Page 24 of Rattling Bone (OutFoxing the Paranormal #2)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Oscar flung up his arms as a frigid blast of wind struck him. The old timbers of the aging warehouse groaned, and for a horrible moment he wondered if the whole structure was on the verge of collapse.
“This is my land!” Ivan roared, in his ear or his head, he couldn’t tell. “I paid for it in blood, and you won’t drive me off it.”
“You didn’t pay in blood!” Oscar stumbled, then found his footing. He called up his shields and dropped into a defensive stance. “Agnes is the one who paid for your greed. You started this cycle of hatred and revenge, and it’s long past time to end it.” He drew a breath and focused hard on creating an opening in the veil to the other side behind Ivan.
“Ivan Corbett, go through the veil!” he commanded. “Leave this place, and trouble it no more!”
He charged at Ivan—but the ghost slipped away.
Oscar’s foot caught on a piece of decaying wood, and he went sprawling. The dirty floor scraped the skin from his palms, and his chin clipped the ground, sending a flare of pain and the taste of blood from a bitten tongue.
“I don’t think so,” Ivan growled, and a heavy weight settled on Oscar’s back.
His fingers scrabbled on the floor as he tried to drag himself out from under it, but the weight was too great. His breath whooshed out of him—and when he tried to take another breath, discovered he couldn’t expand his lungs against the hideous pressure.
Animal panic set in, and he tried to thrash, but there was nothing he could do. Was this how Ivan had felt during his last moments, the implacable weight of the whiskey barrels crushing the life out of him? Spots flared in front of his eyes, and he tried to scream, but had no breath to do so—
“Over here!” Nigel shouted, and light flared, shockingly bright after the darkness.
Nigel crouched a short distance away, the contents of his backpack scattered. He must have managed to get a new battery in his flashlight, because he shone it now at what he held in his upraised hand.
The whiskey bottle filled with spring water.
The warehouse groaned again, and suddenly the weight was lifted from Oscar’s back. He drew in great gasping breaths, found enough oxygen to wheeze, “Nigel, look out!”
Oscar didn’t know what Nigel could see without a medium’s talent, but in his vision, Ivan rushed across the room with a roar of fury. He struck Nigel a savage blow, sending him to the floor. The neck of the whiskey bottle caught on one of the discarded planks on the way down, and broke off, leaving the body of the bottle still in Nigel’s hand.
Spring water splashed out in a wide arc. A few droplets struck Ivan’s ghostly form—and he screamed.
Oscar heaved to his feet even as Ivan drew back, arms flung up. Ragged holes gaped in his ethereal form, as though he’d been hit by acid.
“The water—throw it on him!” Oscar yelled.
At the same moment, Chris appeared in the circle of light, canister of salt in their hand. “Fuck off!” they shouted and began pouring handful after handful of salt and hurling it at Ivan.
Ivan shrieked and began to retreat before the double assault. But Oscar wasn’t about to let him slip away.
He envisioned a beam of white light pouring down into him, reinvigorating his mind. He took a centering breath, steadied his feet against the solidity of the earth.
“Ivan Corbett,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. “Your time of anger and suffering is at an end. Cross over, and be at peace forevermore.”
He held out his arms like an embrace and opened the gateway in the space between them. For a moment, he wasn’t certain that Ivan would take the offered escape, even being pelted with salt and spring water.
Then the ghost turned to the gateway and fled through.
In the last second, Oscar caught a glimpse of his face. The marks of death vanished, leaving him whole. His eyes widened slightly, as if at an unexpected, but not unwelcome, surprise, and a smile of relief curved his lips.
Then he was gone.
* * *
“Oscar! Are you all right!” Scott shouted from outside the warehouse.
Nigel felt as though his legs might go from under him. He sat back, careful to avoid the broken-off neck of the whiskey bottle with its jagged edges.
“I’m fine, Dad!” Oscar called. “I told you to stay in the tent with Tina, didn’t I?”
Scott came in, looking anxious. “I know, but the feed cut out! I was worried.”
Nigel turned the remainder of the bottle over in his hand. A few drops of spring water still clung to the interior. Chris switched out the battery in their camera, then crouched by him, aiming the lens at the bottle. “What happened? I mean, why did the water do that to him?”
“The spring was supposed to have special properties.” He looked up as Oscar approached, trailed by his father. “There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest certain minerals or crystals can affect a medium’s talent, and possibly ghosts as well. At a guess, something dissolved in the water acts to drain a ghost’s power, the same way salt does.”
Oscar stared at the bottle. “Mamaw drank from the spring, remember? Do you think…is that why she survived?”
“Perhaps.”
Oscar extended a hand and helped Nigel to his feet. Uncertain what else to do with a broken, jagged bottle, Nigel set it on the floor and grabbed his backpack. “We’ve done what Agnes wanted. Should we go back to the tent?”
Oscar nodded. “Yeah, back to the tent. I could use an energy bar and a chance to sit down after that. Hopefully Agnes will move on by herself, now that the Corbetts are gone.” He checked his watch. “With five minutes to spare.”
“Happy New Year,” Chris said with a shaky grin. “We should have brought champagne.”
They made their way back across the snow-covered ground. The storm had blown away, and moonlight struggled through openings in the clouds. The purr of the generator outside the tent was the only sound nearby, possibly the only sound for miles.
“I wish we could’ve found her bones,” Oscar said, breaking the silence unexpectedly. “Given her a proper burial.”
Nigel turned to the slope. Whenever the moon peeked out, the snow reflected its light, allowing him to see more of the forest than he would have on an ordinary night. “There’s a lot of mountain to search, especially if she’s moved on and there’s no EMF signal to guide a searcher.”
Scott paused beside him and frowned at the mountain sweeping away above them. “I don’t think anyone would want to lug a body very far through that. I bet we could find her, if there’s anything left.”
Oscar sighed. “That’s a task for another day. Right now, we—”
The walkie-talkies crackled. “I’ve got movement,” Tina warned. “There’s a shape heading your way, coming from the direction of the mountain.”
“Is Agnes coming to make sure we got rid of them?” Chris asked nervously.
“Nigel, get out the spirit box, in case she wants to talk,” Oscar said calmly. He took out his EMF reader and held it ready in his hand.
Nigel shucked his backpack off into the snow and dug out the spirit box. Its static filled the air, the sound jarring in the otherwise peaceful night.
Chris shouldered their camera and started filming, first focusing on the spirit box, then swinging around to the EMF meter in Oscar’s hand. The meter blipped once, twice—then started a steady climb toward red.
Something was here.
“Look!” Scott gasped, pointing.
Impressions of slender, bare feet appeared in the fresh blanket of snow, one after the next as their unseen owner made her way toward them.
Nigel’s heart seemed to stutter in his chest, and he gripped the spirit box tighter. “A-Agnes?”
“That’s close enough,” Oscar warned. “Please stop right there.”
The footprints came to a halt, feet lined up and facing them. All the hair on the back of Nigel’s neck stood up, and part of his brain screamed at him to run, to get away from this unnatural thing.
“I did what you asked,” Oscar told her.
“No,” said the mechanical voice of the spirit box.
It was just a blip—single syllables could just be the result of a radio broadcast breaking through, or of their own minds finding a pattern that wasn’t really there.
But Oscar was frowning. “Ivan, Edwin, and Jeff are all gone, and they won’t be coming back. They left before midnight. That was our agreement—I remove the Corbetts, and you end your vendetta.”
“Not all,” the spirit box replied.
“What do you mean?” Oscar’s brows drew together—then his eyes widened in realization. “Oh shit. Dad, run!”