Pennies for the Ferryman - 01 (42 page)

Berry was obsessed with cartography and enjoyed it when I printed out maps for him to look at in the evenings. Like I said, they were a bit quirky, but interesting enough, nonetheless.

“Those Spanish soap operas are much better than the ones in English, trust me.”

I shrugged, “Dunno, maybe if I could understand them, they’d make more sense. Usually there’re a couple of women yacking away, then blam, they start bitch-slapping each other.”

Amos laughed,
“That’s the best part!”

Berry groaned,
“Now you know what I have had to put up with on a daily basis for the last century.”

There was a light rain, so the three of us went inside. Mom and her bodyguards weren’t home yet. I went into the kitchen and pulled a bag of chips out of the pantry and fired up the computer to knock out my homework.

Opening my email, I saw the some spam and the usual garbage. It was a reminder that I needed a better mailbox filtering program. Among the ones I wanted to read was an email from Candy sent last night, hopefully scheduling our next unsuccessful date. We had the “try, try again” part of a relationship down cold by this point. Frankly, I was surprised she was still sticking with it.

Dear Mike,

First let me thank you for the gift--you sweet adorable guy! I’ll snap a quick pic of it with my digital camera and attach it, so you can see me wearing it.

My work schedule is still pretty heavy, but I’ve got a three day coming up and will be expecting you down here to rock my world!

Gotta run, hugs and kisses,

Candace.

There was one small problem with this message – I hadn’t sent her a gift! I opened the attachment. There was a picture of Candy’s wrist with a jade bracelet on it.

Time froze; there was only one person I’d ever seen wearing a jade bracelet like that, and she wasn’t a real person.
 
Grabbing the phone I dialed Candy’s cell phone and prayed I wasn’t too late. The time stamp on the email was from last night – over sixteen hours ago. I’d been in a rush and hadn’t checked my email that morning.

“Mike! How are you? I was just about to call you!”

“Candy! I didn’t send you that bracelet. If you have it on, take it off! It’s probably the focus of a Skinwalker!”

“But it’s so pretty. I don’t want to take it off.”

“Candy, don’t argue with me. Get rid of it.”

She laughed. It wasn’t her usual style of laughter either. I also noticed that her drawl was much less pronounced. “Oh, Mike, you really should check your email more often.”

“Let her go, Cassandra.”

“I told you that you’d pay. As for letting ‘her’ go, you’ll have to be more specific.”

“What exactly do you mean, Skinwalker?”

“You say ‘Skinwalker’ like it’s a bad thing. Me and the girls are just taking a little road trip. Of course you know Officer McKenna; I’d let you speak to her cousin, your friend Jenny, but she’s resting comfortably in the back of the patrol car. The poor dear thought Candy was dropping by to get her help planning a special date for you. I guess, in a way she is. Care to guess where I’m headed?”

I already knew the answer. “Baltimore.”

“Here I thought you were slow on the uptake. I’m about twenty minutes from there. You’d better get a move on. It’s just after seven and the weather’s awful, if you’re not here by … let’s say, ten, I’ll have to decide which one of these meat puppets is expendable. The short one runs her mouth too damn much anyway.”

My reply was a hiss, “When I catch up with you, I’ll destroy that bracelet and see how much you’re laughing then.”

“That’s funny, Mike, maybe you aren’t all that after all. You think it’s my focus. No, this lovely bracelet is a slave collar. Your little deputy here isn’t a very good candidate for walking, not like Sonya, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.
 
Destroying the jade won’t hurt me in the least. Uh-oh, looks like there’s an accident up ahead, I’d better let you go. See you this evening; I assume you know how to get to Westminster. William and I are expecting you. I’d normally say leave your pathetic bodyguards there, but they won’t amount to much, compared to William. Bring them along and we’ll give him a true coming out party. It’ll be glorious!”

She hung up on me and I sent Sweet to alert Vincent at his temporary headquarters while I started filling my backpack with everything I could think of. I’d assumed Poe would come after me directly or my mom and Vincent could only spare so much manpower.

People always dream of being the hero, running off to save the girl, the day, or whatever. They’re idiots. I won’t lie. I considered not going, writing off Jenny and Candy as casualties of war. The good news was that I’d probably live longer. The bad news was that I’d have to live with myself.

Like I said before, I’m not big on reflecting on the deep issues of life – or death. I fumed for a minute before yelling, “To hell with it! William Henry Poe wants his Ferryman, then that’s what he’s going to get!”

It was tempting to just jump in my car and drive to Baltimore, but in the heavy downpour and with my oh-so-good luck, I’d have gotten into a fender bender with no license.

So, once more, I climbed onboard a Ride-On bus half filled with the soaked and smelly for a rendezvous with my destiny.

Man, I hated riding the bus.

Vincent and his contingent met up with me at the Shady Grove station and the fifteen or so of us clambered onto the Metro to ride to Union Station for the MARC train that would take us to Baltimore. It was amusing to listen to some of the passengers complaining about the cold drafts on such a wet day. I huddled in my seat trying not to speak while Vincent addressed the troops.

“According to Mr. Ross, we will arrive at Penn Station, roughly a mile and a half north of our target, which is Westminster Hall and Burial Ground. We will have roughly twenty minutes to travel from the train station to the battlefield.”

One of the other ghosts spoke up,
“What kind of opposition are we expecting, sir?”

“We face an unspecified number of spirits just like ourselves. Our job is to simply get Mr. Ross to the target area and divert enough of the enemies to make his job easier. Unless you cannot avoid it, do not enter the burial yard. The so called ‘Beast of Baltimore’ also known as William Henry Leonard Poe is confined inside and at least one Skinwalker will be with him.”

There were several fearful grumblings as Vincent mentioned Poe. One of the more vocal ones, whose aura rivaled Vincent’s protested,
“Why are we going on this fool’s errand anyway? I’ve heard about the beast, his cult drags spirits into that graveyard and watch as he rips them to pieces! Even the Lord Justice was scared of him!”

Yeah, he was one of the reluctant converts from Taney’s cadre of supporters.
“True, but Roger Taney should have spent more time being afraid of the Ferryman. We go because Michael Ross is our ally. Has he not, in the past few weeks, helped several of our brethren to cross onto the next?”

Several nodded their heads. A few of the weaker ones were crossed over at Vincent’s request to show that there was a benefit to signing on with the new regime, with the promise that eventually everyone who wanted to move on would be able to.

Neither Vincent’s inner circle nor I really wanted to talk about how two ghosts who were part of Taney’s old guard were forcibly crossed over; it involved being run through with an iron poker while being held down by the others.

War wasn’t pretty. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently; the battles are brutal, and the mopping up can be just as bad, if not worse.

Vincent continued on.
“We go because our ally needs our assistance. We go because the enemy resorts to kidnapping women and threatening to kill them. We go because free of the abomination that called himself ‘Lord Justice’, we can now act as honor and duty dictates! Most importantly, we go because it is the right thing to do! Every last one of us seeks redemption and atonement in some way, shape or form. Let us take our first step down this path as one! Let us assault the enemy as one and fight like men who would be heroes!”

The colonel saluted me amongst the cheers of his men. I smiled and nodded my thanks to him. No wonder there were several statues in his honor. Hell, after that speech, I was fired up about the prospect of facing death again! It reminded me of a few weeks ago when Rusty Fletcher and I caught that movie about the Spartans. Stupid infantry - I only hoped this wasn’t my final stand; Thermopylae was no better in my book than Pickett’s charge – the grunts were just as dead at the end of the operation.

We exited the train and raced towards the church, heedless of the driving rain on a night fit for neither the living nor the dead. I spotted several ghosts trailing us. They made no move to engage us, but then again, they made no effort to hide their presence either. Cassandra might not have known how we would be arriving, but William’s followers obviously knew their turf well enough.

I ran along the streets, pulling on my gloves, feeling the grit of the iron against my skin. Vincent had a phantom knife in his hand. It was the most he had been able to make so far. Had there been more time, I would have traveled to Wilkes-Barre and begged Eva to come help me.

Most ghosts couldn’t destroy one another. Vincent wasn’t just any ghost, though. With a weapon, he could injure and “kill” one. The rest of my comrades were just going there to brawl. There was a part of me already resigned to the fact that I’d have to do whatever it was I did to destroy Taney. On the train ride up, the Colonel revealed that it wasn’t demolitions that destroyed the museum in Fredrick, it was the energy released by my body. It was our one and only trump card. Our strike force knew enough to keep one eye on me and to flee if I started boiling off the ghostly powers.

We halted at the corner of Pace and Fayette. I needed to catch my breath and survey what was ahead. The burial grounds were less than a block away and I could barely make out Candy’s patrol car parked in front. Thunder rumbled in the sky; flashes of lightning momentarily brightened the night.

If nothing else, it was like a scene from an Edgar Allan Poe story. Somebody predicted my presence here, on this night. It made me wonder a bit about fate and destiny. From my backpack, I pulled out my pipe wrench, and then positioned a short iron poker as a backup weapon. I opened a small plastic can of Playdoh, mixed with iron filings, and scooped most of it into my free hand.

Maybe I could find a way to tap into the power that confined the beast. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up in spite of the rain. There was a tangible presence ahead of me; I’d felt something similar when Taney or Eva were standing nearby. William Poe was well over a hundred yards away. That didn’t do much to soothe my nerves.

“Are you ready, Michael?”
Strong Vincent asked.

“No, but I don’t believe that the universe cares whether or not I’m ready.”

“Nonsense! You are a rare human; blessed or maybe cursed with a unique gift. If you do not matter, then I say that no one does.”

Vincent was wasted as a soldier; he should have been a motivational speaker.

My reply was quoted from another man who lost his life in Pennsylvania, only closer to my time than the Colonel’s.

“Let’s roll!”

Several ghosts eager for a fight charged out through the openings in the metal fence. It made me wonder how much the people that built this place had actually known. Vincent was on my left and Corporal Berry my right as the first group came towards us. I didn’t have any of Chuck’s pneumatic contraptions because they would have looked suspicious, traveling on the train. The poker had been gift wrapped and the wrench was on a tool belt.

Unlike the confined spaces of Taney’s museum, this area was fairly open. There was plenty of room for a fight. The first group headed straight for me. I clubbed the first one with the wrench, which was the sign for fights to break out all along the north side of the street. We weren’t as outnumbered as I feared, but I was still fighting two of them – ghosts who glowed as brightly as Vincent. One was armed with a club and the other wore an Orioles uniform, carrying a baseball bat.