Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (40 page)

We were hovering, and I felt their reluctance. Now that we were
here to witness the dead, none of us wanted to, not even Father Skinnyjeans and his patient dogs. The train tunnel was barely in
view; all we had to
do was go down this frosty gravel path, around a little bend, and into that dark hollow. No biggie. I swallowed hard, and started down.

“All aboard, motherfuckers,” I said as I lead the way, “we’re taking the express train to creepyville.”

“DON’T GET ME
wrong,” I said, staring up at the bricked-in
tunnel. To the left of a gated opening was a small, square hole in the wall, circled by a bunch of boner-related graffiti. “I don’t doubt that this place is lousy with ghosts, but that doesn’t mean—”

Something inside the tunnel moaned, and all the little hairs on the back of my neck tripped up in unison. The dogs whimpered and settled into a nose-down position.
Wind. Just wind
.

“Well, there's no point in all of us being eaten by a poltergeist, so I'll just-” I backed rapidly away from the hole in the wall and Harry hooked me by the elbow. My snow suit legs went
schlllllllllip
. “So I’ll just go first, shall I?”

“You are ever so brave, my pet,” Harry’s voice dripped sarcasm.

“I’m warning you guys,” I said, “if something jumps out of the dark while I’m halfway through this hole, I will pee. I will pee
forever. And it'll be inside this stupid marshmallow suit, so I will die like some pee maggot float nobody ever wants in the Macy's parade.”

My knees crunched in the snow as I got down in front of the square opening in the wall. The stone was damp and slick, a
revolting shade
of grey-green. My suede gloves would definitely need to be dry-
cleaned after this little excursion. I stuck my head in to look inside, and instantly drew out with a loud, “Nope!”

“Dear?”

“It’s
bad
in there,” I said, letting the tone of my voice and a
shuddery little
unghh
describe what mere words could not. I did not wait for their encouragements or reprimands; I tried again, tucking my head in, holding until the jitters passed, tucking my shoulders in, waiting for some unseen horror to lunge out of the dark and eat me head first. When nothing did, I inched further, and was almost through when one of the dogs barked sharply; I jerked, losing my grip on the
stone and tumbling the rest of the way in. I shot to my feet, assuming a
karate stance. I’m sure any ghosts in the tunnel were mightily intimidated, even though I don’t know karate, and punching a ghost
seems like it wouldn’t be a very effective deterrent.

Harry chuckled, which must have opened some sort of stress-busting floodgate for Father Scarrow, who guffawed loudly.

“Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck you both so hard.”

“My own darling, are you quite all right?” Harry said through his merriment, gliding forward toward the wall hole. “If I might suggest a course of action?”

“Not necessary,” I called, poking my head back out.

“Do you mean to say this concatenation of events—“

“Totally planned,” I fibbed. “Scaring off any wild animals and such.”

“As one does,” Harry said agreeably.

“Like Bear Grylls does,” I said. “You bet your ass.”

“What do you see?” Scarrow asked.

“A whole lot of fucking dark, since I'm inside a walled-off tunnel, at night, in a snowstorm, you cross-stroking wankbasket.” I
dug out my phone and turned on the flashlight app, shining it into the depths of the tunnel. It was low, rounded, quiet-but-not, dark-and-darker, and it felt terribly unwelcoming. Some ass-clown had apparently been playing Pennywise, because there were broken balloon husks strewn
on the ground. Rotted railroad ties were coated with a layer of
glittering
frost. The mud between the ties looked slippery, and there were footprints in it. Big ones.
Big floppy clown shoes?
“Because that’s exactly
what I need, Brain. Invoke a Stephen King monster while I’m down here. I bet this suit don't float.”

The light from my phone illuminated thick moisture in the air that was probably, with my luck, full of mold spores and hanta virus.

“MJ?” Harry called. “What do you see?”

“I see nothing,” I concluded. “I see squat in a bucket of nada. Is that what I'm supposed to be seeing?”

“How precise is my darling,” Harry marveled.

“Fine. I see rather informative graffiti telling me to go fuck myself. Might do that later. Also, Big Ben was here,” I said. “That
seems to be important, as it is repeated several times in various colors of spray paint. Maybe these are his footprints.”

“Anything
useful
, ducky?”

“Well, some contrary punk wants me to ‘party hard’ but also ‘get out while I still can’. Sure wish he’d make up his mind.” Harry made an impatient noise, and I moved my phone around to spread the light. “There are some frozen white mushrooms that I wouldn’t eat if you paid me in solid gold dildos. Bat guano. Some frayed rope. And
a condom wrapper. Two.” I moved deeper into the tunnel. “There’s water to the left; I don’t know how deep it is, and I don’t want to. Old plastic water bottles. More rope. And a half a rusty handcuff.” I
felt the
corner of my upper lip peel back in a grimace. “And now I’m thinking there must have been some creepy clown gangbang porn filmed down here. Would you guys get your skinny asses in here,
please?”

Harry reached for the iron gate across the doorway and it swung
open at his touch. He was too much of a gentleman to point out that it wasn’t locked, and that I’d squished through the grim little crevice like a dollop of foul-mouthed frosting into the nastiest Twinkie ever
for nothing.

I indicated the low doorway. “Mind yer melon. We’ll explore a bit, talk to some ghosts, get murdered, and make it home in time for Matlock, sound good?”

“Okay, we’re in,” Scarrow said, rather unnecessarily, bringing the dogs with him.

The wind picked up, slamming the gate hard. Scarrow and I jumped together, bumping shoulders. Harry’s reaction was the
irritated twitch of his thrice-pierced eyebrow.

“From now on, nothing will go wrong,” I said.

The storm outside picked up all at once. Snow whipped into the
tunnel through the bars on the gate and the little crawl hole,
pattering to the floor.

“Except the blizzard,” I amended.

Thunder rolled overhead.

“And the thunder-snow,” I added.

At the far end of the tunnel there was a loud crash and a
foomph
, and the meager moonlight that had been there disappeared.

“And the snow caving in.” I turned up the brightness on my
phone’s flashlight; it flickered and died. “Oh, come
on
.”

“We’re not alone,” Scarrow said. He pointed his flashlight into the darkness. “This way.”

“Sure, yeah, we should really go check on that oogy noise in the dark tunnel during a poltergeist outbreak. “ I frowned under my ski mask. “Meathead.”

Scarrow pointed to his chest. “You callin’ me a meathead?”

“It’s literally all I have left to say to you.” I glared and moved away from him, muttering under my breath, “Brings me to a haunted tunnel in the dead of night to get murdered in an ugly
marshmallow exposure suit. Because
that’s
how I want my corpse to look.”

“How would you prefer to look when you die?” Scarrow asked.

“Less like a manatee.” I modeled the suit for him in a slow turn. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” One of the dogs yelped, and it echoed down the tunnel. “See? Fido agrees with me.”

Scarrow let the dogs off their leashes and they started sniffing around, wagging their tails, giving Harry a wide berth. I’d never
seen
dogs capable of ignoring a revenant before; Scarrow was, if anything good could be said of him, an excellent trainer. The priest got out
various gear from his pack and started a sweep. He informed me that he was getting no EMF hits at all. I moved deeper into the tunnel, doing my best not to roll my eyes.

“Well, Harry?”

“Forgive me, ducky, I feel no presences with us at this time.” He swept the tunnel with a gaze full of distaste. “Above, I was certain that there were spirits, but now I sense nothing.”

One of the dogs was nudging something with his snout and made a snuffling noise. Frog and bat bodies littered the floor in the middle of the tunnel, frozen, just as Scarrow had said.
Other, more
professional
preternatural scientists would use the term “teterrimous” to describe the pile of frozen frogs, but that’s just fancy talk for “foul and fucked up.”

My science kicked in. “Frogs don’t freeze in winter. The high glucose in their blood acts like antifreeze.” I squatted. “These poor
things look deflated. And why did the bats not migrate to a more suitable cave or tunnel if they couldn’t hibernate here?”

Scarrow was staring at Harry with shrewd eyes, head cocked to one side, calculating. “Britney was able to see three specific,
reoccurring
ghosts in this tunnel; Old Man with Flowers, Train Engineer with Hat, and Limping Boy. Perhaps these spirits do not like the
atmosphere in the tunnel tonight.”

Harry drew himself up to full height and gave an insulted sniff.

“This shit is five different kinds of crazy,” I said, checking my phone battery. I had charged it fully before coming; it was so flat
now it wouldn't even display the low battery warning. I tucked it in one of the zippered pockets of the snow suit, took my backpack off my
shoulder, propped a knee in front of me so I could put my bag on it and not the icky ground, and rummaged. “It’s a good thing I brought Smarties; I’m gonna need the extra smarts.”

“That’s what you need,” Scarrow said. “Sugar.”

“I brought lots of candy. I stopped at the Bulk Barn before we came. Candy helps me think. I’ve got Fuzzy Peaches, Hot Lips, Bottle Caps, Pop Rocks.
Why don’t you want to use an Ouija board?”
I held out a candy bar. “Big Turk?”

Father Scarrow came to an abrupt halt. “I told you not to bring one of those here.”

“Got a problem with Turkish delight?”

“You brought an Ouija board.”

“Would I do that?” I said, offering him a little box of candy. “Nerds?”

“If you use a scrying board you throw open a portal to the other side loudly enough to alert every single spirit in the area to our presence.”

“And the poltergeist responds by taking a double shot of crazy?”

“We must be
subtle
in our approach,” Scarrow said.

“Tell
her
that,” I snarled, rolling up my ski mask to my brow ridge. “Are these bruises
subtle
?”

“There’s no way to tell who’s going to come, but if you’re asking for spirits, you’re going to get one,” Scarrow told me. “You just have to hope that the right one is listening.”

“You are,” Harry paused to weigh his words dramatically, “misinformed.” Harry turned away from Scarrow as though he had
expected nothing better. “There are ways to contact a specific spirit, ways that would never have been imparted to the likes of you.”

“The likes of me,” Scarrow repeated, and I heard the edge creep into his voice. “You, a man who made a pact with a devil, dare to look down on me?”

 Harry allowed himself a smile of superiority. “Kinship of the Departed imparts to the revenant answers to questions you would
not have the wisdom to ask. The dusky wings of death part to give the revenant a glimpse of the enigmas of the soul and spirit—“

“The soul and spirit are one and the same,” Scarrow said.

“I have no doubt that you believe so,” Harry parried, happy to dance with the holy man, “but you are not entrusted with the many secrets of the dead, priest, mysteries you are neither worthy of nor entitled to.”

“Boys,” I said. “Stop cock-fencing and focus. This is about speaking with the ghosts. You two are going to have different approaches.”

“We need to be careful,” Scarrow warned, making the clear decision to ignore Harry’s taunts. “Inviting spirits parts the veil. Once parted, you can’t just change your mind. It’s like hosting a
party. You may very well get uninvited guests bent on causing trouble.”

“Well, if assholes crash your party, you call the cops. What do you do if a rowdy spirit crashes your invite?”

Scarrow shook his head. “That’s precisely my point. There are no ghost cops who will deal with the intruder.”

“Can’t your dogs scare them off?”

“My dogs
find
ghosts, they don’t chase them off.” The dogs in question didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. One had settled
in a bored sit near the gate. The other was lapping grungy water
from the rill along the side of the railroad ties.

“So how do you dismiss an unwanted ghost?” I said, and the Blue Sense abruptly roared to life.

I had to work hard to keep the sudden insight off my face, and
Harry turned his back on the priest to give me a
surely-you-felt-that
stare. And I had. Father Scarrow most certainly did
not
want us to
dismiss any ghosts, which was odd, considering he was passing himself off as an exorcist, and getting rid of unwanted spooks, specters, and spirits was pretty much the definition of the job. Sending lost souls to the light and to perfect peace, that’s what he’d always claimed. Saving those who could be saved.

I tested him. “So, no scrying board?”

“No. Absolutely not.” One of the dogs gave a nervous yelp at the
anxiety in his master’s voice, and Scarrow settled him with a soft
noise. “Too dangerous.”