Deep Trouble Read online

  Now would be a good time for Jacques the Trapper and Musket Guy to show up again, especially if their ghostly ax and bullets worked on another spirit. Just my luck, they didn’t show. Mad Anthony, on the other hand, felt more solid than ever before.

  I struggled to breathe and knew I couldn’t take much more. No matter how I kicked and bucked, I couldn’t dislodge my Revolutionary assailant. Black edged my vision, and I wondered if I’d been the lucky one to push Mad Anthony over the edge into murder. I tried grabbing for the ghostly arm with my left hand and slapped out with my right to steady myself.

  My hand came down on something solid and metal, and I realized it was the old time capsule. Mad Anthony felt more real than ever, and that’s when I knew I’d managed to find what I was looking for.

  One of his missing bones was in that time capsule.

  All I had to do was live long enough to open it up and give the damn thing back.

  I grabbed the time capsule by the handle, swinging it at Mad Anthony. The box must have had some iron content because the ghost vanished, and I could breathe again.

  I remembered a sign in the entranceway saying something about “new additions” to the exhibits. The display case sign, still standing amid the broken glass, said that the time capsule was part of a new “Twentieth Century” update. I stared at the box still held in a death grip and decided that I really needed to see what was inside.

  The bang of a musket shot sounded close enough to make my ears ring, and if the bullet had been real, it would have either parted my hair or gotten me between the eyes. “Quit that!” I yelled. I knew the phantom ax was coming next, but to my surprise, instead of sounding like it hit the wooden support posts, I heard the thunk of metal on metal, and the lid of the time capsule sprang open.

  Maybe the other ghosts were tired of Mad Anthony, too.

  Trying to navigate around the broken glass, I lifted the open box and set it on one of the waist-high display cases in the middle of the room. I brushed the glass fragments out of my palms as best I could and tried not to bleed on anything historic. My flashlight revealed the contents of the capsule, and I had a little thrill of excitement, my very own Indiana Jones moment.

  It’s funny what people think will be important in the future. The box held newspapers and a telephone book, along with political campaign buttons, a Sears catalog, and a list of predictions about what the world would look like when the capsule was finally opened. I was pretty confident that no one had predicted that the newspapers, phone book, and Sears catalog would be extinct, or that most people would spend all day walking around staring at the phone in their hand.

  I shook the box, and it rattled, so I kept on digging. Beneath all the paper, I found a yellowed finger bone with a note wrapped around it and tied with twine. The note read, “found during the widening of Rt. 322, a bone believed to belong to General Anthony Wayne.”

  Shit. This was it, the new arrival that prompted the spook-a-palooza. Now all I had to do was figure out what to do with the bone to make Mad Anthony go away.

  The spirits downstairs had gotten quiet, and I could feel the presence of the ghosts around me, watching. Maybe Musket Guy and Frenchie had been roused from their long sleep by Mad Anthony’s ghost and just wanted to be rid of him so they could rest. Could it be that the Revolutionary War general had such a turbulent personality that he managed to even piss off his fellow ghosts? Then again, since Mad Anthony hadn’t perpetually haunted the museum, maybe unearthing the time capsule from wherever it had been buried had jerked him back from the afterlife and he was just trying to get home.

  “Hold your horses,” I yelled at the empty room. “I’ve gotta come up with a plan.” For all I knew, Mad Anthony and the other spirits also had ghostly horses, and I envisioned them grabbing the reins and waiting for orders. I pulled out my phone and did a little research. In this case, hitting “pay dirt” was real.

  “Hey, Mad Anthony,” I called out. “If you quit choking me, I can get your finger bone back to where your flesh is buried. Can we have a truce? Because if you strangle me, they’re going to put your bone back in the iron case and you’ll have to wait for another sorry bastard to figure the whole thing out.”

  Nothing stirred, which I took to be a good sign. I looked around at the ruined display and the broken glass and figured that my bosses were going to get a bill from the museum. Still, if this solved their ghost problem, they might not mind, and I’d admit that this was probably the most unusual way I’ve ever been given the finger.

  I tucked the bone into my pocket and headed downstairs. Officer Dougherty was still on watch, and I figured he’d headed off any unwanted police attention my noisy nocturnal foray might have attracted. I thanked him, and he gave me a snappy salute, then walked away.

  Reburying Mad Anthony could pose a problem since his son had him dug up hired a doctor who boiled the corpse, scraped the flesh off the bones, and then reburied the squishy parts. The water and the tools used to do the deed were still in Erie, while his son took the bones back to Georgia, losing some—like his finger—along the way.

  I was not in the mood to drive that far south, so the Erie site would have to do. A little time on Google revealed that while Mad Anthony’s bones had been reburied on the site of an old Revolutionary War blockhouse fort, the original fort burned down long ago. But a reconstructed blockhouse held the general’s tombstone. I figured that was my best bet. I pocketed the bone and headed back to my truck.

  Fortunately, the Wayne Blockhouse wasn’t all that far from the Eagle Hotel, so it was still the middle of the night when I arrived. I slipped onto the grounds and grabbed a shovel and my hoodie out of the toolbox in the back of the truck. Once I got to the door, I hesitated, debating whether to break in and somehow return the bone to the tombstone inside or put it back into the ground in which Mad Anthony’s body had first been interred. It was three in the morning, and I was cold and tired. I opted for the easy choice, found a spot near the blockhouse wall, and started to dig.

  I wondered what Mad Anthony had made of being dug up, boiled, and reburied. The stories about his ghost focused on the missing bones along what’s now Route 322, so I guess he was more attached to them than the rest, but still, it didn’t seem like the most reverent way to treat a hero of the Revolutionary War. Then again, he’d been part of the genocide against Native Americans, so maybe Mad Anthony got what he deserved. His choking kink made me wonder even more about just what sort of guy the general really had been.

  I dug a suitably deep hole, about a foot deep and as wide as a shoebox, and bent down to put the bone inside. Maybe Father Leo would want to stop by and bless the spot, for good measure. All I cared about was that ghosts had stopped trying to kill me and that after a few more shovelfuls of dirt, I could head back to my comfy bed.

  “Freeze and put your hands in the air.”

  Fuck. I was busted, and there was no good way to explain why I was burying human remains. I dropped the shovel and raised my hands.

  Just then, I heard the cop begin to sputter and gasp. I turned, keeping my hood up to shield my face, and saw the cop caught in the grip of an invisible madman. Before I could warn Mad Anthony to take it easy, the cop sank to the ground, still breathing but out cold.

  “Thanks, but you’ve got to quit doing that,” I muttered, filling in the last dirt and smacking it down with the back of the shovel. “Go back to sleep. We’re done here.”

  For a few seconds, the ghost materialized, looking like he did in his portrait at the museum, still wearing his Revolutionary War uniform and tricorn hat. Mad Anthony saluted me, then vanished. I grabbed my shovel and vamoosed before the cop woke up.

  Once I headed back to my cabin in Atlantic, I called Father Leo, feeling not a bit sorry about the ungodly hour.

  “It’s done,” I said and filled him in on the basics. “The part at the museum went a lot smoother with Officer Dougherty watching my back,” I added.

  “Charles Dougherty?” Leo asked, but
I couldn’t figure out why he sounded amused.

  “Maybe. The nametag had a ‘C’ for the first name.”

  Leo described the man.

  “That’s him.”

  “His daughter runs the restaurant at the Eagle Hotel. She’s the one who called us in on this. But Charles Dougherty’s been dead for a couple of years now. It’s really been your night, Mark, hasn’t it?” Leo replied.

  Chapter 3

  “Let me get this straight. Your son was using an ancient grimoire to raise the dead, and you thought it was part of a role-playing game?” I stared at the woman who sat at her kitchen table, twisting a dish towel between her hands.

  “It looked hokey, and I figured it was fake, all right?” Veronica Ellerbee replied, looking up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I mean, it had a fake eyeball in the middle of a leather cover, and a bunch of weird drawings and mumbo jumbo. I thought he’d gotten one of those Caves and Cryptids games and was putting together a campaign.” She knocked back a slug of the whiskey I had poured for her. “I thought if he had friends over to play the game, he’d get a social life.”

  I wasn’t even sure where to begin. Telling her that the eyeball wasn’t fake and that the leather was human skin probably wouldn’t make her feel any better. If he’d tried to use that particular book for an RPG, we were lucky not to be up to our armpits in wraiths and werewolves.

  “Do you know where he got the book?” I asked. Father Leo had already picked up the grimoire for safekeeping, and a consulting witch-psychologist was debriefing Taylor to assess whether his soul had been permanently tainted or whether he could be rehabilitated. Spell books like the one he was using for his “game” are nasty business, and if they don’t drive the user mad, they can eat away the soul and send the would-be witch on a spree of murder and mayhem.

  “There’s a used bookstore he likes—goes there a lot to play tabletop games with his friends, and he gets the books he needs to run his adventures,” Mrs. Ellerbee said. “Taylor’s a good kid. He does his homework, finishes his chores, keeps his grades up. He saves up his allowance and mows lawns to get money to buy stuff for his games.” She sniffed and wiped her nose.

  “I thought he was safe since I knew where he was and the kids he played those games with,” she went on. “I remember years ago, people said that playing games like that would turn you into a Satanist, but I never thought...”

  I shook my head. “It’s not the games,” I replied. “Trust me. I play Caves and Cryptids with a Roman Catholic priest every couple of weeks. It was the spell book, not the game itself.” I didn’t mention that having an actual exorcist in your quest party comes in handy for the rare occasions when it turns out someone used a real incantation in the game master manual.

  “Why would they sell things like that to a minor?” she wailed. “I buy my romance novels there, and they make kids show ID if they want to buy any of the racy books.”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling like I’d been awake far too long already. “My guess is that the shop got the book by mistake and thought it was fake, like you did.”

  “Will Taylor be all right?” Mrs. Ellerbee looked up at me like I had answers, but all I could do was shrug.

  “I’m not the one to ask,” I said gently. “In most cases, the damage is minor and reversible.” I didn’t want to tell her that in the worst case, the witch-psychiatrist would wipe parts of Taylor’s memory, which might or might not affect the rest of his personality if the soul-stain from the grimoire didn’t kill him outright.

  “Then what good are you?” she demanded.

  It was a question I asked myself all too often, usually in the wee hours in the morning in front of a mirror, when a hunt didn’t go right. “I’m just the clean-up guy,” I said, with a pained smile. “I leave the other stuff to the experts.”

  “Get out,” Mrs. Ellerbee ordered. “If you can’t help my Taylor and you can’t punish the person who sold him that awful book, get out.” She picked up her box of tissues and pitched it at my head, nicking me in the face. “Get out!”

  I muttered an apology and left. Part of me wanted to tell her not to shoot the messenger, but the rest of me couldn’t blame her for needing to take out her fear and anger on someone, and I happened to be handy. Since we needed to contain whatever Taylor had unleashed before it caused havoc, I needed to retrace his steps. That started with a visit to The Lair.

  Both the Ellerbee home and the shop where Taylor got the grimoire were in Grove City, a town about an hour south of my cabin in Atlantic. I’m the Occulatum’s designated monster hunter for Northwestern Pennsylvania, from Lake Erie down to Pittsburgh, and from the Ohio state line over to the middle of PA. It’s a big territory, full of all kinds of supernatural dangers, but it’s home, and knowing that I’m helping keep my friends and neighbors safe makes up, a little, for the time I failed miserably.

  “Welcome to The Lair. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” a clerk dressed in wizard’s robes greeted me as I walked into the used book and game store.

  I had to give them props for atmosphere and standing out from the crowd. Outside, The Lair was just another storefront in a strip mall. Inside, it seemed like a different world. The gaming section had fake rock walls with LED glowing runes and lava, and the scarred wooden gaming tables looked like they belonged in a medieval tavern.

  One area of the book section resembled a castle, with an elaborate mural on the wall, papier-mâché stone battlements and a fancy “gold” throne. The other area had a spaceship vibe, with blinking lights, a wall-sized vista of the galaxy, and futuristic reading chairs. Over in one corner, Dickens Coffee sold java and snacks. Fake candles glowed throughout the store, and the smell of incense hung heavy in the air.

  My inner teenage self would have loved this place. I made a slow circuit, checking out The Lair before I talked to the owner. The shelves were full of recent books, movies, and games, all in nearly-new condition, sold at a good discount. Behind the counter, clerks dressed in fanciful costumes offered new and expensive dice, gaming miniatures, scoresheets, and other RPG essentials. Whoever thought this place up was a damn genius.

  Unless he was a shill being used by dark powers to get dangerous magical objects into the hands of unsuspecting kids.

  That thought threw cold water on my nerd-gasm, and I got back to business. An inquiry about the owner or manager got me directed back to the guy in the wizard’s robes. He didn’t look a day over twenty-five, fresh-faced and upbeat, and not exactly what I pictured as an evil warlock enticing innocent gamers to their doom.

  “How can I help you? I’m Joey, part-owner and general manager.”

  “I’m Mark,” I replied. “And I’m trying to track down where one of your used books came from.”

  Joey shook his head. “That’s gonna be hard, man. We get stuff from all over—garage sales, store closings, clearances, and that’s not counting the regulars who bring in their stuff to trade for store credit.”

  I pulled up a picture of Taylor’s grimoire on my phone that I’d snapped before Father Leo took it to hand off to a friend of his from Charleston who gets rid of dark magical relics. “Recognize this?”

  Joey studied the photo, then nodded. “Yeah, sure. Figured it was a movie prop or something. I thought about keeping it myself, to add to the atmosphere in the shop, you know? But one of my regulars came in the day we unboxed everything and went gaga over it.”

  “Did anything about the book strike you as odd?” I asked.

  Joey frowned. “You mean like it was stolen or something?” He shook his head. “No way, man. I bought it at an estate sale. I go to all kinds of yard sales, flea markets, and that kind of thing to find stuff to resell and decorations for the store.” He leaned forward confidentially. “I have another business on eBay where I sell off things that don’t work for the store.” Joey took a card from his pocket and slid it across the counter. “I don’t advertise the online stuff here at the shop, but that’s got the web address,” he said
, as I took the card.

  “So, this sale,” I said, “do you remember where it was?”

  Joey thought for a moment. “Yeah, it was at the Hoffman house. I guess the old man who died had done a lot of traveling and was quite a collector. He had some great stuff, but not to everyone’s taste, you know? They were selling things off by the boxful, and I liked enough of what I saw to bid on some of the lots. The cool book was at the bottom of one of the boxes.”

  He grinned. “Sometimes, you get a hunch about things. I remember bidding on that box. It was like it was calling my name.”

  I sighed and figured Joey was more right than he knew. Malicious items like that grimoire often could sense a willing victim like Taylor, or an easy accomplice, like Joey. I made a note to check out whatever I could find about Old Man Hoffman once I took care of the immediate problem.

  “Do you have anything else from that box left for sale?” I put on my best “aw shucks” smile and hoped it worked.

  “Nothing as cool as that book,” Joey replied. “Let me see if anyone unpacked it.” He ducked into a storage room for a minute and came back with an old cardboard box. “I don’t usually let people go through new stuff that hasn’t been tagged, but if you’re a friend of Taylor’s, I’ll make an exception.”

  I don’t have any magical ability. So, as I pawed through a box that smelled like it had been in someone’s attic since the Carter administration, I had to rely on intuition rather than getting a spooky tingle from touching objects that had mojo. The thought crossed my mind to just buy the whole box, but as I dug down through the odds and ends, I just couldn’t imagine any self-respecting dark witch cursing a set of touristy shot glasses or a bottle opener made from an alligator tail.

  “Someone I talked to at the sale said the old man bought whatever caught his eye,” Joey pattered on. “I mean, he also had a whole set of kitchen jars that all looked like owls. But I saw some cool tankards and a couple of candlesticks and figured I’d make enough off them to pay for the lot.”