but I’m not sure if that was the purpose.”
I don’t know what she means by that, unless she’s reading my mind, and my expression must have made that clear.
“This place…it has a purpose, but… I don’t think it was to block psychics.” Her gaze is distant. “I think that’s a side effect.”
“So what’s the intended purpose?” I ask.
Haley simply shrugs in response, which doesn’t help. Now my mind is obsessing over dozens of possible reasons, each less likely than the last.
As I’m busy debating with myself the relative likelihood that the gallery was constructed to imprison an evil god from an alternate universe, Haley speaks again. “Anyway, we need to find a way down. Help me look.” As she says that, she kneels down and begins running her hands over the floor.
“Why this room?” I ask, grateful that my increasingly-improbable train of thought has been derailed.
She gives me an odd look again but doesn’t reply. I figure it’s best not to pry and begin searching as well, checking the floor on the opposite end of the room from Haley.
The floor is strangely smooth, and running my hands over it causes an unpleasant sensation, like the feeling you get when you step on a too-smooth rock and your shoe skids (or is that just me?).
After a moment, I feel my fingernails catch on a small indentation. “I think I found something.”
Haley comes to join me and kneels down beside me. “Hm, yeah…good work.”
She places her hands on the indentation, hooking her nails into it. I do the same.
“Ready?” She asks.
I nod. In unison, we both pull up as hard as we can. There’s a loud grinding sound, loud enough that I worry the staff will hear us, and then the section of the floor rises up and separates, revealing an opening. Peering down, I see a ladder, vanishing deeper into the darkness.
“…after you?” I gesture to Haley. She makes a noise that might be a laugh and climbs down. Once I’m sure she’s gone far enough that I won’t kick her in the head, I follow her down the ladder.
The ladder goes down much farther than seems possible. I wonder if it really is going deep underground, or if the strange structure of the building is interfering with my senses more than I’d realized.
The smell of moisture rises to meet me as I reach the bottom of the ladder. “Where is this?” My voice echoes around the dark chamber.
“The old sewers?” Haley suggests. I take out my phone and turn on the flashlight app.
“Seems pretty big for water drainage.” I note, shining the light around the room. The chamber is made of large stone blocks with archways on all sides leading into darkened tunnels. It reminds me of the catacombs you’d see in an old movie. Or a horror game. From the tunnel to the right, I hear running water. In the back of my consciousness, I sense something from within that tunnel.
“That way?” I gesture. Haley nods. I sigh as we head in. The smell of musty water assails my nostrils.
“Do you sense any ghosts?” I ask. Haley shrugs.
“No more than normal.”
“And how many is that?”
She thinks for a moment. “Well, there’s about twenty ghosts in this tunnel.”
I freeze. I can’t sense anything at all. I know the more sensitive to spirits you are, the more you can perceive, but I find it hard to believe there would even be that many ghosts here.
“Are they following us?”
She shakes her head. “No. Twenty is pretty normal for a room of this size.”
The room is quite small, so that’s very concerning.
“…You see that many ghosts everywhere?”
She nods.
“How can-” I struggle to find the right words. “How could there be that many ghosts around? Humans can’t have been around long enough to create that many ghosts.”
Haley gives me that look again. “I didn’t say they were human ghosts.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. As I grope through my mind for a reply, Haley raises her hand in a gesture of “quiet”.
I listen closely for whatever it is that she’s noticed. After a moment, I hear it. A faint, repetitive splashing, coming from further down the tunnel.
“Footsteps.” Haley mutters.
“…Human?” I whisper, hoping the answer is yes.
“…Maybe at one point.” That’s not the answer I wanted.
“Is that the way we need to go?” This time I hope the answer is no.
“Yep.” I hate everything.
Haley, apparently unconcerned with my desire not to die horribly, continues onward.
I follow behind her, almost tripping over her as she once again suddenly stops. I make a faint grunting noise as she places her hand over my mouth.
Her hands are cold and clammy, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness I suddenly notice it: blood, oozing from behind her eyepatch. Her visible eye is wide.
She holds her free hand over her mouth in a “ssh” motion and gestures with her head behind her, to the end of the tunnel. I nod, and she removes her hand from my mouth.
I lean forward, bracing myself against the cold, damp wall, and peer into the next chamber.
It’s all I can do not to gasp.
The tunnel opens into an underground waterway, indeed – and there, not five feet to my left, is the source of the sound.
A corpse. A milky-white, bloated corpse, standing in the knee-deep stagnant water. As I watch, the corpse shudders, then, slowly, stumbles forward. One step. Another. Then another.
Barely breathing, I look past the corpse, down the length of the waterway. And just as I was afraid of, I see another corpse emerge from the darkness further down the waterway. Then another. Then another.
I stagger back as quietly as I’m able. Haley and I share a glance, then retreat back down the tunnel as quickly as we can without making any noise. Neither of us dare to speak until we’re back in the chamber with the ladder.
“Zombies?” I hiss under my breath. It’s not like I was unaware they were possible – a human corpse, in decent condition, can certainly reanimate when exposed to extreme amounts of Hellgate energy, but that sort of radiation would usually be enough to make the entire tunnel pulse with its distinctive orange-and-purple glow. And I’m not seeing any such-
My thoughts freeze. I am seeing such a glow. But not from the tunnel. From Haley, who has turned away from me and removed her eyepatch. An intense swirl of orange-and-purple light bursts through from her left eye, and I can feel my soul thrashing, as if my very essence is being drawn out of me, towards the heart of that unearthly vortex.
I can’t speak. I can’t move. All I can do is collapse to the floor and vomit. My vision is swirling.
I don’t know if it’s a minute or an hour, but eventually, I realize the tunnel is dark. The pressure inside my bones is gone. Haley has replaced her eyepatch.
“Sorry.” She says. “I wanted to get the blood off…I wasn’t thinking.”
I try to talk, but just gag.
“Don’t…don’t ask, please.” Haley sighs. “It’s my problem to deal with. I don’t want to expose anyone else to it. Or Her.” Her tone leaves no room for argument or questions.
“You…are a human, right?” My mouth tastes like blood and ozone. I don’t even know what that means.
Haley gives me a faint smile. “According to my birth certificate, at least.”
“At least now I know why being near you makes my brain itch.” I mutter. I decide not to think about Haley’s eye for now. I’m already reevaluating my understanding of reality just from knowing about it, and I’d rather not be.
Haley gives a brief chuckle. Then she sighs and sits down. “Anyway, my eye isn’t our problem right now.”
I have to admit she’s correct. “Why are there zombies down here?”
Haley shrugs. “Guards for whatever Montclair put down here? Or maybe whatever is here attracted them the same way it’s attracting us.”
“Right…well, let’s head back up and come up with a new plan.” I say, grabbing hold of the ladder leading back up and beginning to climb.
A warning flashes through my mind an instant before the ladder detaches from the roof with a loud snap, dropping me to the floor. I manage to turn my fall into a roll and avoid injury, but the ladder isn’t as fortunate, shattering when it hits the ground.
“…Or not.” I groan. I hope the noise didn’t carry all the way to the zombies.
Haley grimaces. “Guess we need a way around.”
“Well, we can’t fight them.” My words are half speech, half sigh. “Not unless that eye of yours can do something.”
Haley gives me a tired smile. “It can kill me, but that’s about it.”
“So not especially useful for fighting zombies.” I reply.
As long as they’re within range of whatever source of Hellgate energy is animating them, zombies are basically invincible. I know of a total of one exorcist who managed to exorcize a zombie, and he did it with a bazooka. Better to eliminate the source first. Once it’s gone, the zombies usually just “shut down”. In theory, at least. I’ve never encountered one before. And once the zombies are gone, hopefully, we can find where the waterway lets out.
Haley nods. “And just because they’re moving slow now…”
“Doesn’t mean they’ll be slow once they see us”. I finish. “But if they’re guarding the…whatever…down here, they’ll probably be blocking every possible route to it.”
Haley nods again, her hand idly rubbing her eyepatch. “We need some way to distract them. Draw them away.”
“I’m not being bait.” I say.
Haley smirks. “That would be suicide, so no.”
I stick my hands in my pockets as I think, and get an idea.
“What about this?” I pull out my phone. “The label on the case says it ‘protects from falls and water damage’. I can set the alarm to go off 30 seconds after I throw it.”
Haley nods slowly. “That could work.”
I pull out my phone and fiddle with the timer. “May as well get this over with.” I mutter. Haley grimaces. Neither of us are keen to go back to the waterway, but instinctively we both sense we need to.
I tiptoe down the tunnel, feeling like a convict walking towards execution. What if the phone breaks before the alarm goes off? What if the zombies sense me before I throw it? What if they’re not distracted?
My mind is filled with visions of grinding jaws and clawing fingers, stripping away my flesh and snapping my bones. And what about Haley? I don’t understand her eye at all, but I can sense that it would be very bad for everyone if the power sealed within her were to be unleashed. If the zombies were to get her-
I almost yelp as Haley puts her hand on my shoulder to stop my movement. Walking on autopilot, I almost walked out into the waterway – and potentially into the zombie’s line of vision. That would have been bad.
I take a deep breath, nod at Haley, and press the “start timer” button. Then, before my courage can fail, I hurl the phone as hard as I can to my right.
There’s a muffled splash, and for a moment I worry that the water might not be as still as it looked, that it might carry the phone back towards us. There’s a horrible silence, like the world is waiting.
Then, bursting out through the still air, Aku’s evil laughter fills the tunnel as the alarm goes off.
With a blur of motion I wouldn’t have thought possible, the zombies charge, passing by us and towards the source of the sound.
No time for thought. I turn and head left down the waterway, trying to splash as little as possible, Haley following carefully behind me.
The water is freezing. The air is thick and stale. My body is screaming at me to turn around and check if the zombies are following, but I know that wouldn’t help. I need to press on.
Left foot. Right foot. Left. Right. It becomes a silent mantra, forcing my body onward.
Stop. A wordless prompt in my mind as my psychic senses suddenly flare. I can’t see a thing, but I know my goal is directly to my right. Behind me, I feel Haley stop as well.
Moving cautiously, I touch my hand to the wall. Cold. Metal. A door.
I grope around until I find the handle. Haley steps next to me and grabs hold as well.
“On three.” She whispers. “One, two, three.”
We pull as hard as we can. With a horrid metal shriek, the door slowly creaks open.
Back up the waterway, I hear an inhuman howl, and hear the splashing of countless feet.
“GO!” Haley yells, practically shoving me through the door. She tumbles in behind me, and we grab the door again, desperately pulling it shut as the footsteps approach.
With a heavy “thunk”, the door slams shut. Mere instants later, a series of wet splattering sounds pound from the other side of the door as the zombies slam repeatedly against it.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, as Haley sinks to her knees.
“I really hope that door holds.” Haley mutters.
“I really hope my phone is okay.” Yes, my priorities are terrible. I know. Life and death situations make your brain work weird.
We sit there in silence for several minutes. Eventually, though, we both force ourselves to stand.
“I guess we keep going.” Haley says.
We seem to be in a small tunnel of carved stone. There’s only one way forward, so that’s where we go.
As we walk, a light begins to flicker up ahead. A faint orange, like a fireplace, gradually growing brighter. Before I know it, we’ve exited the tunnel, and find ourselves in what looks like an elegant sitting room.
An opulent sofa sits in the middle of the room, before a grand stone fireplace. A number of small paintings decorate the walls. There is no sign of any other doors, so the one we came through must be the only way in or out. Across from us, above the fireplace, hangs a massive portrait of a stern-looking man.
“Montclair, I guess.” Haley mutters.
When she speaks, a feeling of incredible malice assaults my senses. The eyes of the portrait bulge and snap to stare at us. The portrait’s face contorts into an expression of rage, and its mouth opens into a furious scream.
“YOU DAMN QUAKERS!” The portrait roars. “Back for more, are you?!”
I stumble back and fall on my butt, feeling a mix of fear and confusion. On the one hand, the accepted wisdom is that if a ghost is powerful enough to speak, you’re pretty much doomed. On the other, that usually assumes that what the ghost is saying is coherent.
“Um. I’m Buddhist.” I hear myself say.
“Atheist.” Haley says, sounding as baffled as me.
The painting doesn’t seem to hear us. It roars incoherently, shaking so violently I’m worried the walls will collapse. The flames roar in the fireplace, embers flying out and igniting the sofa.
I can feel the air pressure increase and the air force itself from my lungs. Only a flash of instinct warns me to dive to the side in time to avoid a burst of flames.
That’s the thing about ghosts. Much like wild animals, it doesn’t matter if they seem silly – they’re still able to kill you. Hippos look slow and friendly looking, but they kill 3000 people a year. A painting of an old man screaming about Quakers is still able to turn the room into a tornado of fiery death.
I dive to the floor and hit the ground rolling as another blast of flames soars over my head. I take an instant to confirm my hair isn’t on fire and look around for Haley, spotting her curled up against the nearest wall.
“What now?” I hiss, crawling towards her.
“Unless you have a fire truck in your pocket, I’m out of ideas.” Her reply is muffled by the roaring of the flames. “If I could just get close to that painting I could do something!” She growls, frustrated. I guess that’s better than fear.
I don’t have any psychic powers involving flames, sadly. In fact I don’t think that’s even a thing. If only I had water, or-
My thoughts cut out. I turn back to Haley. “I’m about to do something extremely stupid, so please wish me luck.”
She raises her visible eyebrow, but nods. “I’ll keep General Mills here busy as long as I can, but be fast please. I’m not fireproof.”
I turn and dive back for the hallway as Haley removes her eyepatch. There’s a horrific howling and I feel the temperature become frigid even as the flames roar past, but I don’t dare turn around. Pushing myself as hard as I can, I force my protesting muscles to propel me back down the tunnel, back to the huge metal door. I’m painfully aware that if the flames were to fly behind me now, I’d have no chance to avoid them. The tunnel could quickly become an oven.
I grab hold of the door’s handle and tug as hard as I can. I really need to start lifting weights.
With a horrible groan the door opens. Instantly, I hear splashing and howling from the other side as the soaking corpses surge towards me once more. I turn and run, back towards the inferno.
The wet slapping sounds of countless bloated feet pound in my ears. I feel – or imagine I do – icy breath on my shoulders.
The light grows before me, the howling of the zombies mingling with the roar of the flames and screams of the portrait. With my last burst of strength I hurl myself forward, rolling to the side as the stone floor peels flesh from my arms. Out of the corner of my eye I see the wet, milky feet of the zombies flow past like a horrid river. There’s another loud blast of flames, and I have an instant to register the remains of the sofa flying directly at me. Then, for several minutes, I see and hear nothing.
The first thing I notice is the pain. Then the itching. I’m covered in scrapes and bruises. Nothing feels broken, thankfully. More thankfully, the fact that I feel anything means I’m probably still alive.
Groaning, I force myself to a sitting position. The remains of the sofa are scattered across the floor, including a bloody chunk of wood. Going by the pounding in my head, I assume that’s the part that hit me. Haley is collapsed next to me, breathing heavily. Her eyepatch is soaked through with blood once again.
“Did… did it work?” I finally manage to say.
“Depends.” Haley mutters. “Was the plan that the zombies would attack the fireplace and give me an opening, or that they’d kill us less painfully than the fire?”
“The first one.”
“Then yes.” She manages a smile. “The zombies charged right into that firestorm. And while they were being incinerated, I dealt with the painting.”
I look around. Only a few faint embers still smolder in the fireplace. The painting lies on the floor before it, still and lifeless as the day it was painted.
“How the hell did…mleh.” I’m too tired to use words. I gesture at the painting vaguely.
Haley shrugs. “Clearly cursed of some sort. Important enough to Montclair that he built that whole gallery to hide it.”
She slowly stands. “Maybe he was going for some sort of Dorian Gray thing.”
“Didn’t seem to do much for his mind.” I mutter.
“Well, it’s just a theory.” She shrugs again. “We could find out for sure, I guess.”
I know what she’s referring to.
Locations have memories. Important events leave indelible impressions.
A skilled exorcist can sometimes draw clues from them. Personally, I’ve never managed more than a single scattered impression (usually accidentally), but some powerful psychics can supposedly get entire narratives. With how powerful Haley is…
“Sure.” I nod.
“Alright.” Haley kneels by the painting. “Can you lend me a hand?”
I’ve never done something like this before, but instinctively I know what to do. I feel my mind expanding, my soul wrapping itself around Haley, strengthening her.
Time seems to slow. Vague images pass through my consciousness. A visitor. Someone Montclair never met before, but who he instinctively knows. Someone he fears. A gift. Instructions. A pressure inside Montclair’s mind, guiding him.
The images stop so suddenly that I jolt back, slamming my head into the wall. Spots fill my vision. Beside me, Haley collapses to her knees, retching. A huge flow of blood gushes from behind her eyepatch.
“HALEY!” I exclaim. She shakes her head rapidly.
“M-mistake.” She gasps.
“Haley, what happened?!”
She looks at me, her eye wide. “Trap. For me.”
I don’t understand.
“Leave. We need…need to leave.” She scrambles towards the door.
“Haley, why-”
”She’s here.”.
The room suddenly turns pitch black. The air sucks itself from our lungs with such force that I begin gagging.
The cold is so intense I can feel frost forming on my skin, on my eyelashes, threatening to freeze my eyelids shut.
I can feel the marrow churning in my bones, my blood alternating between frigid and burning. The world seems to be pushing inward, the very universe trying to crush me.
A sudden pulse of orange and purple lightning flashes through the room, illuminating the figure standing – hovering – across from us.
A woman, impossibly tall, every inch of her skin covered in horrific scars, her eyes nothing but black voids. She hovers in the air, moving slowly, leisurely, towards us.
A smile stretches across her face. Stretches too far.
Every psychic sense feels overwhelmed. This presence is barely even recognizable as a ghost. It’s too alien. Too powerful. The only certain thing my senses tell me is that trying to fight is hopeless.
“Haley.” The whisper comes from everywhere and nowhere. Too quiet to hear. So loud it deafens.
Playful.
Cruel.
I feel Haley’s cold hand grab mine, drag me forward. I shut my eyes, close off my soul. I can’t feel it. The sheer malice feels like enough to stop my heart.
I drag myself forward, my limbs numb and rubbery. I feel Haley ahead, pulling me forward into the tunnel. Like swimming through freezing quicksand.
“Haley.” The whisper echoes through our bones. She’s not chasing. She doesn’t need to. I can sense her behind us, moving at the same leisurely pace. She knows we’re doomed. We’re exhausted. Weakened. It won’t be long before we collapse here, in this prison prepared for us centuries ago.
Distantly, I hear the sounds of running water. Like the flow in the waterway has picked up.
I remember what the tour guide said about some of the rooms flooding.
“Haley.” I feel my vocal cords fighting against me, like they’d rather tear themselves apart than let me speak. “Fire. Made smoke. Museum has sprinklers.” I can’t manage complete sentences, but Haley nods as she comes to the same realization as me. If the pipes in the building still don’t work properly, then there’s a chance some of those rooms might have flooded again. And if so, the best place for the water to drain would be here, through the hidden waterway.
I can smell water up ahead. Haley’s hand is cold and trembling. I’m sure I’m shaking too.
The spirit keeps up the leisurely pace behind us. The sheer malice is suffocating.
The sound of water is louder. Roaring.
Behind us, I feel a sudden change. The spirit has realized what we’re doing. It’s moving faster, trying to cut us off.
I push my legs to move faster. Every muscle is screaming. The ghost’s mere presence is sucking the life from my cells. I think I’m running. I hope I am. My senses are overwhelmed.
Something hits me, hard. For an instant, I think the ghost got me.
Then I realize what it was.
Water.
A wall of water, rushing down the disused waterway as pipes burst in the gallery above us. We made it out of the hall.
Distantly, I hear the Scarred Woman’s roar of anger as the water pushes Haley and me away from her.
I don’t think I passed out. I think I was simply so relieved as the sense of pure evil subsided that my higher functions shut down, because the next thing I know, I’m in the middle of crawling up the side of a riverbank. Haley is a few feet away, looking as dazed and exhausted as I feel.
I’m holding something. I look down, and realize it’s my phone. Somehow, it’s totally undamaged. Maybe some cosmic force decided to throw me a bone.
“You okay?” I hear Haley ask. I nod.
“Great.” She collapses onto her back. “You know, that’s twice now I’ve been saved by a flash flood.”
I wait, but she doesn’t elaborate.
“Well…” I try to think of something to say. Unfortunately, what my brain provides isn’t very useful. “You know, General Mills doesn’t own Quaker Oats.”
Haley gives me a baffled look.
“You know, you made a…you called the painting General Mills. After he called us Quakers.”
Haley stares, then bursts out laughing. I can’t help but do the same.
“Thanks.” Haley finally says, once we’ve both calmed down.
“For the Quaker Oats?” I ask.
“For helping me.” Haley replies. “I dragged you into this. I was the target…you could have just ditched me.”
“Honestly, I never even considered it.” I mean it.
She gives me a wry smile.
“And…well.” I pause. “I won’t ask about it, but…it’s obvious you’re involved in something big.”
She doesn’t reply, so I continue.
“I’ve never sensed anything even close to…that.” I don’t want to mention the spirit directly. I can’t help but worry that even acknowledging it might help it locate us. “I won’t pry, but…if you’re ever in the city and need some help, look me up.”
She nods, then pauses. “Kia?”
“Yeah?”
“Where are you from?”
I blink. “The…city.”
As I say it, I can hear something wrong with the answer.
“Kia.” Haley’s voice is serious. “What city?”
I freeze. I know where I live, of course. I’ve filled out tax forms for years. I have business cards with my address on them. I buy stuff online all the time and fill out my address.
So, then…why can’t I say it?
“The…the city.” I know that’s not what I meant to say.
Haley’s expression is concerned.
“I know I’m not in a position to give advice, considering I keep willingly walking into Her traps.” She begins. “But…maybe you shouldn’t go back home. At least not until you know what’s going on.”
I grimace. “I guess I’m involved in something big too.”
She gives me a half smile. “I wish I could help, but…well, you’ve seen what I’m already involved in.”
I nod, remembering with regret my decision to leave the wooden box back in my apartment. “Good luck to us both, I guess.”
And that was how my vacation ended. I’m afraid K Exorcists is going to be closed for a little while longer, though…I have my own crisis to deal with now.