Ghosts the complete seri.., p.28
Ghosts: The Complete Series, page 28
"How do we do that?" I ask.
He pauses. "Stopping her is the easy part," he says eventually. "It's what happens after we've stopped her. That's the dangerous part."
Chapter Nine
Emily leads me out into the town square. It's almost 3am and there's no-one about. The whole town is sleeping, and there's no sign of life on the streets apart from a fox that runs away from us in the distance. The street lights are running, though, so we can see where we're going, although I'm just following Emily. I have no idea what's happening.
"Here," says Emily, stopping suddenly in the middle of the town square. "We'll do it here."
"Do what?" I ask.
"Wait," she says. She looks about, and there's an unusual element of frantic concern in her expression. "They'll be here soon," she adds.
"Everard and any fools he can rope into helping him out. That man has a silver tongue." She turns to me and smiles. "It's time this town was rid of him once and for all. A man like that doesn't deserve to live."
"We can't just murder him," I say.
"It's not murder," she replies, a hint of anger in her voice. "It's justice. It's getting rid of a disgusting human being who has spread nothing but hatred and pain in this world for many, many years. Just like his father, and his father's father, and the entire line of Everards going back as far as I can remember. There's no hope for them. They'll all terrible creatures, and the line of his family must stop here, tonight."
"And how will this draw out God and Satan?" I ask.
She smiles, recovering her composure. "I'm not sure about God," she says, "but Satan will surely step out of the shadows when he realizes that his friend Lucas Everard has finally been slaughtered."
"I'm not in favor of killing people," I say.
"I can tell," Emily sneers. "You had a chance to kill Everard and you didn't take it. How do you think that makes me feel? He's the man who forced me to carry his child, the man who hurt me, and you didn't have the loyalty for me, or the love, to help me get my revenge."
"I do not -"
"Fine!" she says angrily. "If you won't do it, I will. I'll take that man down. I'll destroy him, and then I'll destroy his office and every relic of his miserable little life. And as he bleeds to death in the gutter, his old friend Satan will come sniffing about, trying to work out what happened to his friend. That's when we grab him and make sure he remembers who he really is. And then our task will be complete."
"We also have to find God," I remind her.
"Yeah yeah," she says, "I hadn't forgotten. I just think it's going to be a lot easier to lure Satan out of the shadows first, and then we can get him to help us find God." She eyes me suspiciously. "What's wrong?" she asks. "Don't you believe me?"
"I believe you," I say. "I just can't help wondering whether killing Lucas Everard is the best way to get things done."
"It. Is," she says firmly. "Kal, if you won't help me, that's fine. If you want to be disloyal, go ahead. But at least tell me, so that I don't think I can count on you and then..." She puts a hand on her belly. "I'm having a fucking baby, Kal," she says. "I need to look after myself, and I need to make sure that Lucas Everard is out of the picture long before his child is ever born. Don't you understand that? If you can't bring yourself to help for me, at least think about this baby."
"I will help you," I say, though I must admit that I still have some doubts. Emily's determination to kill Lucas Everard at all costs seems somewhat misplaced, as if she is fixating on this one task at the expense of everything else that is important. But perhaps I should try to see things from her point of view. After all, Everard hurt her and she's probably far more damaged from that moment than she'll ever admit. And there's the child inside her; a child born in a moment of barbarity, but a child nonetheless.
"They're coming," Emily says suddenly, looking up.
I look around, but I see nothing in the town square but the darkness.
"Where?" I ask.
"They're not here yet," she says testily. "If you could see them, that would mean that they're here. And if they were here, I'd say they're here. They're not here. But they're coming. And..." She pauses. "I'm scared, Kal." She turns to me. "What if he's too powerful?"
"Lucas Everard is just a man," I say.
"Is he?" Emily asks. "We both know he's been touched by the devil. We both know he can talk to the ghosts. Is he really just a man, or is there something else in his soul? Something perhaps even he has forgotten, but which works its magic nonetheless."
I pause. "He is just a man," I say again. "And we will stop him."
"Not stop him," Emily says. "Kill him. And... you have to be the one who does it."
I take a deep breath. I suspected that she might say that. I swore a vow, long ago, that I would never take a human life. Until recently, I did not even believe that I was capable of such an action. Even when confronted with the evil heart of Edgar Keneally, a man who killed his entire family, I held back from crossing that final barrier. But now I have human feelings, human emotions, and I can start to see that in some cases, killing someone like Lucas Everard might be justifiable. I can only hope that when the time comes, I have the strength to do what is necessary.
"They're getting closer," Emily says. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a large knife. "You'll need this," she says. "Cut his throat. Watch his blood flow across the ground. And then, finally, I can rest and my child will be able to be born without having a father like Lucas Everard in his life, and Satan himself will come to this place in order to find out what happened to his ally."
I take the knife and stare at it. It's so simple, so basic, yet it can cause so much damage if it cuts into the flesh of a human.
"Do it for me," Emily says. "Show me that you love me. Show me that you're willing to protect me. In return, I'll give you everything you could possibly want, and more."
I nod, but I say nothing. Can I really strike a human, even one as abominable as Lucas Everard?
"That man is evil," Emily says.
I look at her. There's passion in her eyes. Does she want Everard dead because of what he did to her, or because she simply wants to see me kill a man?
"Don't be tempted by him," Emily continues. "He'll try to tempt you to turn against me. But you have to do this." She puts her hand on her belly. "For all of us." She looks up. "They're here."
I look over and see two figures arriving on the other side of the town square. They start walking toward us, and I see with shock that Beth is with Everard. How can that be? Why would Beth ever stand with a man like Everard. As I watch, I see that Everard is carrying a bag. He stops, reaches into the bag and pulls something out, and then he throws it at me. It lands with a thud at my feet, and when I look down, I feel my heart skip a beat due to sheer shock.
It's Laura's decapitated head.
Chapter Ten
"Do you know why I believed in God as a child?" Lucas Everard asks me as we stand on one side of the town square, facing Emily and Kal.
"Funnily enough, I don't," I say.
"It wasn't because I wanted to end up in Heaven. And it wasn't because I wanted to believe that there was an intelligent order to the universe. No, I believed in God because I wanted to believe that every evil cocksucker, every liar and murderer and corrupt politician, would one day have to face an entity that would see through their lies and cast them into Hell." He laughs. "Does that make me a bad person?"
"Probably," I say.
He nods, seemingly unconcerned. "Oh well. I suppose throwing the head at them was kind of over the top, wasn't it?"
I look over at Kal. He has knelt beside Laura's head and is examining it with an expression of total shock on his face. I guess he didn't know she'd been killed, and since he's been getting his information only from Emily, I wouldn't mind betting that he's spectacularly ill-informed about a lot of things. It's strange, but when I first met Kal I was sure that he was totally incorruptible. Now, though, it's clear that he has been led on by Emily, and she has managed to twist him around her little finger.
"Sorry for the rude interruption," Everard says. "But come on. A body's a body. It doesn't contain the soul of a person, does it?"
Kal looks up at us, a murderous rage in his eyes.
"The real Laura is... somewhere else. That's just a part of her old body. Just a pile of meat and bones. Let's not get sucked into a silly game of false remorse now." He smiles. "Don't you want to know what happened, Kal? Aren't you going to ask? Or are you too scared to know the truth?"
Kal gets to his feet, and I see that he has a knife in his hand.
"That's the knife!" I shout at him. "That's the knife she used to kill Laura."
Kal looks at the knife in his hand, and then he turns to Emily.
"Don't let them trick you, Kal," she says. "Lucas Everard murdered Laura just like he murdered so many people over the years. Just like he persuaded Edgar Keneally to murder his family."
"Step away from him," Kal says to me. "I don't want you caught up in this."
"I'm already dead," I say. "What's the worst that could happen?" I step toward him. "You have to believe me, Kal. Emily kills Laura. I saw it. I was there. If you think I'm lying, go and find Henry. He saw it too."
"She's lying," says Emily. "Look at Everard. He doesn't give a damn about Laura's death. To him, she was just a pawn in a game."
"Who do you believe?" I ask Kal. "Her or me?" I stare at him, and a terrible realization hits me. Kal believes Emily. Her temptation of him is complete, and she has total power over him.
Kal steps toward Everard, the knife in his hand.
"Kill me," Everard says, holding his arms out, a smile on his face. "Do it. Many men have tried before. A few women too. I suppose it was inevitable that eventually someone would succeed. And do you know what? I don't really mind. It's kind of okay. But then again... I say that from a position of strength, 'cause do you what the truth is, Kal?"
"You have no business claiming to speak the truth," Kal snarls at him, the knife in his hand, poised to strike.
"Three things are true here that you're not going to like to hear," Everard says. "The first is that I didn't force myself on that little bitch. She forced herself on me. The second is that I didn't kill Laura. And the third is that you can't kill me."
At that moment, Kal launches himself at Everard and sinks the knife deep into his chest. Everard gasps and staggers back, the knife still embedded in him, blood oozing from the wound. Kal steps back, a look of shock on his face, as if he didn't believe he could really go through with it.
"The heart," Everard says, moments before blood flows from his mouth. "Good choice." He drops to his knees. "So this is what it feels like, is it?" He grimaces in pain. "Damn, I really hoped it wouldn't hurt. But I suppose I don't get to choose, do I?" He smiles. "But you forgot one thing, Kal. You forgot to twist it." He puts his hands on the handle of the knife and he slowly twists it around in his own chest. He drops to the ground.
"Goodbye, Lucas," says Kal, with nothing but coldness in his voice.
Everard is still smiling as he stares up at the night sky. And as I look at him, I realize he isn't moving. He's dead.
"I thought there was a plan," I say under my breath, and it's true. When we came here, Everard seemed so determined, so confident. Did he really just want to be killed? What good does that do?
"The knife," I say to Kal. "Look at the knife."
"I don't need to look at it," he replies.
"Let's go," says Emily. "We're done here."
"Don't you recognize it?" I ask, tears in my eyes. "It's from Laura's house. You lived there. Surely you remember that knife being in her kitchen. Where did you get it?"
Kal looks down at Everard's body. "This man deserved to die," he says.
"Did you deserve to kill him?" I ask.
He turns to me.
I look at Emily. Though she looks shocked and upset, there's a hint of a smile on her face. "I never read the Bible," I say slowly, "but I heard about bits of it. Jesus was led into the desert and tempted by the devil for forty days and forty nights, right?" I turn to Kal. "How many nights with Emily did it take for you to give in? Just the one?"
Kal looks away, as if he can't stand to look me in the face; as if he knows that what I'm saying is true, but he can't admit it, either to me or to himself.
"We have to go," Emily says to Kal. "Satan will show his face soon. We have to be prepared."
I stare at Kal. "Are you really going to go with her?" I ask.
He looks up at me, darkness and fear in his eyes. It's as if Emily has found a crack in his soul, and has poured poison into that crack.
"I killed a man," he says.
I pause. "Good luck," I say. "I mean that." I turn to Emily. "I hope you get everything you deserve."
She smiles. "I think I will," she says. "Kal. Come on." She turns and walks away. After a moment, Kal turns and follows her. He seems completely broken, completely owned by Emily. It's almost like he's her dog. I guess Kal couldn't handle human emotions. He was weak. Funny, I never would have expected that from him. And looking down at Lucas Everard's body, I can't help but wonder why Kal was able to kill him yet he wasn't able to kill my father.
I stand alone in the town square, with only Everard's body and Laura's head to keep me company. It's a strange sensation, and I'm filled with a growing sense of fear. Emily is planning something, and I don't feel like I'm in any position to stand in her way. Hell, it's a miracle she didn't tell Kal to try to get rid of me as well, but I guess getting rid of a ghost is pretty difficult.
Suddenly I hear someone clapping behind me.
I turn to find Lucas Everard - or at least, the ghost of Lucas Everard - standing nearby.
"Excellent performance," he says, grinning from ear to ear.
I pause, staring at him. "Somehow," I say, "I knew you'd be back."
"Me too," he says, walking over and looking down at his body. "You know what they say. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse. What do you think? Was my death good?"
"I've seen worse," I say. "But I thought ghosts never remember their own death?"
"They don't," he says. "Not normally, anyway. But I guess I'm just special." He takes a deep breath. "I'll be honest with you, I expected it to feel more... different. But I feel completely normal. I feel the wind on my ghostly skin. I even seem to be breathing, or at least pretending to breathe." He kicks his corpse. "You know the problem with being alive? It's so limiting. This way, I can have a lot more fun."
"So what now?" I ask.
"Now?" He smiles. "Now we destroy Emily. I mean really, really destroy her. End her evil forever."
"Do you have a plan?" I ask.
"I have several," he replies. "I just have to work out which one is least likely to result in the world being destroyed. And then, you know, I guess we'll pick that one. Because we're nice."
"We?"
"I need your help," he says, his voice sounding serious for a moment. "I can't do this without you. I mean... I don't need your help specifically, but I need someone. And you'll do. You're smart, right?" He stares at me. "Well, you're smart enough. You'll do."
"And what do I get?" I ask.
"You get not to have the world die around you," he replies. "The world, need I remind you, in which your little sister Elise lives quite happily." He pauses. "You also get the answer to your question about why your father killed you."
"Tell me," I say.
"I can't," he replies, with a hint of amusement in his eye. "I going to have to show you instead."
Epilogue
I stand in the doorway, watching as Kal stares out the window.
"How do you feel?" I ask.
He turns to me, sorrow in his eyes. "I feel..." He pauses. "Human."
I walk toward him. "I suppose you are," I say. "You've been in that body for a very long time now. I don't suppose you have much chance of fighting off the urges that come with it."
He looks back out the window. In the darkness, the lights of the town are so bright and it's impossible to see any stars. "I did not believe that human emotions would overwhelm me in this way." There are tears in his eyes. "How do they do it?"
"What?"
"How do they live like this? How do they live with hearts and minds and..." He takes a deep breath. "I hurt Laura so much," he says. "And Beth. I did things that hurt them. But... knowing how I can do that to another person, how can I ever walk the streets again? How can I even breathe?"
"I guess it's complicated," I say. "Humans manage it by numbing themselves. I've seen them do it. You forget, I've been hanging around this place for a lot longer than you have."
He nods. "We have to get out of here," he says.
"Not yet," I reply. "We have to find You Know Who and You Know Who."
"Then we find them," Kal says. "Tomorrow. Whatever it takes. Whatever we have to do. We find them. We end this. We make sure that no-one else gets hurt. And then we get out of here. We leave this planet forever and we go back to where we belong."
"How nice that sounds," I say. "How neat. But don't worry. Satan's on his way. I'm sure about that."
"We have already caused so much damage," he says. "But if we leave tomorrow, those people can heal."
I take a deep breath. "Kal, it seems to me that the most important thing to you is now the task of saving these pathetic humans. It seems you've forgotten why we're really here. If hurting a tramp like Laura means we get what we need, then we have to do it."
"And you can do that?" he asks.
"Yes," I reply. "Let Laura die a miserable, lonely, painful death in order that the rest of the world might live? Of course I would let her die. Any other choice would be... well, it would be -"
"Human," Kal says, interrupting. "And that is the problem."
I sigh. "Yes," I say. "I can see that now." I reach into my pocket and pull out a star-shaped blade.
"I would give anything," Kal says, "to have not hurt Laura. And to ensure that I never hurt her again."
"Well," I say, "I can't help with the past. But the future? I can help keep her safe from you. I can help keep everyone safe from you. Do you want to know a secret, Kal?" I lean up and whisper into his ear. "I don't need you any more." And with that, I stab the blade straight into his back.
