MalContents (23 page)

“But I can see them.”

“You drank the tea.”

Malcolm shook his head, confused.

The elevator doors opened on the lobby and as they walked through the crowd, Malcolm tried to pick out the living from the dead. Some of the deceased were easy to spot because they dressed in outdated fashions. For an experiment, Malcolm held out his hand as a ghost walked past. His hand grew cold as it passed through the spirit; the ghost didn’t seem to be bothered at all.

Outside the hotel, Heinrich handed Malcolm the keys as they walked to the car.

Malcolm noticed movement above him. He looked up and what he saw in the sky froze him in his tracks: Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of winged beings.

Heinrich came alongside Malcolm and looked up. “Minor angels for the most part. Some archangels. Another thing you can ignore. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you. And believe me, you don’t want to bother them.”

“They’re wonderful.”

The angels’ flight formed kaleidoscopic patterns which dazzled the eye. Malcolm found himself mesmerized.

“You’d better stop looking. You can become hypnotized, and then you will become so infatuated with them you won’t eat or drink or sleep or do anything else but watch the angels dance, just staring and staring at the angels all the time, day and night, until you drop dead from neglecting yourself. Or in our case, until the tea stops working.”

By sheer force of will, and thoughts of Violet, Malcolm pulled his gaze away from the spectacle.

“That’s better. Try to stay focused on our mission. Here’s the car,” Heinrich said, waiting for Malcolm to unlock it.

They got in and took off.

“Now,” Heinrich said. “Drive to the outskirts of town. We can begin our search there and circle inward. The effects of the tea should last until noon so we have about four hours. That should give us plenty of time.”

“We might have to stop for gas. You have half a tank left.”

“Still, plenty of time.”

Malcolm pulled into traffic and into trouble. Not only were there ghosts walking on the sidewalks but some of them were walking on the street. To make matters even more confusing, some of the other cars and trucks were semi-transparent as well.

The car behind them honked because Malcolm was driving at a crawl, busy avoiding the people in his way in case they turned out to be of the flesh-and-blood variety.

“After a while, you become better at discerning the real from the spiritual. Take it slow. Never mind about that fellow behind us. He can go around if he’s that impatient.”

Which he did. A red sports car flashed past them on the left, the driver’s arm stuck out his window and held high above the roof, middle finger pointing straight up.

“Barbarian,” Heinrich sniffed.

Malcolm drove like an old woman on her way to a Sunday church meeting, making slow progress. It was as Heinrich had said: after a while, he could tell the material people and cars from the supernatural variety.

Soon, they were at the edge of town in a rundown area of boarded-up warehouses. Ghosts moved about, but fewer than had been seen in the middle of town. Malcolm had never been to this area before. He braked at a stop sign and looked over at Heinrich, whose eyes were closed. “Now what? Left or right?”

“I sense something to the left and I don’t like it. But we should still go that way.”

Malcolm turned left onto a dirty thoroughfare called James Street. It was full of cracks and potholes and weeds. Litter and drink cans lined the filthy gutters. A scrawny gray cat sitting on the sidewalk saw the car approaching and took off the other way, disappearing into a broken basement window.

“Desolate,” Malcolm murmured.

“A perfect hideout for criminals and fiends,” Heinrich said with disgust. “Stop here.”

Malcolm applied the brakes as they came parallel to an alleyway. Both he and Heinrich studied the space.

It appeared much like most alleys in bad parts of towns except for one difference: a glowing, emerald giant stood at attention halfway down the alley’s length. It wasn’t the tall demon they had become familiar with; this fellow was much wider and more muscular. Within the jade glow, the thing’s skin was black as the bottom of a well.

“What the hell is
that,
Heinrich? It seems more solid, more real, than all the other tea-induced apparitions I’ve seen thus far.”

“What the
hell
, indeed. And that is no mere apparition.” The smaller man shook his head. “I do not know exactly what it is, but I do know it is an
alien
being. See how it glows? It’s the tea doing that. The intensity of its aura indicates sorcery of a high magnitude. This thing, whatever it is, is bad news.

“Maybe it’s friends with the tall, skinny demon.”

Heinrich responded with one of his shrugs, in no mood for jokes.

Malcolm cleared his throat. “What should we do now?”

The figure turned away from the wall to face them. He, if it was a “he,” crossed his thick arms and stared at them with radiant green eyes.

“It sees us but it is not approaching. Therefore, it must be guarding something down there and reluctant to leave its post. Perhaps there is a door leading into one of these condemned buildings.”

“There are warehouses on either side of the alley. When we pulled in, it had its back to the one on the left, maybe that’s the building it’s guarding. That means all we have to do is find another way into the warehouse and begin our search there.”

“A fine plan, but do you think if there are other entrances that they remain unguarded?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Malcolm said and pulled the car over to the curb past the alleyway. He turned off the Audi and pocketed the keys.

“Do you have the dagger?” Heinrich said, holding up its twin.

Malcolm patted his jacket and nodded.

“Keep it handy. As I said before, it is effective against magical beings as a stabbing and slicing weapon and also protects you from magical attacks.”

“Let’s hope I won’t need it.”

They got out of the car and locked it. Then they both moved down the sidewalk, keeping a watch over their shoulders in case the black guardian decided to emerge from the alley.

“It knows we’re here,” Malcolm said. “It may be telling its master we’ve arrived.”

“We could always come back later but I don’t think any time is a good time for this type of mission.”

Malcolm nodded and pulled the dagger from his jacket. He unsheathed it and admired the polished silver blade. At the base of the blade, a perfect pentagram had been etched. He held the dagger close to his leg to conceal it from passersby should any happen along, not that it was likely in this area.

Heinrich did the same.

Ahead was a large boarded-up window. Malcolm approached and pushed against one of the dusty wooden panels. “Loose.” He pulled at it and the board fell down to the dirty sidewalk with a clatter. “We can squeeze through here, I think.”

At first, Heinrich looked disgusted by the thought of entering the soiled building but in the end he nodded, a grim look on his round face.

Malcolm laced his fingers together to form a stirrup for Heinrich.

The smaller man set his foot on Malcolm’s hands and pushed himself through the window, swinging around at the last minute to slide inside. Malcolm heard something rip and saw a strip of Heinrich’s jacket hanging from a rough edge of the window frame.

The creature emerged from the alley.

It was a walking shadow and even in direct sunlight no one angle or surface of its body was less dark than another, as though it lived unto its own laws, either absorbing all light or existing separate from the physical rules of Earth. Even from a distance, it radiated strength and power.

It looked at Malcolm and began stomping forward, swinging its thick arms as it moved, clenching its hands into massive fists.

Malcolm, in a rush of panic, vaulted through the window, a feat he’d have considered impossible on any other day. As he landed inside, Heinrich was there to steady him.

“We’ve got to hide,” Malcolm said. “It’s coming.”

They were inside a cavernous section of the warehouse. Rusted metal shelves towered in rows all the way to the back, empty but for a few battered and torn cardboard boxes. This had been a storage area. The floor was filthy with garbage, perhaps left by homeless people who had squatted here when the weather outside became inclement. The only light here shone through the window they had entered.

Malcolm and Heinrich lost light as they moved through the rows of shelving. As they turned left to hide between the back wall and the final shelf, they heard a crash from the front.

The illumination increased slightly, meaning the thing had knocked the boards away from the window.

Malcolm and Heinrich backed into the space between the shelf and wall, silver daggers gripped in their sweating hands. Malcolm hoped they hadn’t backed themselves into a corner. If need be, they could always climb the shelves.

His hands shook, the total silence after the monster had crashed into the warehouse providing time for his nerves to jangle, his own jagged breath the only sound.

They continued backing away from the main aisle and Malcolm knew that sooner or later they’d hit a side wall. What would they do then? Would the daggers protect them against that monstrosity? It didn’t seem possible.

Far back at the end of the aisle, at the place they had entered, something dark moved. Shining green eyes gazed in their direction and then began moving closer.

Trembling, Malcolm watched as Heinrich pulled something from his pocket and hurled it down the aisle toward the creature. Sounds of shattered glass and a low groan reached his ears. The glowing eyes disappeared for a moment as Malcolm and Heinrich continued backing away.

Malcolm stifled a scream when his back slammed into a wall.

Heinrich backed into him in turn, narrowly missing the point of Malcolm’s outthrust dagger.

Together they stood in the near dark as the green eyes appeared again and began moving toward them, the beast’s tea-induced aura providing no real illumination. A low growl accompanied the beast’s approach; whatever that thing was, it was angry.

Something jutting from the wall dug into Malcolm’s lower back. He reached down and felt a round knob. He turned it and sighed with relief when he discovered it was unlocked. Grabbing Heinrich’s arm, he pulled the smaller man through the doorway with him and then pushed it shut. They stood in total darkness.

“Do you have a light?” Malcolm asked. His voice came out squeaky. He cleared his throat.

Scrabbling sounds indicated Heinrich was digging around in his bag of tricks. “Aha.” Soon, a thin beam of light played about the room.

“Shine it at the door.”

Malcolm was disappointed to discover that the door knob had to be locked with a key. However his disappointment vanished when he spied the thick metal latch above the knob which he immediately snapped into its locked position.

“It won’t hold that infernal creature for long,” Heinrich said.

“Right. Let’s get moving.” Malcolm hated the quaver in his voice.

“That is assuming there’s another way out of here and we’re not trapped in a broom closet.”

The thin beam of light flashed about the cramped room, exposing small piles of rusted cogs, wire and gears pushed back against the walls. On the wall opposite the door was a second door and it was ajar. The little cellist pulled the door open and it groaned as it swung wide. Heinrich flashed his light into the opening and poked his head through. “It’s a passageway to the right. I think that is the direction we want.”

“The direction I want is anywhere out of here. Do you see a light switch anywhere?”

Heinrich’s penlight moved around, probing the passageway.

Behind him, Malcolm heard the knob shake on the locked door. “We have to get moving—fast.”

The way ahead of them became flooded with dull light. Heinrich had found a switch.

“Let’s go,” Heinrich said.

Malcolm did not have to be told twice.

He tried closing the door between the junk room and the passageway but met with resistance; an inch-wide gap remained where the door met some friction. Malcolm pulled again but could not close it completely.

“No time,” Heinrich said, moving farther down the passageway.

Malcolm hoped the latch on the other door held long enough for them to find a hiding place or another way out of here. But this warehouse was like a maze. A claustrophobic feeling clawed at his mind.

The passage was concrete and non-descript, without windows or doors along its walls. The floor was smudged with dirt, grease and rat droppings. Caged bulbs burned through their coatings of dust, if they worked at all.

There came a pounding from behind them. The creature was attempting to break down the door with its fists.

“Do you see a way out of here?” he said, pushing against Heinrich’s back. He needed to be somewhere else fast, anywhere away from the certain death on their trail.