Ghost College (The Ghost Files Book 1) Read online

And stuck with this sick son-of-a-bitch.

  He came at me again, lowering the dagger and then bringing it up hard, a movement that was meant to either disembowel me or sever the silver cord. My vote was for the latter. My hand snaked down, reaching for his bony forearm...but it promptly swept through him.

  Sigmund was gone.

  My wife’s voice burst into my thoughts: Behind you!

  I spun and watched in horror as Sigmund, who had manifested behind me, took hold of my silver cord and slashed down with the dagger.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen next—death and pain and perhaps an eternity of being Sigmund’s bitch—but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting to be staring up into the welcome sight of my wife’s beautiful, although alarmed, hazel eyes.

  “Are you okay, babe?”

  I jumped up, spinning, scanning, certain the bastard was behind me somewhere, wielding the dagger from hell. But my wife and I were alone in the abandoned office with the candles still going, but burned halfway down.

  Jesus, had this all been a dream?

  “What happened?” I gasped.

  “Let’s just say my reflexes were a little better than yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s not much to understand. I pulled you back.”

  “The cord....”

  “Of course. I gave it a tug and you did the rest.”

  “But how?”

  “Do you really want to get into that now, when we have one hell of a pissed-off and highly evolved Dark Master heading our way?”

  And just as she said that, a plastic chair from the far side of the room lifted and hurled itself through the air. I ducked and pulled my wife down with me. The chair whistled over our heads and slammed into the far wall, knocking a framed motivational poster off the wall.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Are you a believer now?” asked my wife.

  I grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the door. And just as I yanked it open, I had a brief—and horrific—image of the kidney-shaped table rising a few inches off the floor. And then we were out the door. I had just slammed it hard behind us when the entire wall shuddered.

  “Somebody’s mad,” I said.

  Only then did I notice that one of the table’s legs had punctured through the wall just inches above my head. Drywall dust rained down over my shoulder.

  “C’mon,” I said to my wife.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My cord. Sigmund has to have one, too, right?”

  She thought a moment and nodded. “And?”

  But there was no time to explain. The rumble built beneath us, and as the floor began to shake, I pulled my wife down the dark hallway, praying like hell I was going in the right direction.

  As I hung a left at a T-intersection, fairly certain I was heading in the right direction, the rumbling and shaking stopped almost immediately. Now the sound of our own pounding footsteps filled the empty hallway, and I wondered what the hell we had done.

  Talk about waking the beast.

  Sweet Jesus.

  And speaking of Jesus, where the hell was he? I wasn’t one for add-water religion, but the Good versus Evil thing was looking a little lopsided at the moment.

  Ellen and I had long ago quit holding hands, and we were now covering the tiled floor quickly. Ellen, I wasn’t too surprised to see, was pulling away from me.

  Damn chocolate pancakes.

  We came to a long glass case filled with announcements, bowling trophies, press clippings, and whatever else the university deemed important enough to encase behind glass. And when I glanced to my right, I saw a reflection of three of us running. Not two.

  Sigmund turned to me and opened his dagger-filled mouth. I yelped just as the glass burst out from within.

  My wife screamed. I did, too.

  We continued running as the glass cases burst behind us, step for step.

  We rounded another corner, and, to my great relief, I saw that familiar hallway.

  “Where are we going?” my wife asked, gasping.

  “The music room,” I said, barely getting the words out.

  “Why?” But then she nodded; she understood. “Oh.”

  As if our minds were working as one—and for all I knew, my wife was still in my mind—we hustled down the hall. I kept expecting to see one evil-looking bastard waiting for us, but, for now, Sigmund was gone.

  Maybe he knew where we were headed.

  Maybe he was waiting for us.

  We ran for the music room.

  And Sigmund’s piano.

  His anchor.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There’s an old saying about not bringing a knife to a gunfight. About then, I wish I had brought a bazooka. Michael, Gabriel, and a bunch of sword-bearing angels on winged horses wouldn’t have been bad, either.

  We burst into the tiny practice room. With all those sound-insulating panels on the walls, no one would even hear our screams as we were cut into a billion red ribbons.

  “How the hell do we get rid of this?” I asked my wife.

  “Just like you play a song. One note at a time.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “I’ve heard you play. Mating cats are more musical.”

  I locked the door behind us, not expecting it to do much good. “I’ve got music in my heart. We were too poor for lessons.”

  Ellen leaned over the keys, peering at the sheet music. “Look, the lyrics are in Latin.”

  I ran to her side, vaguely aware of the walls shimmering around us. “This isn’t the page that was here before.”

  “Because we’re in the past. Back when Sigmund was first communicating with the dark powers.”

  “Powers? Like in, plural?”

  “Evil is made, not born, Monty. You know that. It’s a team effort.”

  Yeah. I knew it but didn’t like admitting it. I glanced around. The walls were now of old chestnut paneling, complete with stains and wormholes, and the floor beneath us was scuffed oak. The fluorescent lights were gone, an orange glow seeping from a couple of oil lanterns.

  I flipped the sheet music back to the first page, and there was the title, written in fancy script: “Non Omnis Moriar.”

  “This is his song, all right,” I said.

  Sigmund was at the door, pounding on it, screaming something about his instrument. That word had a lot of connotations, and I had a fleeting vision of cramming his instrument up a dark, painful hole, but the longer we kept him out of the room, the more time we’d have to think of something.

  “Why doesn’t he just get all ghosty and slip through the wall?” I asked.

  “We’re in the past and he’s solid. It’s all real now.”

  “Aw, crap. You mean I’m going to die a century ago and I don’t even get eternal life on Facebook?”

  “Nobody’s dying here except the people who are already dead,” Ellen said, running her fingers over the piano keys. She didn’t press them, more like fondling, as if searching for some crevice that would reveal a secret switch.

  “Aren’t you going to play something?” I said, thinking a religious hymn might keep the bastard at bay, sort of like holy water tossed at a vampire.

  “Music just makes him stronger.”

  The floor suddenly shook, hard enough to toss me against my wife, which I usually enjoyed a great deal but at the moment was a little awkward.

  “The earthquake!” I yelled, as the lanterns shook and blinked.

  The door splintered, and Sigmund gave a mighty blow and a bellow of rage. For a fop who spoke Latin, he could be a little pissy when pushed to the edge.

  “Think,” Ellen said.

  “Music makes him stronger,” I said, remembering all those times I’d spun my old Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd vinyl albums backwards, hoping to catch a hidden Satanic message. “What about anti-music?”

  Ellen flipped the sheet music to the last page. “Well, if I could read
music, I’d give it a whirl. But it’s all Greek to me.”

  “Latin, honey. Please, stay in context.”

  The walls trembled, a piece of timber fell from the ceiling, and the piano strings vibrated along with the floor, creating a rising hum that made the whole journey to the past even more dreamlike. Except another chunk of ceiling fell and bounced off my skull, hammering home the point that this was really happening.

  “We need help,” Ellen said.

  “You’ve said it. I assume a prayer won’t help, since we’re both out of practice?”

  “I pray every minute,” Ellen said. “But God gave us work for a reason.”

  Sigmund slammed into the door again and it split wider, and I could see a chunk of his ugly, distorted face. As much as I wanted to punch him again, every second he was outside was another chance to come up with something.

  “Okay,” I said. “If evil is a team effort, maybe we can call on an ally closer to hand.”

  Ellen read my mind. No. She’s off enjoying some peach pie.

  She’s the only piano player handy, as far as I can tell.

  I’d rather die than bring her back and risk getting her trapped again.

  “No,” I shouted, so excited I wanted to use my mouth instead of my brain. I have that problem a lot. “It’s before the earthquake, don’t you see? This time it’s real, so she’s not dead yet. She plays the piano and goes home. Plus, we’re here to protect her.”

  Sigmund wasn’t giving us a chance to debate. He was ripping apart the door and speaking in tongues, ranting Latin like a drunken priest.

  Play us a song, honey.

  I didn’t want to screw things up, so I kept my head out of the way and hustled over to the door, ready to bitch-slap Sigmund back to hell.

  Bad move.

  He reached through the door with one hand and grabbed me by the collar, jerking me forward. My face slammed against the door and a few splinters said hello to my cheek.

  But I heard the notes behind me, and a surge of hope gave me strength.

  It was an odd tune, the notes of the same key but strangely disconnected, like one-finger Beethoven. But I couldn’t get much listening done, because a certain demonic wannabe had me around the throat with his cravat, which wasn’t half as dainty as it had looked.

  “Now you’re mine,” he whispered.

  I was about to deliver a snappy comeback, like “Careful what you wish for” or “We’ll make beautiful music together,” but he had me completely choked. He yanked my breath away and I was pinned with my back to the splintered door, the earthquake now tearing at the walls.

  As my vision dimmed, I got a blurry glimpse of Ellen standing over the piano, flipping the pages of the sheet music in reverse, while cute little Sophia played her heart out, biting her lip in concentration, as if this were one lesson she wanted to get right.

  God, please, I prayed, not caring that I was out of practice. Take me if you want, but let them escape.

  Then Ellen was in my head, somehow multi-tasking, and I understood we were in both places at once, the real past and the ethereal present, and I had my silver cord again, and I didn’t need air in my lungs, and I was back on even terms with Sigmund.

  Well, nearly equal.

  With the piano music still playing and the earth rumbling and the floor buckling, I reached behind me and poked the bastard in the eye. He squeaked like a chipmunk, which didn’t do much for his Dark Master image, but I was done fighting fair.

  The pain gave him a burst of anger that allowed him to shred the door, and he yanked me up by the cravat. I dangled like a side of beef on a hook, and he held his knife up like a butcher who got paid by the pound.

  “First you, then the two little bitches,” he said.

  “Don’t let him cut the cord!” Ellen screamed over the tumult. “We’re almost done with the tune.”

  Sigmund grinned, and his eyes shimmered red with lantern light. “Thank you for the instructions,” Sigmund said, and he let go of the cravat. As I toppled to the floor, he yanked my soul chain and my belly-button did a major ouchie.

  Amid the chaos came the crash of glass. Sigmund’s face curdled with rage. “My piano!”

  I glanced over and saw one of the lanterns had toppled over, its oil soaking the wood and spreading flames. “Burning your cord, asshole,” I wheezed through my constricted throat.

  He wrapped my silver cord around his wrist a couple of times and pressed the blade of the knife against it, and an eerie, white-hot glow emanated from the point of contact. I had a feeling this was going to hurt, and then the real pain would begin.

  He clearly wanted to own me, to punish me, to take that one piece of me that connected me with all that I knew and loved. Just as his connection was turning to charcoal.

  But I wasn’t ready to go without a fight, so I lunged at him, just as the room collapsed, just as the piano tune ended, just as past and present collided.

  Just as the Dark Master snipped the cord and stood there with it fused and glowing in his hand, lighting up his serrated smile.

  And all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Twenty

  I woke up on the floor of the music room with a sore throat, a bellyache, and an angel leaning over me.

  “I must be dead,” I said.

  “Not yet, hero,” Ellen said. “We’ve still got a few dances on the card.”

  She helped me sit up. I patted the vinyl flooring. “Is it real?”

  “Yep. Good old Twenty-First Century Earth.”

  “The one with chocolate pancakes?”

  “You bet your life.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  As I recovered, I looked around. Everything looked much the same as it had during the beginning of our investigation. Except for one big difference.

  “The piano’s gone,” I said.

  Ellen smiled, and it was a glorious thing. “Yep. When the floor collapsed, the piano fell. Not just into the basement, but lower. Like, way lower.”

  I blinked some more, trying to get used to skin and floor and oxygen and all those little things we take for granted. “Where did he go?”

  “He followed the piano. That little silver cord of yours? While he was busy cutting, I was busy tying it to the flaming piano leg. He was dragged down by his own possessiveness. I’d call that divine justice, wouldn’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure what hell was like, but if it had people like the Dark Master sitting around playing for tips, I’d just as soon try to live right.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “How did you know that would work?”

  “I didn’t. But his little slogan, ‘Not all of me will die,’ must have meant his Earthly connection was the piano. That’s all that was keeping him in both worlds.”

  “So, you risked my eternal soul on the off chance that he’d be dragged to hell by my lifeline?”

  She shrugged, and even the gorgeous swish of her hair against her shoulders couldn’t completely absolve her. “Hey, I was desperate. Next time, you do all the thinking and I’ll do all the fighting.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time.”

  She smiled, and goddamn it, I couldn’t help but forgive her. Partly because if I died, I knew a little bit of her would die with me.

  There’s a different twist on the little saying “Non omnis moriar,” one that the selfish likes of Mr. Sigmund would never understand in a million eternities. The surest way to live on is to be in love, to surrender to something bigger, to trust that maybe Good is always going to be just a little bit stronger than Evil when it counted.

  Ellen helped me to my feet. I was a little woozy but, all in all, I couldn’t complain, considering I was more or less in one piece.

  “Sophia?” I asked.

  “Home in time for dinner.”

  I nodded. I might not be much, but I know what’s worth fighting for.

  “Sounds good to me. Let’s go get some pancakes,” I said.

  She helped me into the hall. Dawn was
breaking through the windows. Outside, Faith University glowed with a radiance that was a little more than the sun could have managed all by itself.

  We made it down the elevator and were nearly to the front door when Headphone Boy came out of a classroom, dragging his mop bucket and bopping to no-doubt-awful music. He removed the headphones when he saw us.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Rough night?”

  “Hey,” I said. “You try moving a piano and see how it feels.”

  Confusion crossed his face, and the expression seemed at home there. “Like, did you bust some ghosts?”

  “Put it this way,” Ellen said. “Any voices you hear from now on are completely in your head.”

  “By the way,” I said, nodding at the mop. “You might want to check that music room. I saw a few spots you missed. And there’s some broken glass down the hall for you.”

  We went into the sunshine, and I realized I was now entering a world in which I accepted ghosts as real, though I had even less proof than I did before. Except for one thing.

  “So,” I said, putting my arm around my wife. “I guess Dr. Stevens will bill us for the piano, and we end this job in the red.”

  “Maybe we banked some gold in a higher vault.”

  “Denny’s is heavenly, but it isn’t free.”

  “I’ll put breakfast on the credit card.”

  As we headed for the car, I voiced a concern that I’d wanted to keep to myself, but what was the point of being in love if you had to be worried?

  “This lifeline thing. I’ve lost mine, so what happens if I ever need it again?”

  “Good question. But first, do you remember when I said everything comes back threefold?”

  I thought back. “Yeah, but we only conjured Sophia and the Dark Master. Who’s the third?”

  “You, you dolt. You were the third spirit.”

  “But for me to be conjured, my lifeline had to be severed.”

  “In short, yes.”

  “Then why am I not dead?”

  “Who says you’re alive?”

  “Are you trying to freak me out? Because you’re doing a damn good job of it.”

  She giggled a little and patted my arm. “Oh, relax. You’re fine, aren’t you?”