C.H.A.R.O.N., page 13
“Interesting,” Travis said. “That might be useful. What did you mean about the tunnel?”
“Oh—the Conemaugh Tunnel was started when South Fork was at its peak. The mines were pumping out tons of coal, the lumber and sawmill were busy, and workers came for jobs. Jonah Sanders was the wealthiest man in town. He owned the coal mine, and he had arranged for a railroad spur from the main line to come right into town through the hills above,” Tammy said.
“The tunnel had accidents and deaths during the construction. But…no track was ever run through it,” Tammy continued. “The mine started to peter out, lumber prices dropped, and the rail spur idea was dropped because of cost. The tunnel was finished, but it’s fenced off since it doesn’t actually go anywhere.”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d love to explore that,” Brent admitted. “But how does it tie to the mansion?”
“Sanders lost his fortune. He wasn’t popular because he made money by taking safety shortcuts that cost miners their lives,” Tammy replied. “He went bankrupt, his wife left him and took their children, and he committed suicide right before he was going to be indicted for tax evasion.”
“Wow,” Brent said. “I can see why that might be a place with bad juju.”
“And the hospital—it’s always had a terrible death rate, even though many of the people who work there are very good,” Tammy added defensively. “I think part of it came from the nature of a lot of the injuries—crush accidents from the mines and logging, amputations from the sawmill, burns and other bad stuff from the railroads. But…Liz can tell you that the place is haunted. There are floors no one likes to work on because they’ve just got bad vibes. And the fourth floor of the East wing is abandoned—too much bad history. No wonder the place is finally closing.”
“That wouldn’t happen to be where Dr. Wyrick had his office, would it?” Travis guessed.
Tammy caught her breath. “Yes. It is. You’ve spoken with Mr. Krystyk?”
“Yeah,” Brent said. “Caught up to him at Fisher’s. I know he sounds crazy, but we believe he’s telling the truth. We’ve run into Wyrick’s kind before.”
“My mom was a nurse back when Wyrick had his program running,” Tammy said, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “She didn’t like the man. He was arrogant. But more than that, she thought he was callous to his patients. There were some who went missing or self-harmed. I don’t think anyone missed him when he died.”
“Do you know the history of the land under any of those three sites?” Travis probed. “What was there before the monument, mansion, and hospital?”
“For the hospital—that’s easy. A previous hospital,” Tammy replied. “There have been three of them built on that site. One burned—a lot of the patients didn’t make it out. One was badly damaged from floods and had to be rebuilt. The one standing now is the third version.”
Plenty of death and trauma, all on one site, Travis thought.
“And the others?” Brent pressed.
“The monument is on the spot where a strike got put down pretty brutally by the Pinkertons,” Tammy said. “Fifteen men died, dozens were severely injured, and someone set off a bomb that blew up a car and killed several of the agents. It was the worst mine strike South Fork ever had.”
“Which of the sites are the oldest?” Travis tried to figure out whether that could be key to unraveling the dark energy that lay at the heart of South Fork’s problems. “And are there legends about any of those places being ‘bad’ before what happened there?”
He practically heard Tammy grin over the phone. “Oooh! Kudos to me! I thought you might ask—so I looked it up. The mansion was built on the site of another very large house, which burned to the ground after the family who lived there—wealthy merchants—came down with yellow fever and died, along with all of their servants. Rumor has it that they caught the fever on a trip to New Orleans and the locals burned the place to stop the contagion.”
“Lovely,” Travis said sarcastically, with a glance in Brent’s direction.
“Thank you, Tammy,” Brent said wholeheartedly. “This is important information. You’ve helped a lot.”
“Really? I just followed the research rabbit hole to see where it led me,” Tammy confessed. “Glad it was useful.” A crash and raised voices sounded in the background. “Sorry—gotta go! Call if you need anything.” Tammy ended the connection.
Travis looked at Brent. “Thoughts?”
Brent sipped his now-cold coffee. “I think we’re going to have a wet, miserable, busy day. My bet is that Wyrick anchored his magic to something powerful in town, maybe a place where the original energy was already strong. We need to figure out if it’s any of the sites Tammy mentioned—and if not, where else it might be. We’ll have to break it to weaken the thought forms.”
Travis nodded. “We also have to look at any evidence that might still be at the sheriff’s. I feel certain that Wyrick hedged his bet and made a copy of his research. He’d have been a fool to believe CHARON would play straight with him. If we can find that copy, we can reverse-engineer what he did and maybe destroy the tulpas.” He yawned. “And I put out a call to all our friends who know the lore for anything they’ve got about tulpas, Shubin, and how to get rid of them. We might get lucky.”
“Do you think that either the Shubin or the tulpas can affect the weather?” Brent asked. “Because if that old earthen dam breaks, Krystyk’s ‘hungry ghosts’ are going to have a feast—and we’ll have a bloodbath.”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Travis admitted. “And asking myself whether the energies are smart enough not to kill the host.”
“They’ve never consumed more than the town could sustain before,” Brent replied, catching his breath at the possibilities.
“Some creatures seem to have a built-in shut-off so they don’t over-eat and kill off their food supply,” Travis said. “Others gorge until everything’s gone and then relocate or die.”
Brent met his gaze. “This begins and ends with South Fork. We can’t let it migrate.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Danny! Where are you?” Brent shouted, scanning the park for his twin brother. They had gone to the fair, planning to gorge on junk food and go on all the rides, and when Brent turned his back, Danny had vanished.
“Danny! This isn’t funny. Where are you?” Despite the lights and music and the whir of the Ferris wheel and buzz of the Scrambler, the fair was empty. His voice echoed, and he shouted louder, starting to run.
Brent glimpsed the back of Danny’s jacket as a figure went around a corner, slipping between two food trucks. Brent ran faster, but the person was gone, and then he caught sight of Danny’s jacket as someone ducked into a barn. He followed.
The dark barn offered a stark contrast to the sunny summer day outside. A flicker of movement in the shadows made Brent wheel around, only to find an empty corner. The temperature dropped, and farm odors shifted to grave rot. A chill breeze thumped a loose shutter against the wall, and hanging chains jangled from the rafters.
“Danny—let’s get out of here. I don’t like this game. We need to go home.” Brent tried to keep the fear from his voice but didn’t succeed. His heart thudded, afraid of what might have happened to Danny and terrified of what could happen to him alone in the cavernous building.
Between one breath and the next, Danny appeared on the far side of the darkened space. He looked pale and not quite solid.
“Danny? Stop joking around. Come with me, now.”
“I can’t—not yet. I’m trying to find my way home. Keep the lights on,” Danny said, and then his image vanished.
“Danny!”
“Brent—wake up!” Travis sounded like he’d called for him more than once.
“Huh?” Brent startled, and the dream slipped away. He realized that he had fallen asleep at his laptop, leaning on his hand.
“Everything okay?” Travis maintained distance between them since shaking someone with PTSD was a good way to get punched.
“Yeah, yeah. I drifted off for a moment.” Brent shook his head and blinked, then drained the rest of his cold cup of coffee. “I just…”
“You saw Danny.”
Brent nodded. “Did I say something?”
Travis shrugged. “Yes, but I’d already felt his presence. It’s faint and distant, but it’s the first I’ve sensed him since he went away.”
“Can you reach him?”
Travis gave him a compassionate look. “I’ll keep trying. I’ve been sending out a call periodically since Cooper City. This is the first time I’ve felt him stir. Maybe he’s finally regaining strength.”
“Or maybe he knows we’re in danger,” Brent said, getting up to stretch. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Six oh-fuck in the morning. No wonder I’m tired.”
“You weren’t out long,” Travis said. “And you didn’t snore—much,” he added with a grin. Brent threw a balled-up napkin at Travis, and it bounced off the laptop.
“Did I miss anything?”
Travis was just about to answer when Medved opened the conference room door. His scrubs were clean, and the lack of blood spatter told Brent the coroner had changed after finishing his examinations.
“Well, that’s done.” He sounded exhausted. “They were too damn young, both of them. Awful ways to die. And…the wounds were familiar.”
“More echoes?” Travis asked.
“I remembered about halfway through Kelson’s autopsy about a guy who got cut in half by a snow plow about three years back. And there was another fatality before that. Similar wounds. Just as unlikely a cause.”
“And Nora?” Brent asked.
“There was a surgeon back in the 1920s who killed four patients before he was caught,” Medved said wearily. “He liked vivisection. So the kidneys…”
“Yeah. Matched his M.O.,” Travis guessed.
Medved leaned against the wall and yawned. “That’s the extent of what I learned, after five hours up to my wrists in entrails. Nights like this, I hate my job.”
Travis’s phone rang. “Sheriff. What’ve you got?”
“Video from the security camera when Kelson died. I’m going to send it over. The forklift wasn’t an accident,” Calabrese said. “It was driven by a ghost. And before you ask—Melinda found something in the old files. She’s going to make sure that whoever is at the desk when you come knows to take you to it.”
“Any photos?” Brent hoped they could get a jump on examining the contents.
“Yeah. I’ll send those after the video clip,” Calabrese replied. “It didn’t look like much to me, but your mileage may vary. Gotta go. Let me know if you find anything essential.” He ended the call, and Travis’s phone pinged with the new files.
Travis pulled up the clip and held his phone so the others could watch. Even on the small screen, the grainy gray figure blinked in and out behind the wheel of the forklift. The edges of his form blurred, but no one could miss the malice in his eyes or the vicious smile as he drove the forklift forward with a jolt to impale Kelson through the gut.
“Shit,” Brent muttered as Travis lowered his phone.
“That’s…rough,” Travis replied.
Medved shrugged, trying to play off the emotion that haunted his eyes. “After my time here in South Fork, I should be used to it. But honestly—it never gets easier.”
Travis’s phone pinged again, this time with photos. He sent them to his laptop, where he could make them large enough to examine in detail. “Look for anything that might conceal a backup for Wyrick’s files,” he told the others.
“It wouldn’t be hard to hide a data card inside just about anything,” Brent said. “A flash drive would be harder but still possible to conceal. And it wouldn’t have to be physical media. Wyrick would have been stupid not to have backed his files up elsewhere. There could be a password, an IP address. We’re going to have to go over everything carefully.”
Travis stared at the pictures and the box’s mundane contents. A wallet, car keys, papers, and some other odds and ends didn’t look like they would hold the answer, but Brent knew valuable information could be hidden in all kinds of places. They’d need to see the box in person to find out whether it hid important secrets.
Medved glanced from Travis to Brent. “We’re all beat. There are cots in the fallout shelter in the basement—I can bring them up for you to catch some sleep before you head over to the sheriff’s office.”
“Thanks, but I can sleep pretty well on the floor when I’m this tired,” Brent replied with a wan smile. “Done it enough in the Army—and airports.”
“We’ll be fine,” Travis assured Medved. “Just as long as we haven’t run out of coffee.”
Medved laughed. “That, I can promise. I order it by the case.”
Brent and Travis reluctantly closed down their computers and put away their files. “I think we proved our theory,” Brent said as he picked a spot to stretch out on the conference room floor. “But it sure would be nice if we knew what to do.”
Travis staked out a place on the other side and blocked the door with a chair since it lacked a lock. “We’ll figure it out. If it was simple or obvious, someone would have put a stop to it before now. Calabrese wouldn’t have had to call in the big guns,” he added with a tired laugh.
“We’d better start earning our pay then. Oh, wait. There isn’t any.”
“Then again, if Wyrick’s research made it back to CHARON, we could be running into the tulpas elsewhere. Be nice to know how to stop them. The next ones might be worse.”
“Aren’t you the cheery one? Go to sleep, Travis. Catch a few hours. I suspect tomorrow will suck.”
Brent wondered whether Danny would visit his dreams again, but when his phone’s alarm woke him three hours later, he knew his brother had not returned. Sadness swept over him, fresh grief at a new level of loss. Danny’s ghost had been a companion for so long that its absence in the months since Cooper City had awakened the feelings he thought were settled long ago.
“No word from Danny?” Travis sat up, stretching and twisting.
Brent shook his head. “I knew it was a long shot but—”
“You miss him,” Travis replied as if hanging out with a ghostly brother was perfectly normal. “And grief’s a cycle, not a straight line. If he can come back to you, he will. The odds are looking better than they were just days ago.”
“I know. And given everything going on, it’s the least of our problems.”
Medved came to the door, looking annoyingly chipper. “Coffee’s nearly done, and I’ve got peanut butter and crackers. Not fancy, but better than nothing. If you want a shower, there’s a no-frills one off the autopsy room. Help yourselves.”
Travis opted to eat first while Brent went to clean up. He grimaced at the state of his clothing as he stripped it off but knew there was no chance of getting back to their bags at Chris’s house until they had chased down the leads they discovered during the night. He tried not to let the pressure get to him, but Brent shared Calabrese’s gut instinct that time was running out.
Travis headed for the shower as soon as Brent returned to the break room and took his partner’s spot at the small table across from Medved.
“Do you pull all-nighters often?” he asked as the doctor put a plate of crackers and a jar of peanut butter in front of him.
“More than I should at my age,” Medved replied. “Blame it on South Fork. It’s not like the dead are in a hurry, but families want answers, and evidence degrades. Whatever nasty spirits cause the havoc in this town seem to like the night. Somehow the bad stuff rarely happens during daylight hours.” He crossed himself reflexively as if he realized he just tempted fate.
Brent’s phone rang, and he recognized Chris’s number. “Everything okay?” he asked, worried.
“Even for South Fork, things are fucked up,” Chris replied. “I’m going to open the bar early for people who don’t have anywhere else to go. Power’s out in a lot of places. The storm took down wires, and no one’s coming to fix that real soon. Liz says the library is at capacity—they’ve even got people in the old fallout shelter in the basement and the librarian’s apartment on the third floor that hasn’t been used in forever.”
“Travis and I think we’re getting a bead on the problem,” Brent reported. “We’ll be chasing down some new leads now.”
“Be careful out there,” Chris warned. “Two more people have gone missing. Maybe it’s floodwaters. But folks have been reporting creatures in the shadows. It’s insane—people think they see all kinds of things, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t find two people.”
Fuck—that’s two more on top of the old man and the bodies we found at the lumber yard. This just keeps getting worse.
“Noted. Thanks for the tip. And it’s possible that the things we’re hunting can change form depending on who’s looking at them,” Brent said, figuring that tulpas might take shape based on the fears of the closest individuals. Are they fixed or fluid? Do they arise from a single memory, or are they a composite?
“Well, fuck. That can’t be good.”
“We’re working on the solution,” Brent assured him, trying to sound more positive than he felt. “Stay in touch—and keep people indoors.”
“We’ve got enough beer to last for quite a while,” Chris replied with strained humor. “Go live up to your reputation.”
Brent put his phone back in his pocket and finished his coffee, then washed out his cup. “Thanks for letting us crash here,” he told Medved. “We’re going to follow up on some leads we found earlier. Out of curiosity, do you know if Wyrick was autopsied? Or what happened to the body?”
