They were known as the rarest and most powerful of all adepts. They were more powerful, in fact, than any psychic, medium, ghost or spirit. They were gatekeepers and never more than one had ever existed at a time.
Neither the living nor the dead could ever divine why or how these keepers of the gate separating their worlds were chosen. Some said personal virtue, others said pure evil and still others opined that it was a random choice that was conferred on one like a supernatural lottery. Likewise, it was never ascertained by whom this honor was conferred or whether it was the random, chaotic process of a cosmic scheme of things or intelligent design.
Every generation or two had one for at least 10,000 years. Some were virtuous, some were evil while most were neither. A few were famous and most others obscure. They were male and female, young, old and in the middle, Caucasian, black, yellow and brown. But there was no one common denominator uniting them. Adam Moss was the strangest choice in centuries, thought Jodl as he was on his way to where the boy was.
The last gateman before Adam Moss died hours before his near-fatal car accident. There was also speculation that those who had died young, suddenly or violently had committed some taboo, had violated some cosmic order and that such a transgression necessitated an abrupt adjustment.
Only two things were agreed upon by all who knew of the gatekeeper: S/he was theoretically the most powerful human in at least two dimensions and that their ability to wield that power depended upon them remaining alive. And Dietrich, Jodl had long since reasoned, was a fool for wanting this Jew boy dead even before he’d become cognizant of the full scope of his powers.
For reasons that even Dietrich didn’t realize, the Moss boy, Jew or gentile, was worth infinitely more alive than dead. Fuck Dietrich and his mysterious employer and underwriter. As Jodl hurtled toward the Moss boy’s unique and potent energy signature, he knew precisely how best to use him.
I had to admit for an older lady, Ed’s big sister was starting to grow on me and, no, it wasn’t just because of her big hooters (although that was part of it). Sometimes I thought that she was coming on to me but maybe that’s because she’s warm and sexual toward all males. Or maybe it’s because I remind her of her dead nephew.
It’s also kind of cool that Coffey and I have something in common in that we both have big sisters who sometimes tweak us and treat us like we’re still little kids.
There was one time in Vienna when Coffey saw a hornet on his sister’s window. He scoped out the place looking for something to trap it in. Finally he just put his hand over the yellowjacket. The fucking thing must’ve been stinging the shit out of him. But he kept the insect in both his hands until he could shoulder open the door and set it free.
He looked at his hands, cursed under his breath and walked into the bathroom. I asked Virge,
“Why didn’t he just swat that hornet?”
“Because he killed enough as a Green Beret, Sweetie.”
“He was a Green Beret?”
“A long time ago. He does this now, freeing the lost and trapped, saving the hopeless, giving second chances, no matter what the cost to him. He began doing this when he first went into the police academy but especially after Chaz died.”
I looked outside and remembered it was a chilly November day and that in the act of freeing and helping it, he might’ve wound up killing the damned thing.
Ghosts don’t always subscribe to stereotypes. Sometimes they don’t oblige us and take the form of entities wearing sheets and dragging chains. Ghosts can also be memories and they can dog and haunt you just like the real thing, saying “Boo!” in an infinite variety of ways.
For over 15 years, Chaz, Bea and I had populated our neighborhood, our city, with ghosts of ourselves. Supermarkets, bike trails, ball fields, skateboard parks and board shops, restaurants. We’d saturated the place with memories, memories that now take on the guise of residual hauntings.
Residual hauntings and the events therein never change, the subjects unaware of the still-living. It’s terribly, cruelly unilateral as you can’t interact with them while they affect you in ways they can’t imagine or would care to. Each memory is a ghost of Bea, Chaz and me. Without knowing it, we’d created a city of ghosts in our images. Every place my boy had been to, everywhere he walked or skated on his board is both infinitely more precious and more painful. Even here at my sister’s house, I’m surrounded by ghosts and almost all of them look like my dead boy, the only child I’m ever going to have.
So is it any wonder why my heart went out to this poor kid whose life had also been co-opted by the dead?
In a way, it was almost like her former addiction to those webcam sites where models would do live sex shows for two or three bucks a minute. Even after she’d disconnect, she’d weaken, log on again and put another $30 on her maxed-out credit card. It was worse than heroin. Then she’d find her favorite model if he was logged on, send herself to where he was whether he was in Bogota, Colombia, St. Petersburg, Russia or Manila, Philippines and have her way with whatever lucky soul she’d inspire to a monstrous orgasm and ejaculation.
Mathilda Hogan found herself addicted to Adam Moss and his sexuality, his stunning good looks and sweetness of temperament. Oliver just told her to hightail it back to ADEPT headquarters, which was where she was now, not to continue her supernatural surveillance. But she found herself in a safe room at headquarters, wet-hacking herself back into Adam’s world and immediately felt cold, which was never a good sign.
“Is it getting cold in here or is it just me?” Virginia asked Adam. She reluctantly let go of his hands and gathered her knit sweater around herself.
“You’re right,” he said, looking outside. The sun hadn’t gone behind a cloud. It was chilly outside but since none of the windows were open, there was nothing that could account for the sudden drop in temperature. In seconds, it had gotten so cold in the living room, Adam and Virginia could see their breath. Then she finally said, “Someone’s here,” as she stood up and called for her brother.
I’ve heard my sister call out my name before in all kinds of moods. She’d call to me when she was pissed off, exasperated or when she’d try to charm me into doing something that neither of us wanted to do. But I’ve never heard Virginia summon me with dread and panic and her voice was laden with both. That’s why, even though my hands were still stinging from that damned yellowjacket, I already had my gun drawn when I left the bathroom and immediately noticed that the rest of the house was like a reefer and all the lights were off.
Outside, all four of Virginia’s dogs were howling like it was the end of the world.
Because of all the times I’ve been surrounded by ghosts, I can tell you from first-hand experience, dude, that when they come calling, a good sign of their presence is when the temperature drops and batteries drain. Back when I was a kid and I was studying the paranormal, I read somewhere that when ghosts manifest, they draw energy from the air and ghost hunters with fresh batteries would have them drained in seconds just before shit happened.
Virginia didn’t have a normal electrical hookup. She’d explained to me that her home was powered with solar panels and stored in batteries somewhere. That meant that whoever had arrived at her house had a shitload of energy to suck up. And just as Coffey came rushing out of the bathroom, the lights went out and we had no illumination but whatever little we were getting from the sunset.
“Virge, where’s your flashlight?” I called into the darkness, my eyes still adjusting. The lights were on in the bathroom but by the time I burst through the door they were all off. I or anyone else who knew that Virginia had solar panels to light and warm the house would’ve assumed that we’d gotten enough sunlight to power the whole place for days.
“The kitchen drawer. Don’t get the battery-powered one. Take the silver one that cranks.”
“What the hell’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference,” I heard. But it was Adam’s voice. Both of them knew something that I apparently didn’t. So I went rummaging through her drawer and finally found a silver thing that looked more like an electric shaver than a flashlight. I thumbed the rubber-coated on-off switch but nothing happened.
“How the hell do you turn this thing on?” I said asked as I rushed back into the living room. The crank was recessed and I had to pull it out and wind the thing up to power up the capacitor. It whined and whined like a remote control car until I could get the thing to light and when I shined it toward the couch, I wished I hadn’t. Adam was suspended about six feet in the air while Virginia was trying to pull him down by his ankles.
“Don’t just stand there, you dumb shit,” she yelled, “do something!”
Above her, above Adam was a guy in a Nazi uniform perfectly answering the kid’s description of the guy who murdered the Christiansons.
Mathilda had never seen this guy before. He was dressed in the uniform of a Nazi officer but looked almost real enough to pass for human. But this so-called human was levitating about seven or eight feet in the air and holding up Adam by his clothes while he struggled to free himself.
“Lemme go, you fuck!” the kid was saying.
Even in her astral projection, Mathilda could feel the cold and immediately sensed there wasn’t much energy in the air from which to draw, which further weakened her. At least while she was unsuccessfully guiding the kid and his handler to headquarters, she could draw energy from the cop’s constantly-charging 12 volt car battery. Traveling from place to place she could also draw from power lines and other EMF sources. But now there was virtually no electromagnetic field with which to energize herself and she immediately felt weaker. The only other alternative was to draw from the life force from the three living people in this house and after that accidental fatality in Sydney nine years ago, she vowed to never do that ever again. But what choice did she have?
Then she saw others, real spirits, flocking toward Adam, including the girl that she’d cruelly impersonated a couple of days ago. And that just further drained the EMF in the whole house.
The next thing I knew, I was hurtling back to the floor and that had something to do with that Nazi fuck named Yodel letting me go and Virginia tugging on my feet. I landed on top of her and we both wound up on the floor. I could still feel the ice cold sensation on my back from where he grabbed my clothes from behind. Coffey came running into the living room training Virginia’s little wind-up flashlight on him and fired three shots through him and into the wall where it met the ceiling. Yodel just smiled down at him as he produced some more scalpel things like the ones he used to practically decapitate the Christiansons.
The piece of shit stopped smiling when he found himself surrounded by the Christianson twins, Clarissa and a shitload of other ghosts that I never saw before, including some really hot chick with an Emo hairdo that looked at me with the same “I wanna fuck you” way “Clarissa” did on the road.
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