The Stars Never Rise (The Midnight Defenders Book 2) Read online

  “Wait for it,” he said, setting his spatula and lid-shield against the floor as quietly as he could. Then he sprang towards the pot, grasping either side of it with his oven mitts, and lifted it straight up. He shouted, “Now!” as if I had been ready with a trap of some sort.

  Sitting on the counter where the pot had sat a moment ago, was…nothing.

  “Impressive,” I said.

  The weatherman lowered the pot to one side and slumped his shoulders. “It was here. I…”

  “Right. Can we go in the other room and talk a moment?”

  He set the pot on the floor next to the lid and turned to look at me with wide eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Look, mate, I’m just trying to gather the facts, alright? No offense, but I don’t accept anyone on their word, least ways about something I’m certain don’t exist. Savvy?”

  He sighed loudly, and visibly, the way a frustrated child might upon giving up. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, for starters, why do you have a colander on your head?”

  He looked up, moving only his eyes, and reached a mitt up to snatch the metal strainer. As he lifted it, his black hair jutted out comically.

  “Alright, maybe I can take you more seriously now.” He nodded, and I worked to ignore the rest of the faux armor. “Why do you even think you have a ghost?”

  “Like I told you on the phone, man. I hear noises. I live alone, and I’ll be in the living room watching TV or I’ll be just coming out of the shower, and I’ll hear a book being knocked off the shelf in the living room or plates being tossed out of the cabinet, or the crinkling of a chip bag, something like that.”

  “Chips?”

  “It’s been eating my cheese curls.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And it’s not mice, because…?”

  “Look, Mr. Swyftt. This is a nice building. It’s properly maintained. They spray for pests and bugs and all that shit.”

  “You’re a lot different in person than on TV.”

  “And you’re just as big of a dick as I heard,” he said with a smirk. “Doesn’t mean we don’t get the job done. Savvy?” He said the last word in a mock accent.

  “Fair enough. Spirits tend to bring an aura with them. Apart from noises, have you noticed anything else out of the ordinary? Strange events? Sightings?”

  He seemed to consider that for a moment. “Last week, I had a boil in-between my shoulders.” He bent forward a bit, indicating the place in question.

  “Not exactly what I meant.”

  “I didn’t think anything of it at first, but the second day, it had grown to the size of a golf ball. The day after that, it was maybe like a baseball. I thought I was going to be a hunchback or something. It didn’t really hurt or anything, but it was pretty noticeable. I took a personal day and scheduled a dermatologist…”

  “There’s nothing there,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m telling you.” He grew excited. “One morning, I woke up, and it was just gone. I guess it had popped while I slept. My pillow was wet with puss or whatever, like I slept on it wrong, or…”

  “Okay. I think we’re getting off topic.”

  “No. It was after that the noises started.”

  “A phantom…boil?”

  He started to say something, and then he stopped. “Well, when you put it like that….”

  “DeNobb.”

  “Call me Jamie.”

  “No. I don’t make friends with my clients.”

  “What if you take a friend as a client?”

  Ignoring him, I said, “No boils like that before?”

  He thought about it a moment. “No. But last week was sweeps week, and I was under a lot of stress. Like, a ton. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so stressed in my life. It was my first sweeps in the timeslot, and the previous quarter we were down five percent against Channel Four’s morning news. Channel Four’s our closest competition, and we were hoping to beat…”

  I waved my hand in front of him, and he stopped. “I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not writing your sodding memoirs.” I was starting to get a headache and was tired of listening to him drone on. I considered my options for a moment.

  “You said you trapped it in the pot?” I asked, moving into the kitchen from the hallway for the first time.

  He nodded.

  I pulled the glove off my right hand, and then I grabbed the handle of the pot at the weatherman’s feet. I could feel the electric energy coursing through the metal, and then everything around me began to darken.

  “What are you doing?” DeNobb asked.

  The darkness lifted, and I looked up irritably at him. “If possible, keep your mouth shut for a few minutes. I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “Are you psychic?”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  He smiled. “Okay. I’ll, uh, give you a minute.”

  He stepped into the hallway, considered me for a moment, and then disappeared from view. I took the handle once more in my bare hand and took a deep breath, feeling the vibration once more as I welcomed the vision.

  I wasn’t psychic. I was just born with the ability to see an object’s history through little more than skin contact and concentration. Lately, it took a bit more of the latter. I was getting fucking old.

  I didn’t see anything from the pot, but I did hear noises, scratching mostly, which isn’t the kind of noise that a ghost would make, providing such a thing existed.

  I stood and searched the countertops. Orange cheese powder sat on the counter where the pot had stood. The bag of cheese curls sat open on the counter beside the refrigerator. “Were you having a snack before I got here?” I called.

  He popped his head in from the hallway. “No. I had a late lunch today.”

  I scanned across the countertop from the open bag to where the overturned stew pot had sat and then beyond to the opposite end of the counter where a wooden, mahogany bread box stood beside a toaster oven. “How often do you eat bread?” I asked as I crossed to the box.

  “Uh…I keep my bread in the fridge.”

  “Then why do you have a bread box?”

  “It was a housewarming present.”

  I touched the shiny, metal handle, and the moment my fingers touched the polished sheen, I felt the vibration of energy, and I saw DeNobb’s ghost. I took a step backward, shook my head confused, and the weatherman said, “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. Putting my glove back on, I took a deep breath and slid the breadbox door open.

  Crouched in the corner of the little box was a figure that was maybe four inches tall while standing. The little, naked humanoid cowered and shook, shielding its face with its arms. All around its feet were half-eaten cheese curls, and in the opposite corner, a sock was laid out like a sleeping bag.

  “Here’s your ghost,” I said.

  “What…?”

  I shook my head and took a fresh cheese curl from the bag, holding it out to the trembling form. Its little head moved, shifting its eyes around its hands to stare out at me with tiny, glassy pools. As I moved my hand closer, it sunk further into the corner.

  “Just set it in there,” DeNobb said.

  I did and then took a few steps back. Its eyes flickered from the cheese curl to me, then to the curl, then to DeNobb.

  “Step back,” I said.

  He did so without question, and when the thing determined we were far enough away, it unfolded its arms to reveal its features and moved reluctantly towards the cheese curl, more fully into the light. DeNobb gasped when he saw the creature’s face, but I’d seen it already in the flash. The face was DeNobb’s.

  In fact, the entire figure was an exact duplicate of the weatherman, and as it stood there fumbling with the cheese curl, trying to fit the large, round end between its jaws, DeNobb gawked at it and said, “How in the fucking hell?!”

  We watched the thing in silence, and after a few tense seconds, it stared awkwardl
y at us over the cheese curl that was about the size of a baseball bat in its fingers.

  “Just one of those is a whole meal,” I said. I moved back into the hallway and headed for the door.

  “Wait, where are you going?” the weatherman asked, trailing after me.

  “Job’s over. You wanna settle up now, or would you prefer I just bill you later?”

  “You’re…not leaving. You can’t leave me alone with…”

  “With yourself? I thought you celebrities loved that kinda shit?”

  “You’re kidding, right? What the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Get a jar and poke some holes in the lid, or keep it in your pocket. I don’t care.”

  “Ha ha. You’re hilarious. At least take the thing with you. It gives me the creeps.”

  “Now you know how the rest of us feel.” He didn’t say anything and didn’t wear the panicked look on his face well. “Look, I’m not a pest exterminator, and as far as I can tell, the little bastard isn’t a threat.”

  “It’s creepy!” His voice broke into a high-pitch crackle.

  “Get used to it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you put some clothes on it. Maybe go down to the toy shop and get a Ken doll outfit.”

  I put my hand on the doorknob, twisted it, and pulled it open. As I stepped into the hallway, I felt his hand on my shoulder. “At least tell me what it is! Where did it come from?”

  “You hired me to find your ghost.”

  I walked over to the elevator and hit the button.

  “And get rid of it!”

  “Get rid of a ghost,” I clarified. “You don’t have a ghost.”

  “You’re useless.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open.

  “No,” I said. “I’m tired. It’s been one hell of a night already.” I stepped inside, and the doors closed behind me.

  3

  Almost twenty years ago, my daughter, Anna, became sick. She was four years old.

  What followed was two years of hell: doctor’s visits, misdiagnoses, incorrect prescriptions, trial procedures, and long, long hours of pain, dizziness, and tears. Nobody could tell us what was wrong with her, and the only thing those fucking doctors could tell us for certain was that until they knew what was wrong, they didn’t know how to treat her. Maybe it was curable. We could try this. Even though she tested negative for these diseases, it bears the symptoms of these and we could attempt those treatments.

  Fuck, maybe she had a cold, and all the paranoia and bullshit and chemical treatments made her worse. I can’t say what happened. Only one knows exactly, and He and I aren’t on speaking terms anymore.

  We watched impotently as she withered away, and I held her in my arms as she drew her last breath. We buried her in the autumn among the falling leaves. She was six fuc… She was just six years old.

  For nearly twenty years, she was lost to me.

  A few months ago, I found her again.

  Sort of.

  The case we’d taken involved missing kids, rotting street vagrants, and a faceless, puppeteering boogeyman who laired beneath the Seattle Space Needle. That’s where I found Anna.

  After I finished with the weatherman, I headed towards the Needle.

  As I drove, I heard Nadia’s voice in my head: “We’re worried about you.”

  I shrugged it off, turned the music louder to try to drown her out, but it was no use. The closer I got to the Needle, the louder she screamed at me.

  “We’re worried about you.”

  I slapped my palm against the steering wheel and gave into the memory.

  We were sitting at a little two-person table by the window of the Crab Dip restaurant. It didn’t exactly overlook the water, but it overlooked the storage warehouses and docked freighters of the shipping yards. The conversation was fresh in my head, happening only hours ago, just before that sodding bonnacon busted in and set the place on fire.

  “If you’re both worried, why are you the only one here?” I had asked.

  “Because Terry didn’t think you’d listen.”

  “He was right.”

  “Jono. We’re worried.”

  “You said that bit already.”

  “I don’t have a prepared speech, okay. I’m trying to talk to you like a human being would. I’m trying to pour out my heart to you and let you know…”

  “That you’re worried.”

  She stared at me coldly. “Anna’s been dead for a long time. What you’re doing is not healthy.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Holding on. Spending more time with her than anyone else. How many nights this week have you even been home?”

  “Two, but I slept at the office.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Watch your language, young lady.”

  She shook her head and twirled her fork idly in her pasta. “You don’t get to do that,” she told her plate. “You don’t get to forsake me for months and then all of a sudden play the father card.”

  “Nadia, don’t be silly.”

  “Silly?” She looked up at me. “Is that really the direction you want to take this conversation?”

  I shrugged.

  “Is that all I am to you, a silly girl? No wonder you don’t care. No wonder you’re never there.”

  “Stop,” I said. “You know that’s not what I meant, love.”

  She looked back at her plate and moved a piece of shrimp around like a hockey player juggling the puck.

  “Are you going to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said and put her fork down.

  I ate a few fries from my plate, smelled the heady aroma of the vinegar. “Look. You don’t know what I’m going through. I thought all of this was behind me. I didn’t ask to see Anna again.”

  “No. Don’t tell me that. It’s perfectly clear that you never let her go. It affected you, and I get that. I feel for you, and I hate that I even have to drag you out here like this to have this talk. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child. I lost Huxley, sure, but I was young, and …”

  “Don’t talk about him like he didn’t matter.”

  “I was young,” she said. “I didn’t know him like you did.”

  “Right,” I said. “But you can’t go around pretending to be the expert on recovering from loss. Maybe I’ve never let go, but you’ve never dealt with your pain. Whenever Huxley comes up, you always change the fucking subject.”

  “That might not sound as ignorant coming from your mouth if you actually knew what you were talking about. While you’ve been underground for the past few months, I’ve been trying to deal with Huxley. I’ve been wearing the amulet. When I do, I feel him near, sometimes even see his memories. Maybe you knew him better, but after wearing this necklace, I feel like I understand him better than anyone.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You win. Do you want a medal?”

  “I want you to stop dwelling on the past, nursing your pain, and shirking your responsibilities like a…a…fucking ass.”

  “Language!”

  “Shut up, Jono. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  I took a long pull of my beer and another meaty bite of my crab cake and smiled at her. “Look. I’m spending time above ground, love. With a living person. Just be happy that, for right now, you got your wish.”

  She sighed.

  “Say what you want, but you won’t change my mind. She’s my daughter.”

  “I’m…” Her hand covered her mouth.

  I saw the glow outside the window from the corner of my eye, but I didn’t pay it any mind. Ships passed by all the time, and their lamps burned about as bright. It wasn’t until it got closer that I turned to the window and saw the flames that enveloped the charging bonnacon heading straight towards us.

  I grabbed Nadia and tackled her to the ground in the instant before the wall next to our table imploded into the middle of the restaurant. The tacky shit that decorated the walls -- seashells and framed photos of old boats –
exploded around us.

  I sighed. That was hours ago.

  I didn’t want to think about the bonnacon and how we’d forced it out of the restaurant by activating the fire sprinklers and ramming it with a deep fryer. The bonnacon was behind me now. What was before me…was Anna.

  I parked the El Camino on the street and headed for the old service door. At this hour, I didn’t worry about putting change in the meter.

  On the first trip into the underground lair, we had taken a long tunnel that wound for miles in the dank, deep darkness and sewers. The way out was much faster, and it became my new entrance as well.

  I entered and descended the rickety metal ladder. The room below was dark and ancient, everything rusted or covered in moss. That is, everything but the green lantern hanging on the hook. That fucking thing stood out like bollocks on a ballerina. There was no electricity in the Underground, and as often as I’d been there lately, I needed reliable light, so I picked up the lantern from a sporting goods shop. I took it from the hook, switched it on, and shielded my eyes momentarily from the glow. Then I took the door before me and entered the stadium-sized cavern. The empty store fronts of the once populated, fire-scarred city now looked like hollow skulls.

  The original Seattle burned, and rather than tear it down, city engineers built up, burying the ashes of what was. That’s the problem with modern living, at least in Western society – everything’s fucking disposable. Even cities. Records no longer existed to map the grave that was the old town. Nobody knew how vast it really was, but that’s where the city’s nightmares crouched in waiting and fed upon their prey.

  I moved quickly through the cavern, over the exposed charred brick of old roads, my steps echoing in the cavern, to the shop across the way that I’d become so familiar with it felt almost like home. After all, home is where the heart is, and my heart belonged with my little girl.

  I walked though the front of the building and into the sanctum beyond. The place had, only months before, been draped with brightly-colored sheer fabrics, theater masks, makeup tables and costume chests to serve as the dressing room of a faceless maniac.