Dead Things (17 page)

“Who owns it now?”

“No idea,” I say. “Griffin, maybe. If he took over the organization he might have gotten hold of the assets.” I’m less worried about who owns it and more about who’s here.

“Do you see anybody?” I say.

“No,” she says. “Shouldn’t there be workers? Cars in the parking lot?” There might not be people, but there are cameras. Lots of them. Spaced at ten foot intervals. Okay, that’s going to be a problem.

“Front door’s not really an option, is it?” Vivian says.

“I’m thinking not.” A sound grabs my attention. A shoe scuffing on pavement? Vivian hears it, too. Freezes.

“I know you’re over there, goddammit,” Ellis says on the other side of the shipping container. “You’re making more noise than a cat in a bag.”

I catch Vivian looking at me. I’d drawn the Browning without realizing it. I slide it back into its holster.

“Over here,” I say. Ellis pops his head around the corner of the shipping container. Stops when he sees Vivian.

“Doc?” he says.

“Hi Henry,” Vivian says, not missing a beat. “How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. What are you doing here?” His eyes are playing ping-pong between Vivian and I. “Didn’t know you knew this guy.”

“You know how it is. Small world. Especially for us. I heard you had some trouble the other night,” she says. “Eric here mentioned you might show up. Was hoping I’d run into you.”

Some magic isn’t magic. When she wants Vivian’s got a voice that could calm a rampaging bull. I can see on his face that he knows it’s a lie. How much does he trust her?

A lot, apparently. He nods. Turns to me. “You’re looking to get in,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “You know a way that won’t walk us in front of the cameras?”

My paranoia tells me not to trust him. Why have such a change of heart? He was pretty scared last night. But if he has a way in, I don’t want to poke him too hard and spook him.

“Maybe. Boudreau built a contraband tunnel under the warehouse. I don’t know who else knew about it.”

“How do you know about it?”

“That’s how he’d bring the—” he falters, a shadow passing over his eyes. “Sacrifices. One branch of the tunnel goes up into the warehouse and another goes to the ritual room I was held in.”

“It’s still around?” Vivian says.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Henry, why are you here?” Vivian asks.

“I—” he looks lost for a moment.

“I think I know,” Vivian says. “I think you’re here because you’ve got a chance to put some things behind you. I think that’s a good thing.”

“I don’t want to go back in there.”

“I know. And I’m not saying you have to. But if you could show us where it is, that would help Eric and it might help you, too.”

He looks between us with furtive eyes, chews on his lip. Eventually he nods. “I don’t know if it’s still there, but we can look. It’s not far.”

“Thank you, Henry.” Vivian looks at me expectantly.

“Yeah, thanks,” I say. “Appreciate it.”

“Uh huh,” he says and heads back the way he came. We follow as he zigzags between shipping containers, checking labels, looking at doors. Raps on the side of a couple of them. Eventually he stops at one stack that’s eight stories tall about a hundred yards from the warehouse and simply stares at it.

“Problem?”

“Don’t know. Things have changed a little,” he says. “Looks different in the daytime.”

“What do you mean?” I say.

“I only saw this side of it the night Boudreau died. With everything going on I was able to get loose and find my way through the tunnel. Glad I took the right fork and not the left.” He lifts a well-worn padlock on the shipping container’s door. “Can you do anything with this?”

It’s a pretty standard padlock. Master. A simple spell spins the tumblers and it pops open. I grab the handles, stop when Ellis grabs my arm.

“Hang on,” he says. “Look. The edge of the doors.” I would have missed it if he hadn’t pointed it out. And that would have sucked for all of us. Wards drawn in very thin paint strokes, and so subtle I have to stretch my senses to pick up the magic.

“What is it?” Vivian says.

“Fire wards,” I say. “A lot of them.” Tiny spells, not much more than a flash of heat and light. But they all interlock with each other.

“Didn’t trigger them when I came out,” Ellis says. He squints. “They’re not new.” He traces a finger above them, careful not to touch.

“They only go off if you open the door from this side,” he says. If I’d opened the door we would have had a few hundred thousand tiny bursts of flame that would have made one big kaboom.

You have to admire the work that went into creating them. Whoever did it was very good. Thousands of miniscule explosives all knit together like an afghan made out of detcord.

“I’ve seen similar, but never one this complex,” I say. “This could take a while.” With spell weaves like this there’s usually a stray thread in the pattern. Some loose piece of a spell that isn’t tied tightly enough to the others. It’s like counting out tiny rosary beads. I go down a path, lose count a couple of times, have to start over.

“This is going to take all day,” I say.

“No, it won’t,” Vivian says, studying the wards.

“You got an idea?”

“Yeah. Figured this trick out in school. It’s a lot easier to futz around with organic chemistry when you can actually pick apart compounds.” She mutters a spell. The edges of the doors flash a deep red. The whole thing unravels like a sweater thread caught on a nail.

“Nice,” I say.

“Thanks. Easier to do in New York when I was in school. L.A.’s magic isn’t good for complex.”

“Oh, come on. L.A.’s plenty complicated.”

“There’s a difference. Like I’m complex, you’re complicated.”

“Point.”

“So, it’s safe?” Ellis says.

“Yes,” Vivian says. “Don’t know what’s on the other side of this door, though.”

“Let’s find out,” I say, pull the latch and yank. The door opens with a groan of metal gone to rust in the salt air. The air inside is stale, floor covered in dust. No one’s opened this door in years. Guardrails flank a wide hole cut into the floor, leading through the bottom of the crate and down into a tunnel dug into the pavement. Heavy bolts line the floor, securing the container in place. Fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling.

Ellis finds a switch on the wall, flips it up and down a couple of times before one of the old tubes sparks to life with a loud hum. “It goes down at an angle for a while before leveling out,” he says. “There are two branches. One leads to the chamber. The other to a freight elevator that goes up to the warehouse.”

He turns to leave. Vivian puts her hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“I know you don’t want to do this,” Vivian says. “But it might not be bad to see it again.”

“No,” he says. “I got you this far. I’m not going in there again.”

“You have nightmares about this place,” she says.

“Often enough.”

“Then come with us. See it and see that it’s just a place.”

He looks from her to me. “You think it’s safe?”

“With wards like that on the door? No. But do I think Boudreau’s on the other side waiting for me? No. But I have to be honest with you, if I was certain I wouldn’t be here.”

“We could use your help,” Vivian says. “Can’t we?”

I think about it for a second. I understand what Vivian’s doing, helping the old man exorcize some demons. I can empathize.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but we wouldn’t have found that door without you. Or those wards. What I said last night still holds. You know this place.”

Ellis takes a deep breath. “All right. But anything goes pear shaped and I’m out of here.”

“We’ll be right behind you.”

We close the doors, throw an internal latch to secure them. About half the fluorescent tubes in the tunnel are out, but there’s enough light to see by. Our footfalls echo loudly on the dusty concrete.

“Which way?” I ask when we hit the fork.

“Left,” he says. “That’ll get us into the ritual chamber.”

We head down the left tunnel, stopping to cast a light spell when we hit a patch of dead fluorescents. The rest of the tunnel is pitch black. A minute later we see why.

“This is new,” Ellis says, running his fingers along the mortar lines of the brick wall blocking our path.

“Obviously,” I say.

“No,” he says, glaring at me. “I mean it’s new. Like recent.” He digs his finger into the mortar and comes out with small chunks. “Two or three days at most.”

“Is there another way in?” I say.

“From the warehouse, yeah. There’s a trap door that leads to it.”

“I’ll go that way, then,” I say. “You two go back up the tunnel and wait for me in the car.”

“What?” Vivian says. “Why?”

“Somebody bricked this up for a reason,” I say. “Maybe I got Griffin spooked that Boudreau really is back. Maybe there’s something else in there. If it were ten years old that’d be one thing. But the last couple of days?”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Ellis says. “If the elevator’s out there should be a ladder. It ends in a shed at the top.”

“And the trap door?”

“About ten, fifteen feet away from the elevator. Look for a metal plate. It looks like it’s there to hide electrical work. It’s on hinges. Least it used to be.”

“I’m not letting you go on your own,” Vivian says.

“Look, something’s going on. You could help me a lot more by being in the car and keeping the engine running.”

“He’s got a point, Doc,” Ellis says.

She closes her eyes. I can almost hear her counting backward. She’d do that every time I’d done or said something stupid and aggravating.

“How much time do you need?”

“An hour tops.”

“You have an hour. If you’re not out by then I’ll drive that fucking boat through a wall and come get you.”

“Deal.”

We split at the fork in the tunnel. “One hour,” Vivian says before heading back the way we came.

The freight elevator isn’t far. Even though it’s just a simple platform it’s obvious a lot of money went into it. Safety flooring, handrails. Hell, it might even be OSHA compliant.

But it hasn’t seen much use. Old grease and dust is caked on it, except the control lever. Skidmarks in the dust expose the metal floor. So they came down this way, bricked up the passage and went back up. I don’t know if there’s still power to the elevator.

If I go up in this thing it’s going to make one hell of a racket. I opt for the ladder instead. It’s not a long climb and I get to the loading platform in the shed a couple minutes later, doing my best to be as quiet as possible.

I crack open the double doors. See no one. Sun through the windows and skylights casts a gloomy light. It looks like a normal warehouse. Crates, boxes, forklifts. A small office in the back.

I listen for workers, hear nothing but the hum of the air conditioning units on the roof. The trapdoor down to the ritual space is right where Ellis said it would be. A large metal panel with a DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE sticker on it. Next to it is a cement mixer, bags of concrete. Looks like they were going to seal this side of the room, too.

I check for wards like the ones on the shipping container, but don’t see anything. Must figure that anyone inside is supposed to be inside. That or they just don’t want people exploding inside the building.

I grab the latch, pull it open, revealing a narrow staircase. Wide enough for two people to walk abreast. More handrails. That Boudreau, always thinking of the safety of his employees. I look for a light switch when I reach the bottom. Nothing on the walls, but I do bump into a cast-iron candelabrum, almost knocking it over.

I murmur a spell and the candles flare to life, smoke guttering from years-old dust. No one’s been down here for a long time. The room’s maybe twenty by twenty, with plain black walls, ceiling and dust covered floor. A lectern stands against one wall. More candelabra.

On one wall is the tunnel door. The wards on it are more obvious, less subtle. Just as well we didn’t go through it. It’s got the same spells the shipping container had. Only we wouldn’t have been able to see these. I walk across the floor to get a better look and my foot snags on something, sending my sprawling to the floor. I pick myself up.

A series of metal links are bolted to the floor. I brush some of the dust away and see part of a circle in the floor inlaid with silver and gold and inscribed with runes. Deep, rust-red stains are soaked into the concrete.

This must be where Boudreau kept Ellis chained. Where he chained the people he murdered to create enough power for the spell. But if that’s the case, why aren’t there any Dead down here? I had noticed some dockworkers outside who had fallen from cranes nearby but nothing down here. I close my eyes and put out more feelers. Extend my senses out of the room, out onto the docks. I get nothing, like I’ve hit a wall. Like the place has been cleared of everything dead.

An exorcism would do that. Would make sense. For what he was having Ellis do he’d probably want to keep the area clear as much as he could. Having ghosts wander in when you don’t want them to can muck things up.

Still, I should at least get a feeling of the collected trauma, a sense of dread, something. I hope there’s nothing actively blocking the Dead. Some ward I’m not seeing keeping them out. If that’s the case then I wouldn’t be able to summon Boudreau’s ghost even if it was still around.

I clear a space in the dust, pull out my gear. Get half way done setting up when the floor starts to shake.

A couple of candelabra fall over. Half the flames on the candles still standing sputter, go out. I’m here to call the Dead. Looks like the Dead are calling me.

There’s an implosion of light on the other side of the room. A ghost, hazy but solidifying fast. The feel of magic buzzes along my skin like static. And all those missing dead? Found ’em.

They swarm into the room, a seething tornado spinning around this one ghost. The strength of their collected personalities hits me a like a sledgehammer, a screeching whine in my head. And through all that noise, one ghost punches through loud and clear.

Any doubts that Boudreau has come back are gone.