have you sign something just so—”
“I think I hear something.”
“Really?”
Jarvis scrambled to climb the closest pile of rubble before his guide could expand upon the legal ramifications of doing so. Although the footing was shaky here and there, he felt a solid base under his boots. Before he got to the edge of the pit, Jarvis hunkered down and steadied himself with one hand while using his other to aim the flashlight into the hole.
“What do you hear?” Steve asked. “Is it voices?”
When he leaned far enough for his front foot to slide, Jarvis crouched down to regain his balance. The motion loosened some of the rocks as well as a clump of dirt from the edge of the pit, which dropped down into the darkness to make an echoing clatter. The sound also triggered a few restless, snorting breaths.
“Are you all right?” Steve shouted.
Jarvis swung his hand back toward the other man, which was enough to quiet Steve down. He then aimed his flashlight toward a spot at the bottom of the pit where he’d heard those noises. The first thing to catch the glare of his flashlight was the reflective tape on the edge of a bright yellow vest. Next, Jarvis’s eyes were drawn to a series of quick flicking motions coming from one section of the hole. Laying there, curled up on its side, was a twisted abomination of a living thing.
Although it wore the shredded waistband and one leg of a pair of jeans, along with a few shreds of an oversized sweater, the thing inside those clothes was far from human. In worse light and through a dense fog, it might have been mistaken for a large hound or wolf. Most of its body was covered in skin that looked like a coagulation of fluid that had sprouted irregular patches of coarse hair. One of its knees had the reversed bend of an animal’s hind leg, while the other was still human enough to keep its work boot in place. The longer Jarvis shined his light onto its face, the more the thing twitched and snorted its way out of a fretful sleep.
Jarvis hoped to avert a disaster by moving the light away from the thing, but only managed to find two more of them laying on a thick bed of leaves and garbage a few yards from the first one. One of those things looked partially human, but the other was gnarled beyond recognition. That one was larger than the other two, and lay without any shreds of clothing on its body. Lighter hairs sprouted to form a tangled shell over a bony frame. Its muscles looked as if they’d been tied into knots beneath its flesh, and at least three of the ribs pressing against its leathery flesh were clearly broken. The longer Jarvis looked at the things down in that pit, the more he wanted to figure out what the hell they were. And then, not long after he noticed the dark glistening puddles on the pit’s floor, the scent of blood hit his nose.
Suddenly, the fretful breathing from the pit caught in the back of a gnarled throat. Dirt scraped against rock as one of the things shifted in the darkness.
Jarvis could feel those things’ eyes pivoting toward him without needing to see them. Natural reflex got him rolling away from the edge of the pit before one of the things caught sight of him looking down at them. The moment his back hit the pile of rubble, he froze. The sound he’d made echoed through his ears like an explosion, but it quickly faded; only followed by more shifting and a choking snore.
Doing his best to collect himself, Jarvis got to his feet and hurried away from the pit as quickly and quietly as he could.
“Find anything?” Steve asked anxiously.
“No, I just slipped a little. There’s…a hole. That hole over there. See it? Stay away from there. In fact, don’t let anyone near it.”
“Is it about to collapse?”
Relieved to have such a good excuse handed to him, Jarvis nodded and said, “Yep. It’s pretty dangerous.”
“What about your investigation? Will you be coming back with a team?”
Now that he couldn’t smell the blood and couldn’t see those twisted, half-animal wretches, Jarvis was able to think a lot clearer. “Yeah. I’ll be coming back with a team, but I need you to do me a favor.”
“What?” Steve asked as his eyes lit up with anticipation.
“It’s very important that this site isn’t disturbed any further. Spirits get agitated when their homes are messed with, and if there’s any activity, we want to be here to record it.” Sensing the gears turning within the other man’s head, he added, “When they’re agitated, they just might disperse, so we may only get one chance at recording some real good activity.”
Steve kept nodding passionately. “All right. The renovations are already on hold, but I’ll leave a note for the caretakers to take some time off. Just let me know when you’re coming back.”
“Will do. Are there any records or plans for this place, because I’d sure like to see them.”
“They’re in my office. I’ll be right back.” With that, Steve jogged back toward the remains of the mansion and headed for the quarter of the structure that had actually been rebuilt enough to stand on its own.
Once Steve was safely out of sight, Jarvis reached for his phone and flipped it open. The expensive piece of equipment snagged a few bars of signal strength right away and made its connection as soon as he hit the speed dial button.
“MEG Branch 25,” droned the voice at the other end of the connection.
“Hey Will, it’s Jarvis. I’m at the Lancroft Reformatory. Look up Prophet’s number, will ya?”
“Why don’t you have it? Aren’t you supposed to be meeting him soon?”
“He’s one of those guys. You know the ones.”
“Oh. Give me a minute.” The sound of fingers clacking against a keyboard drifted through the phone as Will asked, “You find anything at Lancroft?”
“Yeah. It’s something Prophet might know what to do with. There’s not enough time to explain it to you right now and I wish I could forget I’d even seen it.”
“One of those cases, huh? Sweet.”
Chapter 7
Cole was no stranger to flying. In the first few weeks after he was hired by Digital Dreamers, he’d been forced to fly more than a southbound duck as he made the move from Modesto and got everything squared away. And once his job began, he was saddled with the chauffeur hat dozens of times to pick up visiting executives when they arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International. He’d even been to O’Hare a few times.
Now, landing at O’Hare in a sorry excuse for a prop plane was like ambling along the Los Angeles freeways in an old pickup that couldn’t do more than forty miles per hour. By the time the landing gear bounced on the tarmac, he was longing for the sweet touch of the customs officers who’d sifted through the plane and other things at a smaller airport in Montana.
While he’d been probed in Montana almost as much as the plane itself, his luggage was logged and the bloody knife stashed in a compartment above the landing gear. The officer performing the inspection went through the motions, but wasn’t about to hold the plane up any longer than it took for the proper forms to be filled out. Cole thought he saw some scars on the officer’s palms that vaguely reminded him of Gerald’s, but before he could decide if that was important or not, the plane was on its way to its next refueling spot. He was more than happy to distance himself from what had happened up there.
The old plane had taken its sweet time getting to Chicago, which made it easier for him to focus on more immediate things, like sleeping, being sick, or praying. Landing at O’Hare took place in much the same way: rough, yet successful. Even though he winced at the sound of all those bigger jets in the vicinity, Andy touched down and taxied to his spot without a hitch. After they rolled up to one of the smaller terminals, the engines were cut and Andy pushed open the door.
“This is where we part ways, Squid,” he said, using the affectionate nickname he’d given to Cole after watching him squirm during some of the rougher landings along the way.
