Dead Endings: Chapter 5

They rushed back into the hall. Gabriella shut the door behind them with a thud. She stood there a moment, back pressed against the heavy wood, and let out a shaky breath.

“All right, then. Strike one.”

Cailen gave her a flat stare and held up the screw she’d retrieved from the floor. “Trying to kill us is only worth one strike?”

“Well…”

Something moved on the other side of the door.

They both froze.

A shuffling whispered across the wood floor. The muted steps halted just short of the doorframe. Pressure started collecting, and a sense of weight pressed against the shellacked slats of the barrier separating them from the wine cellar.

Gabriella’s brown eyes flitted to the knob, and she gripped the handle–somewhat pointlessly, given their situation. Cailen held her breath.

A small object rolled under the door and skittered across the wooden divider. It spun slowly between Gabriella’s braced feet and then halted with an unnatural finality, tip pointing back down the hallway.

Both Cailen and Gabriella were staring at the screw when a flicker of motion revealed a white hand withdrawing under the crack between door and sill, the fingers slick with red.

A cold, greasy weight settled in Cailen’s gut. She turned away from the door, feeling sick.

“Easy, easy…” Gabriella murmured, though the calming words sounded half for herself.

With the retreat of the hand, the ugly knot of emotions dissipated and the air cleared a bit. Cailen took a deep breath.

“Why bother showing us anything if it’s just going to try and murder us?” she managed, through the churning of her lunch.

“Patience. They operate at their own pace and getting anything coherent out of them is a win. Working one of these things is like pulling at a knot until it comes undone. Delicate.”

“Getting a fucking wine rack dropped on us is not delicate.”

“I pulled the wrong string,” Gabriella said with a grimace. “Sorry. It’s not a perfect science.”

“And if you pull the wrong one again?”

“Sometimes there isn’t a ‘right’ one,” her friend said, and stepped around her down the hallway.

Cailen opened her mouth to say something, then ground her teeth together. Wary and unsettled, she followed Gabriella to the kitchen.

“What now?”

Gabriella toyed with the remains of the broken candle holder for a moment, then looked resolutely in the direction of the lit staircase.

“Up. That’s where he showed himself before.”

Cailen followed her gaze, but with less certainty. She was starting to get that these poltergeist-like spirits had a short fuse that you couldn’t see or measure. Their pain and confusion over their deaths mixed together with unpredictable violence. She wondered if true poltergeists were just spirits that had lost any thread of their humanity and had given into that maelstrom of violence and confusion. Christopher Markle seemed to be skirting that edge pretty closely.

She hoped Gabriella knew what she was doing, because Cailen sure as hell didn’t know what she was doing.

The staircase at the far end of the living room remained bathed in light. Cailen checked for movement in the opposite hallway, but saw nothing there or on the rising of the second floor. An open door above the landing cast a fuzzy shadow across the gleaming oak balustrade. Gabriella took a fortifying breath and strode across the carpet towards the staircase.

Cailen followed somewhat slowly, her eyes darting around the open space, fully expecting to engage in some of the “ducking” Gabriella had so helpfully mentioned. She was almost disappointed when she reached the stairs without a single projectile being flung in her direction.

Gabriella glanced back at her before ascending. A double tap-tap sounded again from the second floor, but Gabriella barely paused to acknowledge it before she reached the top.

Another lit hallway awaited them, but only one door was open–the furthest down the hall, flush against the front of the building. Gabriella didn’t spare much attention for the rest of the doors, but Cailen took one more long look back before following to the final room.

A huge, eggshell-white bedroom spread out before them. It was almost half the size of their own apartment and bordered in the dark oak of the first floor.

Cailen wept a little inside at the extremity of space. Her own bedroom barely allowed her a single bookshelf and desk. Even Gabriella’s room, fairly generous by New York standards, would easily fit within the bathroom en suite. The room’s furnishings were equally impressive: a four-poster bed draped in a cream bedspread, a pair of tall dressers framing the entrance to what looked like a walk-in closet, and a beautiful old drafting table beneath a pair of large bay windows.

Cailen saw the barrel of a rifle peeking out from behind the side of one of the dressers; she nudged Gabriella. Her roommate frowned at it and nodded at several boxes jammed up against a wall opposite the bed.

“This is definitely the place.”

“But the place for what…?”

Gabriella stepped a bit farther into the room and ran her hand over the old drafting table, fingers gentle on the well-worn surface.

“I don’t have any talent for psychometry, but something about this room seems important to him. Ghosts can only show themselves to regular people when they have a great need or a great desire…so what did he want Alex to see?”

Cailen adjusted her glasses and gave the room another critical look while Gabriella began walking the perimeter. Awareness prickled at the back of her neck.

“Gabriella…”

“I know. Keep looking. Either we’ll find something or he’ll come out and show us.”

They poked around the various bric-à-brac of everyday life that littered the room, but besides a rising sense of fury in the air, Cailen couldn’t perceive anything of importance. As she sifted through the contents of the desk, the familiar tap-tap began again. Feeling increasingly nervous, she glanced back at Gabriella just as she emerged from the walk-in closet. The light behind her clicked on and off, then on again.

Click-clack. Click-clack.

Gabriella scowled and went back in for a second look. The dresser drawers and contents on the desk began to rattle.

“Gabriella,” Cailen called. “I think I know what he’s trying to tell us. Get out of my bedroom or else.”

“There has to be something useful,” was Gabriella’s muffled reply. “He won’t say anything directly when I probe him, but I can feel it. C’mon, Christopher. Give me something I can work with!”

More things started jingling in drawers and an almost tangible smell of ozone filled the air. Cailen was plucking gingerly at the bed covers when she saw something blue around the edges of the bathroom mirror. She straightened with a jerk and hissed, “Gabriella!”

Her friend poked her head out of the closet. She didn’t even have to follow Cailen’s pointing finger, though, as her gaze fixed immediately on the adjoining bathroom.

“The playback.” Her eyes roamed the ceiling warily. “Markle is finally starting to concentrate in one area. I think we’re about to–”

All doors in the apartment slammed shut with a resounding boom. Ears stinging from the noise, Cailen reeled back and was nearly brained by a set of picture frames from the opposite wall. She ducked in time; they shattered against the far side of the room.

Gabriella took cover behind one of the dressers as a box of cufflinks exploded against the ceiling.

“I’m going for the playback!” she yelled over the rattling cacophony. “See if you can’t give me some cover when I run. Block anything head-level!”

“What?! You’re crazy! Wipe Markle first! The guy’s gonna kill us with this stuff!”

Gabriella jerked her head in dissent. “I can’t! It’ll take them both out! We won’t learn anything!”

“We’ll come back later, then! Gabriella, this is–”

A loud scraping rent the air. Cailen jumped back from the bed as it skewed sideways. A crunching sound and a cry made her whip around.

Gabriella’s hand and wrist were pinned awkwardly between the colliding dressers. The color drained from her face as she strained against them, but some unseen force prevented her from breaking free.

Cailen scrambled over. “Oh, shit…!”

She braced her shoulder against the wood of the dresser on her left and heaved. A vase crashed above them and tiny shards of glass rained down over their heads. She ignored the stinging slivers and pressed against the dresser with everything she had. Gabriella tried pushing with her free hand, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“Fucker!” Cailen shouted at the air. “Let it go!”

By way of response, more knickknacks flew off the desk. Cailen shielded herself and Gabriella from the barrage.

Gabriella gritted her teeth. “Fine. We’ll do things the hard way–I’m wiping him.”

Face waxy and tight with pain, she closed her eyes. Light coalesced around her. It grew into a burning force, spreading dazzling sparks of white throughout half the room, but then it flickered and retreated.

Cailen shoved again at the dresser. It seemed to give slightly, but refused to move more than that. Gabriella made a sharp sound of pain as it settled back on her wrist.

“What happened?” Cailen gasped, as she stopped struggling against the unyielding wood.

From her kneeling position, Gabriella breathed heavily, free hand braced against the floor. Sweat dripped onto the carpet from her forehead.

“Markle…is…” she panted. “All over the place again. I can’t…pin him down.”

The lights flickered overhead, punctuating her statement. Cailen whipped her head back and forth trying to anticipate the next attack, furiously thinking of a way to silence the spirit and unpin Gabriella’s hand.

“What can I do?!” she shouted.

“I’m going to…try again,” Gabriella said. “Get ready to…push.”

Pale and shaky, she focused as Cailen braced herself against the dresser and strained. But this time Gabriella’s light barely reached the ceiling before it was pulled back into her gasping body.

“No…good! He won’t stay put.”

“Fuck!” Cailen yelled. If the increasing rumblings were any indication, they didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the spirit wore itself out before it dropped something heavy on their heads. Gabriella was three-quarters of the way into shock already and couldn’t reach Markle to exorcize him.

Cailen could think of only one surefire method to bait him into one specific location. She stood up.

“I’ll bring him to you. Get ready.”

Gabriella looked up, hair damp with sweat. Her eyes widened under the small, pink rivulets that ran down her face from a multitude of tiny cuts.

“Wait! Not like that!”

“Just be ready!”

Cailen set the bait.

After spending so much of the last week carefully building up her defenses, opening herself up was a blunt reversal of Cailen’s instincts. It was like drawing back the curtains to let the world see inside. But Cailen wasn’t one to gently push aside the drapes to let in the morning light–she didn’t do subtle when it came to dropping her defenses. She just dropped them all.

And true to form, she was irresistible to the restless dead.

***

From her pinned position on the floor, Gabriella had an awkward view of her friend’s attempts to draw off Markle’s spirit. Cailen’s last words died in the air.

Cailen had always been somewhat “noisy” in the aura department; Gabriella was so used to Cailen’s incessant spiritual hum that she’d hardly felt the smaller woman’s efforts during the past week to barricade the flow. When Cailen dropped the careful walls she’d been constructing, however, the feedback hit Gabriella in the face like a sound wave.

Small, slightly painful mental pops pinged around in her skull, and she resisted the urge to clap her free hand over her ear. As if that would help, anyway. Shoving aside the annoying sensation, she bit hard on her inner cheek to reclaim focus.

Warm light poured from Cailen, and Gabriella squinted at the thick fibers of the carpet to avoid the glare. She didn’t need to see to track this particular force–Christopher Markle’s spirit was about as subtle as a hammer through a glass table, and in the wake of Cailen’s gesture, that blunt force was gathering, drawn to the warmth.

Stillness gripped the air for a moment. A collective pause spiked with awareness, and then a cold, concentrated sensation like an arctic blast ruffled her hair as it passed. Gabriella saw Cailen stagger back and knew Markle had pounced. When Cailen regained her balance and looked forward, her normally gray eyes were dark brown.

The pressure in the air lifted and the crushing hold on the dressers released. Gabriella gasped in relief. She put her shoulder to the heavy furniture and pushed it back with a grunt.

Her hand dropped from between them and she cradled it against her body, trying hard not to look at the purpling flesh. The radiating pain and disjointed feeling told her it was broken and spared her from ogling the damage. She couldn’t afford to go into shock just yet.

The sound of breaking glass snapped her back to attention.

Cailen, steered by Markle’s ghostly control, had walked away while Gabriella was busy freeing herself. Another burst of crunching glass punctuated the air. Cailen’s fist left a bloody imprint on the shattered mirror as she pulled it back.

“Why?” Gabriella thought she heard him say.

“WHY?!” Cailen shouted again–her voice strange, deep, and low. Markle’s fury reverberated off the tiled walls of the bathroom. A blue haze resonated with it and softly descended over Cailen’s form.

Gabriella saw it and surged to her feet, but a wave of dizziness turned the world on its side; she fell against the dresser. Cailen walked slowly back into the room.

Her brown, glassy eyes regarded Gabriella.

Gabriella felt awareness there, sort of, but through her building nausea, she struggled to separate the three overlapping auras that now occupied her friend’s body. She couldn’t say who was in charge right then. Had she used up so much juice already? She couldn’t even get a grip on her own motor functions. Panic began to seize her. She was screwing up. Cailen was…

Her frantic scrabbling inside herself finally found purchase. She felt power there, but she had to claw for it. Oh, you are going to pay for this later, some small part of her mind said.

“You should kill yourself,” Cailen said suddenly, though Gabriella knew the words were not her own.

Gabriella prepared to strike, but hesitated.

“What?” Gabriella tried. “What do you mean by that?”

The dead eyes wandered slowly down. The movement looked disjointed and uncoordinated. One eyelid trembled spasmodically.

“You should do it,” Cailen implored softly. “How long will you make me wait?”

Cailen smiled then–or tried to–but half of her face remained slack, as if the spirit had forgotten how to coordinate the movement. Happiness pulsed around her. Hope and joy.

Gabriella, feeling sick, tried to straighten herself using the dresser as an anchor. “Who are you?” she demanded.

The spirit’s gaze drifted back up, but looked past her now.

“Just kill yourself,” Cailen repeated. Her gaze was so intense at that moment, so focused, that Gabriella reflexively looked behind her, fully expecting to see another spirit there. She didn’t see anything.

When she turned back, Cailen held Markle’s abandoned rifle. A trickle of blood ran from her nose and trailed lazily over her lips and chin.

“You should,” Cailen said again. “I did.”

Her friend’s long-fingered hands, usually wrapped around coffee mugs or flying over a keyboard, gripped the rifle lovingly and spun it around so that the barrel tucked neatly under Cailen’s chin.

“I miss you.”

The fingers crept to the trigger.

With a cry, Gabriella lunged for the gun and lashed out with all the energy she had left and more. Pure white light, a flood of dazzling fire, erupted from every pore in her body and engulfed the pair, then the entire room.

The rifle boomed.

Somewhere to the left, the bedroom door banged open and a pair of dark silhouettes filled the entryway. The light stuttered, and winked out.

To be continued in Chapter 6.

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