The Siege (25 page)

“Mr. Chapman, as I was explaining, my dog needs to urinate, and the back door is blocked with snow.  Excuse me,” Mia said and walked Maggie past the Other and off the porch.  She lifted her legs high and managed to move through the deep snow.  She stopped a few yards from the house, and Maggie peed as if on cue.

The two masses that had been moving away from the farmhouse turned around and sped towards her at an alarming rate.

“Careful!” Mia said, halting their progress.  “If you scare my dog, and she isn’t able to poop, then I’m going to be out here all day.  Bad enough, I have all this snow to deal with.  Ted, could you send Murphy out to…”

“No need!” Richard called.  “Leave the woman and her pet be.”  Richard looked at Ted and the man with the lifted axe behind him.  He didn’t need another fight to disrupt negotiations.  “Keep that poor farmer out of this.”

Mia turned around.  “Excuse me, aren’t you the one that sent your goons to attack Murphy?” she asked.

“Yes, but…”

“And didn’t that poor farmer slice you like a Christmas turkey?”

“A momentary miscalculation on my part,” he admitted.

“Say you’re sorry.”

“I beg your pardon!” Richard blustered.

“It’s Murphy’s pardon you should be begging.”

“That animal cut my arm off.”

“No, I believe that was a friend of his,” Mia corrected.  She watched as the Other tried to hold his temper while sorting the wheat from the chaff of Mia’s conversation.

“Alright!” Richard shouted.  “Mur…  What do you call him?”

“Murphy,” Mia supplied.  “Stephen Murphy is his given name.”

The Other raised his hand in the direction of the front door of the house.  “Stephen Murphy, I humbly…”

“Humbly, really?” Mia questioned.

“Stephen Murphy, please accept my apology for involving you in a fight.  It was petty of me and my associates to challenge your friendship for Mia Cooper.”

“Mia Martin,” Mia corrected.

“Mia Martin,” Richard repeated.  “You married that beanpole?” he asked, making a face in Ted’s direction.

“Now you’re insulting my husband.  I don’t think we have anything to talk about…”

“Wait!  You are the most exasperating human I’ve ever come across.”

“Then you’ve never met my aunt, have you?” Mia asked and saw a flicker of something move across his face.  “You have met Beverly,” she realized.

“I know of your aunt.  I’ve never sat down with her, personally,” he lied.

Bev must have found a loophole and escaped. Mia filed this information and moved on.  She looked around her and saw that all three goons were accounted for.  Ted had stayed on the porch, but the counterfeit Murphy had disappeared.  Mia hoped that Murphy was far away by now.  Mia nodded to Maggie who squatted and began to evacuate her bowels.

The stench of the excrement forced Richard to move away from Mia.  He studied the pregnant woman.  She had grown from the turbulent teen to an accomplished woman when he wasn’t looking.  She had a husband and soon a family.  Mia had the respect of her peers and the admiration of superhumans.  He would have to make the offer something she couldn’t turn down.  The stakes were high.  The entity he was representing was very demanding.  Richard had to make this deal.

“Your dog is finished.  Can I have your complete attention now?”

“Where are my manners?  I think that it’s time I invited you in.  You will have to leave your goons outside.  I just washed the carpets,” Mia lied.

“It’s hardly fair considering you have one, possibly two, ghosts inside.”

“Well, then let’s sit out here on the porch.  No, I insist.  Ted!  Ask Cid to bring a pot of hot chocolate.”

“You have to invite me in,” Richard insisted.

“I believe I did, and you refused,” Mia commented.  “It was rude, but I wouldn’t expect much less from your kind.”

“I have to be invited in.”

“Present your deal to me out here after we refresh ourselves, and we’ll go inside for the signing of the contract.  I assume a contract is involved.”

“Yes, of course,” Richard said.  He pondered what the hell was going on.  How had he lost control of this negotiation?

“Well, come on then.  Would you prefer a bit of salt in your hot cocoa… Oh pardon me.  I forgot what you were.”

“I am not a ghost!” Richard said with disdain.

“Forgive me.  You’re not a ghost, are you?  You’re something or another.”

“Other, O T H E R! Not another,” Richard clarified.

“Other.  Unusual but interesting.  So tell me, Richard, what brings an Other to my front porch?” Mia asked and smiled wickedly.

Chapter Nineteen

Murphy moved quickly through the back of the farmhouse.  He knew it would take more time, but he needed to move west before he moved south, and then east to the village of Big Bear Lake.  Two of the ghosts were accounted for, but Murphy had lost track of the big dangerous one.  He feared that this fellow had more than the rudimentary skills enabled to the ordinary spirit.  Also, the monster had the time to become familiar with Murphy’s area long before Murphy knew of his existence.  An inner alarm normally sounded inside Murphy’s mind if another spirit trespassed onto his property, but Murphy had heard nothing.  True, they had destroyed the mausoleum when Murphy was away helping the PEEPs with the poltergeist infestation and wasn’t around, but that was one day away from his precious farm.  He worried that he had been watched for some time now, and all his normal pathways had been marked.  Because of this, he would have to travel contrary to his normal routes if he was going to get by these ghosts.

Stephen increased his speed, and as he crested the hill, he slammed into an invisible barrier.  He picked himself up out of the snow and a tried again and was shocked to find that he could not move through the wall.  He rose higher and hit another barrier.  He put his hand above him and flew a few feet, tracing the globe that imprisoned him.  How had they done this?  It was a magic he had never encountered before.  This must be something the Other used to trap his spiritual prey.  Murphy spied salt licks placed every few yards.  Had the Other somehow linked them?  He needed to warn Mia that if she was taken outside of this dome, he could not follow her.

Halfway to the house, he stopped.  There must be a way out.  The Other could not know everything about the hollow.  A sudden flash of memory seared an idea into Murphy’s brain: Mia’s hand shooting out of nowhere.  He pulled her out of an eddy of energy.  He hadn’t known about the vortex previously, and he’d been on the farm for over a hundred years.  The newcomers, unless they accidently came across it, would be unaware that an entrance to one of the most powerful ley lines was ten feet away from where his remains used to rest.  And even if they knew, did they know how to travel one?  He hadn’t.  Mia showed him, and even then, he was in constant jeopardy of not being able to control where he ended up.  He would have to chance it.  Get in for a blink and out again, hoping his exit wouldn’t be downtown Chicago, far from Tom and Big Bear Lake.

But what if the vortex was outside the barrier?  Murphy closed his eyes and took in all that was around him.  He thought backwards and placed each of the players in this drama on their marks.  He moved the film forward slowly, examining everything for the information he desperately needed.  The gray-suited man stood on the porch with the large ghost immediately behind him.  Where were the other two?

He had seen the two goons walking down the drive of the farm.  How far had they walked?  He replayed his memory again and smiled.  The spiritual thugs had walked farther down the drive than the area that encompassed the vortex, a mere fifty-feet parallel to it.  This realization came as a relief to Murphy but also underlined another problem.  The goons that paced the drive were between his present position and the vortex.  Did they have the same ability as he, to sense another spirit?  Should he go around them?  Time was short, and Mia could not continue her double talk for too much longer.  Nor stay in the cold.  Soon she would have to go inside and, in doing so, invite the Other in.

He moved from behind the barn to the snow-covered vehicles.  He slowed his progress when he saw the largest thug twitch and turn his head Murphy’s way and start moving towards him.

A whirl of machinery whizzed by Murphy.  Curly had exited the barn and was in the process of dragging a small salt spreader up the walk between the house and barn.  While the ghost’s attention was on the machine, Murphy made his move and left the parking lot for the lowland to the south of the drive.

“And so the fecking pooch has to take a dump before the boss can start the negotiations.  I hope he fries that mongrel when he burns the house down.”

“I do love a good fire.”

Murphy raised his axe.  He was prepared to slice through these lackeys if they turned around and saw him.  Murphy waited for the right opportunity.  He managed to slip behind them while the two were deep in a conversation reminiscing about another fire, and the attention of the third ghost was being kept by Curly’s steady progression up and down the connecting walk.

He moved quickly through the woods.  The deep snow made identifying the area of the vortex difficult.  He didn’t have the usual landmarks to judge where the vortex was exactly.  He turned to his memories and let them guide him.

Murphy remembered the first time he encountered the vortex.  He had been cutting deadwood.  Murphy looked around until he saw the spot where he had previously pruned the bad limbs in order to let the new shoots have a chance to grow.  He had hoped that this would solve the problem, but nothing ever seemed to last long in that spot.  He stared at the dead area of the woods and nodded.  This was it! He walked over, moved the snow away from the barren ground, and scratched a line into the frozen earth.  He worried that the sound he was making would attract the more savvy of the spirits, but he would have to risk it.  He traced his lines again, digging deeper into the soil.  The line began to pulse with light.  There was one more step.  He had to decide his direction before he stepped into the ley line.  He mirrored what Mia had done and thought about Sabine before he walked forward and was sucked into the swirling void.

Inside he spun wildly.  If he did not regain control soon, he would ride the line to the end, to find himself forty miles away and pitched into the Chicago River.  He grabbed onto his axe with both hands. Pulling power and stability from the spectral wood and iron, Murphy managed to not only right himself, but used the momentum of the swing of his axe to exit the ley line.  He tumbled out and found himself north of Big Bear Lake.  He couldn’t have been in a better position.  He would follow the shoreline down to the village and then to Tom Braverman.  Before he left, he hacked an X into a mature maple so he could identify where he’d left the ley line for his return trip.  He would have to ride the line again because he had no doubt that the barrier they had erected worked both ways.  No ghosts out and no ghosts in.

Murphy moved quickly over the snowy landscape.  He needed to find Deputy Tom.  There wasn’t any question in Murphy’s mind that he wouldn’t find him.  When he started Tom’s heart after the deputy suffocated in quicksand, Murphy had inadvertently left a mark upon Tom.  This acted as a homing beacon to the spirit.  The same had been true for Mia.  There was no place, aside from heaven, that Murphy couldn’t find her.  Murphy slowed down outside of the Big Bear Lake Sheriff’s Station.  He didn’t want to blow into the place and cause the other deputies to be confused and possibly frightened by the disturbance that moving out of the ghostly realm frequently caused.

The snow had eased, leaving the county covered in eighteen inches of the stuff.  It wasn’t a problem for Murphy who had no difficulty moving through it, but the men and women working hard to keep the parking lot clear were tired and cranky.  Tom wasn’t outside so Murphy entered the building.

Tom felt the pull before he saw the ghost standing there.  Murphy looked anxious and waved at Tom to come to him.  Tom shook his head, raised his hand, and directed the ghost to follow him.  “What’s the matter?” Tom asked as they entered the deserted hallway.

“Mia’s in trouble.  Powerful paranormal entity called an Other and three funny-speaking ghosts have them trapped at the farm.  No phone, no cell phone, soon no Mia.”

“You came to me for help?” Tom asked, confused but pleased.

“You can see and hear me.  You can help me hold them off until He-who-walks-through-time arrives.”

“I take it, this guy is equipped to handle the situation.”

“We hope so.  Until then, we must fight like in the hollow.  Come!”

“Hold on, come with me.  I think I can do us one better,” Tom said.

Murphy followed him into a conference room.  Sheriff Ryan was deep in conversation with two women.  He looked up at Tom.

“Stephen Murphy is with me.  He says that our perps are at the Martin farm aiding an entity called an Other.  Mia is trapped there.  She has called for help, but it’s going to take time.  We need to get over there.”

The two women turned around and looked at Tom and Murphy in the doorway.

“Hello, farmer,” Tonia said.

Murphy took off his hat and nodded.

“Murphy, we came as soon as we heard about the Dickensian ghosts in this area.  Tom called us in,” Lorna Grainger explained.  “We can help you hold off the ghosts, but an Other is, well, another problem.”

“Come, hurry.”

“We’ll be there as soon as humanly possible,” Tonia promised.  “When you see a white horse, clear us a path to the door.”

Murphy nodded and disappeared.

“He’s very upset,” Tom remarked.

“He should be,” Lorna commented.  “Dickensian ghosts are a big problem.”

“A ghost is a ghost is a ghost,” Ryan scoffed.

“A Dickensian ghost feeds off of your perception of them.  That’s how they get their power.”

“I don’t understand,” Ryan admitted.

“This time of year, a lot of people are watching and reading Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
.”