The Wounds in the Walls (2 page)

It shouldn’t be like this. It was never meant to be like this.

Pete shifted uncertainly on his feet and looked up at the ceiling, grounding himself on a crack wide enough to expose the beam beneath.

“And how old is it, Peter?”

Pete glared. “I told you once already. It’s Pete.”

Clarke was watching him like a hawk now. “Your name is important to you?”

“Yes,
Mr. Clarke.
‘Peter’ sounds like some prissy uptight asshole. I’m Pete. I drink beer and watch wrestling and football on TV.”

“And pick up women at the bars?” Clarke suggested helpfully. Except there was a hedge here, too, for some reason. And Pete had fucking had enough.

Pete looked him dead in the eye. “As a matter of fact, I suck cock. You got a problem with that, Clarke?”

It was a goddamn good thing Clarke didn’t grin, but the twinkle in his eye was bad enough. “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

Pete rolled his eyes and turned back to the room. God, but the place was stuffy for a joint without a single pane of glass left. He stepped around the chandelier and went into the parlor, checking the floorboards carefully each time he ventured deeper. They were in surprisingly good shape, though, and once Pete managed to get a good fifteen feet in, he decided to start trusting them. He looked up to take in more of the room than just the part that was underfoot.

And it was then that he saw the walls. They had gashes on them.

Frowning, Pete crept forward, moving with a hesitation he didn’t quite understand but couldn’t seem to stop. He felt like he was trying to keep something from waking, which made no sense, because there wasn’t anyone or anything here. He didn’t even feel spooked out. He just felt… hushed. Like he was visiting somewhere sacred that deserved his respect.

The gashes, though, were disturbing. From a distance he’d thought they were just cuts in the wallpaper, like Edward Scissorhands had wandered around in here drunk. But whatever had made these cuts had gone clean through the lath. Pete had chipped at that shit before, and it wasn’t exactly like going through butter.

Weirdest was how many cuts there were and how randomly they were placed. Maybe Pete could have written them off as a tree branch or something if they’d been just here or there, but they were all over, like a kid had been bored one day and scratched the shit out of the living room—if the kid were twenty feet tall and had the strength of six or seven men. He couldn’t make it make sense, no matter how he rolled it around in his head. And he hated to do it, but he couldn’t help himself. He turned back to Clarke and saw that, yeah, the other man was watching Pete intently. Waiting.

Pete put his hands on his hips. “All right, wise guy. What’s your game? And don’t give me shit about you need help clearing out a house. There’s nothing here to clear. There’s just a really weird old house and a lot of weeds.”

This seemed to throw Clarke. “You mean—you can’t see it?” He motioned to the room. “You don’t feel it? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

Pete gave the room another glance, just in case, but nope, it was the same old cruddy room. He shook his head. “I’d love to know about the gashes in the walls, but other than that, it looks like a pretty standard run-down house.”

Clarke’s eyes widened. “Gashes?”

Pete jerked his hand at the one he was standing beside. “Yeah. The gashes. The three-foot long cuts through wallpaper, plaster, and lath. I think I can see daylight through the one over by the south window. Those gashes.”

Clarke looked at the window and then at Pete. He shook his head. “There aren’t any gashes, Pete.”

Pete raised an eyebrow at him.

“There aren’t any gashes on the walls.” Clarke nodded at the empty space beside Pete. “There is, however, a ghost standing right beside you.”

Ara

This
is it,
Mike thought as Pete turned to the specter beside him.
Here it is.
He watched Pete look the ghost up and down, and he waited for the truth to sink in. Mike was ready with either technical explanations or soothing platitudes, whichever Pete would require. But in the end, Pete turned back to Mike and gave him, once again, a look that said without words that he thought that Mike was completely, utterly crazy.

He hadn’t, Mike realized, seen a thing.

“I told you,” the ghost said, its tone bored but amused. “I told you he wouldn’t be able to see me, but you just don’t like to listen, do you.”

Mike ignored the ghost and kept his focus on Pete. “You don’t see anything? Really?”

Pete gave Mike a long look. “You been drinking, Clarke?”

The ghost pouted in mock empathy. “Poor Mikey. All your little plans, ruined. Should I run and fetch your spreadsheets? They might make you feel better.”

Mike fought the urge to set his jaw. “You said you saw gashes in the walls? How many?”

But Pete had clearly had enough of this game. “Buddy, you’re gonna tell me what the fuck is going on here, or I am walking out that door. Either that or you’re gonna write me a big fat check, because this kind of circus is gonna cost you.”

Mike had his wallet out of his back pocket and several bills in his hand almost before Pete finished his sentence. “Here. Three hundred dollars, right here and now. Cash. Just to stand there and let me ask you crazy questions awhile longer. Okay?”

It was clear it wasn’t what Pete wanted to do, but he came forward and took the cash out of Mike’s hand all the same before moving back to his post by the wall. “All right, then. You want to know if I see little leprechauns in the ceiling? Because I don’t. They’re dancin’ in a circle in the middle of the floor. They want to know who stole their Lucky Charms.”

The ghost, who had moved out of Pete’s way as he came back, snorted.

Mike gave up and looked at him.

The ghost was wearing a tweedy-looking pair of trousers held up by a pair of black braces over a pristine white shirt unbuttoned halfway down the chest. It had the half-starved look about it that it always did: its arms were a bit too skinny, cheeks too sunken, eyes a bit too pitted. But there was nothing dull about the ghost, and it grinned impishly at Mike through a messy mop of spiky hair.

The ghost pressed its hand to its chest. “Oh dear. Are you looking to
me
for help?” It shook its head. “You really are getting desperate, aren’t you?”

This didn’t make any sense. Mike had stood here just last week with the psychic, and
she’d
seen him.
It,
he corrected himself quickly. Because it wasn’t a man. It was just energy. The remnant of a man.

But the psychic had seen the ghost. And she’d upset it, too, which was how Mike knew he was onto something. It was she who had given him Pete’s name. “Peter Eason,” she’d said, “in the black water.” She’d drawn a picture of the man standing in front of Mike: tall, broad-shouldered, rugged, simple, but clean-cut, with short, curling brown hair. His face was exact down to the little scar about his left eye. And he’d lived in Blackwater, Missouri. This had to be the Peter she meant. The Peter she’d insisted had the key.

Except she hadn’t mentioned that not only would Pete have no idea he had the key but wouldn’t be able to see the ghost he was supposed to exorcise. And Mike wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now.

He crossed to the south window and ran his eyes up and down the wallpaper. Pete didn’t see the ghost, but he saw gashes. Well, then, he’d start with the gashes. “Can you come here and show them to me? Point to where this one starts and where it ends. Please.”

Pete came over, still moving a little carefully over the creaky floor, and pointed to a spot on the wall. “About a foot above here”—he ran his hand in a diagonal path three feet down—“to here. And it’s about a half-inch thick.”

Mike nodded, staring at the perfectly fine if somewhat faded paper in front of him. And that gave him an idea. “Describe the room for me, would you? Tell me what you see in as much detail as you can. What does it look like? What color, for example, is the paper in front of me?”

“Green,” Pete said. “A pale green with gold designs.” He made hash marks back and forth in front of the wall with his hand. “Diagonals.”

The paper Mike saw was gray with raised velvet fleur-de-lis. “And the furniture?”

This earned Mike another dubious glance. “The room is empty. Unless you want to call the fallen beams from the ceiling a sofa.”

Mike looked out across the room, taking in the red easy chair, the sagging plaid sofa, and the gaudy coffee table. He was beginning to understand why Pete had told him he needed a bulldozer. “Where’s the beam, exactly?”

Pete pointed at the couch and the chair beside it. “There.”

“And what’s over there?” Mike pointed to the piano in the corner.

“A pile of crumbling wall. You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I suppose there’s no rug, either?” Pete’s expression told him that no, there wasn’t. Mike nodded. “Okay. I think we’ve seen enough here. Maybe we should try another room.”

Pete shrugged. “So long as I don’t fall through the floor.”

Mike led Pete to the foyer again, heading toward the kitchen. He noticed Pete frequently took circuitous routes around floor rugs and end tables, often looking worriedly at the floor.

“You think this place is haunted, I guess?” Pete asked. “That what this is about?”

Mike weighed how much to tell him. It wasn’t easy with the ghost standing there leering. He noticed, though, that it kept well away from Pete. It was a noticeable difference from how it behaved with Mike normally, or how it had been with the psychic. Usually Mike had been run through at least four times already. The ghost found it amusing when Mike retched afterward. But not this time. Outside of the wry remarks and the glares, the ghost was barely present.

Maybe this was the right Peter after all.

“Yes,” Mike said at last, holding open the door to the dining room. “I think this place is haunted. In fact, I know that it is. That’s my job, you see.”

“You a ghostbuster?” Pete asked. But his eyes were fixed on the walls. He looked troubled.

“Paranormal psychologist.” Mike followed Pete’s gaze, but he saw only dust and cobwebs over a metal dining table and walls coated with hideous floral wallpaper. “What do you see in here?”

“More gashes.” He frowned and gestured at the wall above the sideboard. “All of them are there, over the fireplace. Six angry slashes, right in a row.”

Fireplace? Mike hurried over and ran his hand over the wallpaper, then laughed out loud. “My God, you’re right! I can feel where they bricked it up.”

“Bricked it up?” Pete repeated. He didn’t come forward, just stayed in the doorway. He looked distinctly uneasy.

So did the ghost. But it glared at Mike.

Mike motioned to Pete. “Come here. I’ll show you.”

Pete and the ghost backed up as one, moving in opposite directions. “No,” they said in unison.

Mike turned to the ghost. The dark eyes were no longer dancing in mirth. The young man manifested before Mike seemed to be shrinking inside himself, but the ghost held the image firmly. It shook its head. “No,” it said again. “Take him away. Don’t keep him here. Don’t ask him any more questions. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I’m here to help you,” Mike said gently.

“You’re not helping,” the ghost shot back. “Just go. Get him
out.
And
don’t
let him touch the walls.”

“I need to get out of here,” Pete said. He looked around the room, seriously worried now. When Mike started to protest, he pulled the money out of his pocket and held it out. “Forget it. Just take this. Find somebody else for this game. I’ll eat tuna and ramen for another month before I put up with this shit.”

Mike tried not to show how excited he was. This was it! This was what he’d been waiting for! This was the breakthrough he needed. But they were both nervous, so he had to tread carefully.
If only I can get them to make contact with each other,
he thought.
Surely that will trigger something we can really use.
He held up his hands and smiled. “Hey—no problem. It’s okay. Take it easy. If the dining room makes you uncomfortable, we’ll move on to the kitchen.”

Pete looked pissed now. “I’m going out the goddamned front door.” He swore and thrust the money out at Mike, and when Mike didn’t move to take it, he threw it down on the ground. “Fuck this.” He turned to go.

“Wait!” Mike hurried after him, ducking around the ghost as it tried to step into his path.  He dropped his coat on the ground, but he didn’t stop to pick up either it or the money. “Peter—wait! Just hold—
ugh!
”

He shuddered and caught the bile in his mouth as the ghost rushed through his body. Mike felt his organs jangling with the ghost’s energy; the nausea caught up with him, and he stumbled forward, heaving.

“You okay?” Pete came toward Mike.

Mike tried to answer and vomited instead.

Swearing, Pete caught him by the shoulders, hoisting him up. “Easy, buddy.”

Nice and strong,
Mike thought, and then threw up again. It was dry heaves, at least, because he’d prepared for this and not had any breakfast.

But he was shaking now, and Pete continued to hold him up, aiming him at the door. “Easy. You’ll be all right. You just give me the keys, and we’ll go get some tea in you or something. We’ll go somewhere fucking far away from here.”

The ghost was huddled by the door, glaring. “Get him out. Get him out, and don’t bring him back.”

Later, Mike wouldn’t be able to explain why he’d done it. There was no thinking at all, in fact, just some instinct he couldn’t explain. Because one moment he’d been shivering against Pete, trying to figure out how and where this had gone so wrong, and the next he was ducking from underneath Pete’s arm, grabbing his hand, and shoving it forward toward the ghost. He watched the ghost’s eyes go wide and dark, no pupil at all, not even a white, just dark slits of fear as Pete’s hand came toward it. A silent “no” formed on its lips, and as Pete touched it, the ghost shivered, then shattered.

So did Pete. Except his shatter was less literal. He didn’t vanish, but he did seem to crumble inside. Except as Mike watched—and oh, he was watching, like a hawk—it wasn’t the despair he’d seen on the ghost’s face. In fact, Pete looked almost… sensual. It was as if the touch had been arousing, so pleasurable that it had undone him, and when he opened his eyes, staring straight ahead into the place where the ghost had been, they were dark with passion.

All this took mere seconds. One second, in fact, the longest, most intricately packed moment in Mike’s life. The second that followed it, however, was quite different. Because it was in that sliver of time that gravity took hold, and Pete, propelled forward, continued on, all the way to the wall. In that second, Mike watched Pete’s rough, work-worn fingers brush against the floral paper.