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“We had a deal,” I say.
“Not with us.”
Skeletal arms and bodies shoot up from the trash-covered floor. Grab on to my legs and the waistband of my pants. It’s jabbers. A whole pack of them. The meanest I’ve ever seen. Jabbers are just animated skeletons with a little connective tissue holding them together. They’re not very strong or solid, but I suddenly have dozens of hands trying to pull me down. A few more crawl completely out of the floor and pile onto my back. I’m covered in the stinking mummified remains of pissed-off clock punchers looking for some payback from the living.
I’m still weak from the Shoggots. The jabbers pull and push me down onto my hands and knees. I drop the bag of bones. They get my right hand under the floor debris. They want to pull me under and drown me in garbage. I relax and let them pull. Concentrate everything I have into my hand. The jabbers keep puling me down. I’m almost on my belly when I’m able to manifest the Gladius. I drag it from the ground, hacking through jabber bodies and sending a shower of burning trash all over the room. The jabbers back off fast. I swing the sword, ripping through their bones as the other ghosts and poltergeists dive-bomb them, driving them back underground. Another minute and it’s over. I let the Gladius go out and fall against the wet wall, panting and holding on to my gut. I think I’m bleeding again, but when am I not bleeding?
A poltergeist drags the bag of bones to me. I pick it up.
“Okay. Now. How the hell do I get out of here?”
“That, I’m afraid, is your problem. The ceiling collapsed over the door and there are no windows and no ladders down here.”
“Great. Can I get a small fire going?”
“Why?”
“So I can make a shadow. I can get out that way.”
“All right.”
I wrap some of the old clothes and paper around a pipe and pack it together tight. Using a cinder block as a stand, I stick my MacGyver torch on top and wait for it to catch. When it does, it puts out more smoke than light. But it’s enough. I know the corridor above me, so this should be easy. Right. Because everything’s been so easy down here. I step into the shadow and I’m out of the cemetery. Go through the Room and I’m back in the passage upstairs. I sit and pour the bones from the bag into my coat pockets. I slit the lining of my coat and drop in the handful that don’t fit. I stop and fill my lungs with air that doesn’t smell like an abandoned butcher shop.
Now that I’m out, I have no idea where the others might be. For all I know, the group following us is right around the next corner, but I can’t sit here in the dark forever.
“Hello,” I yell. I wait. Nothing comes back. I call a couple of more times. Not a peep. I’m pretty worn out. Maybe I’m not shouting as loud as I think. I take out the Colt, cock the hammer, and fire two shots into the ceiling.
A few seconds later I hear shouts and see pinpoints of lights in the distance. If it’s the other team, I’m not going to be happy. If it’s another pack of ghosts, I’m fucked. I slide behind a big concrete boulder that blocks half the hallway and cock the Colt again.
I hear her before I can see her clearly. I know the sound of her sneakers slapping on the floor as she runs. I stand and she hits me like a little leather freight train. Candy throws her arms around me. I’d do the same to her, but she has my arms pinned.
“This is because I like you,” she says. She lets go and punches me in the arm.
“Ow.”
“And that’s for disappearing again.”
“It’s good to see you too, baby.”
I kiss her and feel the others crowd in around me, hands helping me stand up straight.
Brigitte reaches into one of my coat pockets and pulls out some bones.
“Look. You’ve brought presents for everyone.”
“Don’t lose any of those. I promised some dead people I’d get them out of this dump.”
“We have to find our own way out first,” says Traven.
I look around for Delon.
“How’s that coming, Paul?”
He nods somewhere down the corridor.
“We found the door the Grays pointed us to.”
“Show me.”
