The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (23 page)

H
e noticed in suspicion that Old Sack at the back of the line kept letting the new arrivals go before him.

Oh, I see
. He remembered very well how concerned the headmaster ghost had been about protecting the school’s reputation above all.

Old Sack
wanted to go last so that the other ghosts wouldn’t hear whatever it was he wanted to say to the medium. Jake couldn’t help smirking at the irony, though.

S
urely Madam Sylvia was the very embodiment of all the superstitious, hocus-pocus, unexplainable stuff the headmaster would have disdained during his rigidly logical life as an academic.

J
ust then, a noisy party of four more ghosts arrived, tools clanking from the belts around their waists, lanterns shining on their hats. They were arguing constantly and bantering among themselves, but Jake sat up straight as he realized who they were.

The
four dead coalminers!

His heart started pounding. He
forgot all about Dr. Sackville as his turn finally came around.

Madam Silvia glanced at him. “What is your question for the spirits, young man?”

“I want to know what happened to the four men who died in the Harris Coalmine recently,” Jake said boldly.

In the blink of an eye, the miner ghosts swept over and surrounded him, all
talking at once.

“
Oh, I’ll tell you what happened—”

“I
t was ’orrible!”

“It was all those
two’s fault. I told ’em to stay away from that door!”

“Don’t blame us, Barne
y, you’re the one who started all this.”

“Was not!”
a chubby, hapless-looking fellow in coveralls cried.

“Were, too!
” said another with a mustache. “You’re the one who said it sounded hollow.”

“Well, you’re the on
es who wanted to get the dead bloke’s gold.”

“Shut it!” bellow
ed the older fellow, silencing his men. “So help me, if I have to hear this bickering for the rest of all eternity…”

Madam
Sylvia touched her temples with a wince. “The spirits are angry—”

“You’re bloody right
I’m angry!” The big, brawny one with a cigar turned to her. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“Please, speak only one at a time. I can hardly hear you across the void.”

The four ghosts scowled.

“Right,” said the leader. “Martin here. I’ve got
the others with me: Smith, Collins, Barney. We’re the ones the kid was askin’ about. May we speak now, ma’am?”

“Thank you, Mr. Martin
, yes, please do. Do you have any messages for the living?”

“A
ye. You need to warn the Company there’s something creeping around down there in the mine.”

“What’s down there?” Jake blurted out. “
I mean—was it an explosion or an animal attack, like some of the rumors claim?”

“
No explosion.”

“Wild dogs—”
the mustache fellow started.

“
That was no dog!” Barney interrupted.

Once again, the miners all started
talking at once, unable to agree on what sort of creature had attacked them.

“I tell you, it was
gargoyles, ma’am!”

“Gargoyles?” Madam Sylvia echoed, puzzling all of her guests.

“Gargoyles?” the living echoed.

“
They can deny it all they like. They refuse to believe their own eyes. But I’m not so stubborn. Enchanted gargoyle statues came to life, ma’am, and ate us. I swear it on my grave,” Barney said with the utmost sincerity.

Jake gulped, wide-eyed.

“You mustn’t listen to him, ma’am,” Martin grumbled. “He’s gonna start a panic with his daft talk. The truth is, we can’t be too sure what sort of animal attacked us. It all happened so fast and then, poof! We was dead and sucked up into heaven.”

“Much to my surprise,” the brawny one drawled.

“It’s just that we did find something down there, you see,” said Martin. “Some sort of room.”

Jake was dying to ask questions, but
he only had one question left—plus, he had to go through Madam Sylvia in order to hide his skills. “What was that about the gargoyles?”

The brawny miner ghost was staring at Jake with his eyes narrowed.
“Mr. Martin, I think this boy can hear us.”

“Really?” Madam Sylvia looked at Jake in surprise, bu
t he made his face an innocent blank, just like he used to do in his thieving days.

Barney intended to make the most of anyone who could hear him. He leaned closer, right near Jake’s ear, babbling at top speed while the others argued. “There was a ring, too, it glowed, and there was bones, a skeleton, and this big, daft door carved in the shape of a—”

“Silence!”
the soldier ghost thundered. “I demand order!”

Strict
Old Sack had also had enough. “Stop pestering that boy, you fool-headed peasants. You heard Madam Sylvia. Only one ghost at a time.”

“Who you
callin’ a ghost?” the brawny miner retorted, taking his cigar out of his mouth.

“Easy
, Collins, just ignore that old crow,” his mustachioed friend said.

Old Sack glanced around and visibly abandoned his decision to keep his secrets. “I do not know what these buffoons thought they saw, but whatever killed them, it isn’t half as alarming as what’s been lurking in the basement of the Harris Mine School
!”

This got all the other ghosts’ attention, as well as Jake’s and Madam Sylvia’s.

“What are you talking about?” the cigar ghost asked.

“The black fog.”
The headmaster floated into the center of the table, his spectral body superimposed over the candelabra. He glanced around in distress. “I’m afraid there’s not much time. It may have followed me here.”

Murmurs of fear ran among the ghosts.

Old Sack glanced around imploringly. “It’s been feeding on the children. The poor things are having nightmares in droves. It’s as if somebody’s filling their heads with their worst fears at night, so in the daytime, they can’t concentrate on their studies. They’ve got no appetite. They no longer even want to play outside. The children cannot see this thing, this wraith, that’s attacking them. But I’ve seen it. Feeding on their souls.”

Jake gave up trying to hide his abilities
. “What does it look like? When does it come? Only at night?”

“Any time,” Old Sack
answered. “I’ve even seen it drawing out their energy in the middle of class, while they’re sitting, yawning, at their desks! They have no idea anything’s happening to them. I’ve tried to warn the staff, but no one can hear me.”

“What do you mean, feeding on them?” Madam Sylvia demanded.

“It hovers over them like a dark cloud, I don’t know, sucking out their life-force. One sees a stream of energy being pulled out of them. Oh, I don’t know how else to describe it! I didn’t even believe in any of this sort of mumbo-jumbo when I was alive. It’s all come as rather a shock, I don’t mind saying.”

“Have you tried communicating with it?” Jake asked urgently.

“Heavens, no! I keep my distance. But…I’ve been hearing rumors from some of the other ghosts in the cemetery across the road from the school.”

“What’s the gossip?” Madam Sylvia pursued.

Old Sack hesitated. “Ghosts are disappearing. I fear this dark spirit may be responsible.”

“I
t even attacks the dead?” the medium asked in surprise.

“I can’t be
certain. All I know is that he’s evil and he grows stronger every day.”

Jake’s heart thudded in his chest
. “Is it Garnock?”

“Ask him yourself—he’s here!” Old Sack fled
with a shriek as all the ghosts started screaming.

Jake stared in horror at the sinister, skull-headed spirit that had just arrived, laughing, through the wall.

It was the black fog.

CHAPTER FOUR
TEEN

Visions of Darkness

“W
hat’s happening?” Madam Sylvia cried, hearing the chaos of ghosts shrieking in panic, though she could not see them running for their afterlives.

Having exploded into their midst, the black fog
began chasing after the ghosts with diabolical laughter.

Madam Sylvia
paled at the sound, clutched her heart in dread and thereby broke the séance circle. The living guests, oblivious to the attack in progress, were demanding to know what was happening.

All the
while, Jake stared at the dark spirit, riveted with fear. The black fog had a ghostly skull for a head and arm-like streams of ectoplasm, with a wispy, tail-like structure trailing out behind it like a loose black robe.

“Who’s there? What’s happening?”
Madam Sylvia demanded, pressing her fingers to her temples.

“Madam Sylvia, what do you hear?” one of the lady guests asked nervously.

She shook her head, waving off the woman’s questions impatiently. “Something’s wrong. Another presence has arrived.”

Some of the guests smirked like they thought this was just part of the act.

The black fog was streaming after several of the ghosts, who whooshed away shrieking with terror. But the soldier ghost and the brawny coalminer and the big ghost dog, as well, were not about to put up with it.

With the dog between them, barking its head off in an effort to scare the black fog thing away, t
he two brave, manly ghosts rushed up to protect the others from the wraith.

It paused.

“Well, well,” it mocked, pausing at the barrier they presented.

“Hoy!” The
coalminer spat out his cigar. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“In the name of Her Majesty, you’d better stop right there, friend,” the soldier warned the thing.

It laughed.

Infuriated by such insolence, the ghost dog grew itself in size, all teeth, every bark a thunderclap.

Madam Sylvia held her ears; Jake could not believe the others couldn’t hear it.

Seeing their
braver friend make a stand, the other three coalminers floated up nervously behind the big fellow to back him up.

“You’re the one who’s been feeding on the
children at the school, like the old man said,” their boss, Mr. Martin, accused him.

The skeleton head of the thing almost seemed to smile. “
Guilty as charged. And now, guess what, my good fellow? Now I’m here to feed on you.”

“Get ’im!” yelled the soldier.

But as all the angry ghosts working together rushed at the wraith, it ground out an evil incantation in some strange tongue, then opened its jaws impossibly wide.

In the blink of an eye, it chomped its teeth down on the cigar ghost and swallowed him whole.

“Collins!”
his three companions screamed in horror.

Having already been eaten once, they did not intend to let it happen again. The miner ghosts
scattered and fled in all directions, abandoning the soldier to make his stand alone.

The wraith ate him
in a similar fashion. It even bit the dog, who tried to intervene, but escaped and zoomed away with a yelp.

“All of you, run!” Madam Sylvia cried to warn away whatever ghosts still lingered.

While the living guests looked at each other in confusion, Jake gasped to see the black fog take notice of the headmaster, who was peeking out from behind a photograph on the wall.

The wraith
sneered at him. “You…annoying little man.”

“S
tay away from my students!” he yelled bravely.

But when t
he skeleton-head unhinged its jaws in response, Old Sack rocketed straight upward through the ceiling, his robe and tassel flying. He just narrowly missed being chomped by the horrible floating skull.

“Madam Sylvia, please, what are the ghosts saying?” a gentleman attendee asked the psychic in a nervous voice.

“They’ve all fled. Something’s scared them off. A dark presence. Who are you?” she demanded of the wraith.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, old witch!” it taunted her in a low
, garbled voice. “I’ve heard about you from my ravens. Clairaudient, no?”

She did not engage the dark spirit. Jake could hear the terror in her voice as she commanded the thing: “Leave this place! You are not welcome here!”

“Of course, as you wish, my dear,” it simpered.

But since she could not see the wraith,
she did not know it was obviously lying.

Jake saw the black fog purposely keeping quiet as it
turned its attention to the living, now that the ghosts had fled. Its eyes widened as it began to feed off the lady sitting across the table from him.

Dr.
Sackville had described the awful process perfectly. The wraith opened its mouth and inhaled a stream of life-force energy from its victim’s very soul.

Jake watched in dread as a smoky stream of pale life energy flowed out of the lady into the mouth of the evil skull-head.
She seemed to have no idea that she was under attack.

H
e wanted to warn her, but he was terrified of what that sinister thing might do to him if he let on that he could see. After watching it destroy the two manly ghosts who had tried to stand against it, he dared not draw attention to himself.

Having fed off the woman,
the wraith began going around the table from guest to guest, preying for several seconds on them all. Each time it fed, its shadowy outline got brighter, stronger. It seemed to grow in size.

As for its victims, nobody
dropped dead like the tree goblins had, but they all started looking very tired.

Jake saw that
in a few seconds, the wraith would come around to him.
What am I going to do?
It was horrible to see the attack coming and do nothing. He felt paralyzed.

He couldn’t bring himself t
o flee the table, mumble some excuse, and run away. Leaving these people to their fate was hardly conduct worthy of a future Lightrider.

His heart
beating like a drum, he was not sure if he could make himself sit there passively for those few seconds while it fed on him and pretend not to notice, though that was probably his safest bet.

As he wrestled with himself, the dark spirit rea
ched the man sitting next to him—the ghost dog’s master.

Everyone else around the table suddenly seemed exhausted
and rather depressed, except for Madam Sylvia and the last woman, to Jake’s right. It hadn’t got to them yet.

Jake
felt trapped. Then suddenly, his time was up.

T
he black fog came around to him.

He fou
nd himself face to face with its horrible floating skull. Its breath stank of the grave. Its soulless eyes were as black as the pit, with sparks aflame in their depths, proving that somehow, it was indeed, hideously, alive.

Jake was trembling, but strove not to flinch or
pull back or give himself away in any fashion.

The foul creature hovered before him, its wispy, smoke-like body snaking ba
ck and forth a little behind it.

Jake sat
frozen like a mouse mesmerized by the stare of a serpent. He heard a voice in his head, the black-magic spell the wraith was using. The words seemed to wrap around him like the coils of a python, conjuring a darkness in his mind of his own worst fears to paralyze him.

In his mind’s eye, he saw that
shameful event from all those years ago, when he’d been sent to work in the coalmine. Though he was only nine, his job had been an important one. As door boy, he had to open the door in one of the tunnels for the coal carts whizzing through and for the work crews coming and going.

After the bullies on one crew had made sport of him one time too many, he had locked the door and abandoned his post, leaving them trapped underground.

He had run away and never dared go back, because he knew those boys would have killed him after that. He later heard how they had run out of light down there and might have run out of air before anyone finally wondered where they were.

The worst part was, Jake
had not been the least bit sorry. He was glad he had made them suffer.

But the wraith was not
done consuming his life-force. To keep its victim still so it could feed, it projected an even worse vision into his mind—horrifying him into a state of helplessness.

Then Jake was swallowe
d up in dark fascination at what he saw: Himself. Grown up. A man.

R
ich, handsome, powerful, the seventh Earl of Griffon at the height of his abilities. He was surrounded by a circle of dark-cloaked witches and warlocks hailing him as…

T
he new leader of the Dark Druids.

The breath felt squeezed from his lungs at what he saw, but he
could not look away from the terrible vision of himself using his supernatural abilities for evil.

He knew
somehow, deep in his bones, that in that possible alternate future, he had done terrible things. He had caged Red in the cellar. He had killed Derek Stone. He had cut Dani O’Dell out of his life long ago, and his cousins shunned him.

There he was, using his rank and fortune for evil. He
had become everything his Lightrider parents had hated.

Because they deserved it.

Because they had left him.

That was his rationale, and to
that
Jake—that hard, bitter, angry man—the excuse seemed perfectly logical.

Only
seconds had passed when the wraith abruptly quit feeding on him and backed away, coughing and gagging.

Released from the dark vision,
Jake blinked, still dazed but struggling to come back to himself. Back to the here and now.

As soon as the Garnock-wraith stopped ret
ching, it turned to him with a shocked, angry stare and hissed a single word of accusation:
“Lightrider!”

Jake thought he heard fear in its spectral voice, bu
t suddenly, it fled. Zooming off through the wall, it disappeared, still choking.

Jake slumped
into his chair, staring into space. He felt drained and shaken to the core by that ghastly vision of himself. Surely that was just a possible future, not the definite one. He barely paid attention, sitting there in his own world while Madam Sylvia shushed the guests again, listening to the air for all she was worth.

At last, she gave them all a grim nod. “It’s gone.”

Thank God.
Jake closed his eyes in exhaustion.