Storm Road (Old School Book 3) Page 7

Beulah had feared the worst when she’d heard of Sadie’s reunion with her college boyfriend, Marcus. It was the brutal way Marcus had betrayed Sadie’s love nine years ago that had first brought Beulah to North Carolina. Sadie was a North Carolina girl, all her family were here, but few people understood betrayal the way Beulah did. She’d worried for how Sadie would survive Marcus’s actions, and so, as a fellow Minervalle alumni, she’d checked on Sadie.

  Those visits had strengthened a shallow school friendship into one that would endure a lifetime. They’d also led to Beulah falling in love with the mountains and making her home, here.

  When Sadie had emailed Beulah to say Marcus was back in her life, Beulah had changed her plans so that her journey home let her check on Sadie, and confirm that Sadie wasn’t trusting too easily.

  Marcus’s devotion to Sadie had shocked and relieved Beulah. The full story of his apparent betrayal had revealed a love tested in fire and agony. In spite of Beulah’s cynicism, she’d only had to see the way the man looked at Sadie to know he’d die for her.

  Beulah was incredibly glad that true love could exist and that Sadie had found it. Not everything that had started here at Millie’s farmhouse was bad. Not everything was grief and devastation. She had to remember that. Perhaps especially when she faced the ghoul.

  “Do you have the cameras?” Dean asked.

  It was another line they’d scripted over dinner. Soon enough, the ghoul’s appearance would leave them with no option but to improvise. For now, they had certain information they wanted to convey while they hoped the ghoul was listening.

  Her ex-husband’s collection of books hadn’t included much on ghouls, but a number of the books had discussed demonic possession, at length. Demons were an irresistible lure for magic practitioners who had a lust for power and an eroded conscience.

  There was no guarantee that a ghoul’s possession mimicked a demon’s, but demonic possession was the only information Beulah had, so she was rolling with it. According to the death magic grimoires, a demon in possession of a human body acquired that body’s memories and understanding. That fact suggested that demons’ legendary sly intelligence was less a matter of being all-knowing, as having had the chance to consume multiple people’s knowledge and life experiences.

  As far as Beulah knew—and she hoped this hadn’t changed—since the breaking of its binding, the ghoul had only possessed Nate Smith. Judging by Mrs. Johnson and Claudia’s comments, poor Nate hadn’t been a particularly pleasant person, but he’d also been limited in what he wanted from life. The ghoul would have acquired extensive knowledge of cheap alcohol, but not too much about modern life. Beulah’s two old digital cameras ought to be sufficiently convincing props for her and Dean’s charade that they were at Millie’s house to record supernatural activity.

  They were offering the ghoul a chance to be a celebrity spirit. Their plan hinged on the ghoul having an ego. If it was little more than a perverse impulse to gain and sustain a mockery of life, then they would struggle to keep the ghoul’s attention focused on them. It would want to feed. However, the fact that in last night’s pursuit its attention had been for Dean, who’d escaped it once before, and that it kept moaning, “Mine”, suggested that it had an ego, a sense of self.

  Beulah had studied the death magic grimoires for the strategies a demonologist employed to interrogate a demon. Surely the common link between ghouls and demons was their drive to possess humans. Both wanted—needed—human life energy to sustain their manifestation. A demonologist used that desire for life to bind the demon.

  The ghoul might rawly attack her and Dean, but Dean had the personal protection charm and she had her objects of faith and her own long ago exercises in personal protection that Minervalle School had drilled into her. Everyone, magical or not, had the ability to shield themselves from negative energies.

  Tonight, she’d see how strong her shield was. It had failed her before with Samuel—but then, she hadn’t known she was under attack.

  She grabbed the two cameras, one designed to record video, and set them up at different angles. Turning her back to the ruins of Millie’s house was the hardest part. It was there that the ghoul had first manifested and the memory of being pursued by it stirred an atavistic response. She wanted to face her fear of it—or run. A ghoul was so wrong, so evil, that it pushed at the subconscious to flee.

  Dean stood on the far side of the five tea light candles with their flickering flames. Strong and proven under fire, he watched her back.

  They had this.

  She set the first camera on a rock. For the video camera she spied a cast iron bucket in the wreckage of the barns. Going into the barn space was part of their plan. If they were right in their guesses and the ghoul had been bound in the dirt beneath one of the old barns, then crossing into that space might be their strongest trigger to get the ghoul’s attention.

  “I can see a bucket that’ll make a good camera stand,” she said to Dean.

  He looked where she pointed. “I can get it.” He touched his upper chest in a subtle reminder of the personal protection charm he wore.

  “I’ll be careful where I tread.” She detoured back to the pickup to grab her flashlight and close the bible. Its pages fluttered in the strengthening wind. The flashlight beam darted and marked her path to the bucket. It wasn’t just for show. She didn’t want to tread on anything in the rank grass. The spring rains had brought up weeds in profusion. Snakes, too, could be hiding under the debris of the fallen barns.

  She picked up the bucket, found the handle missing, and carried it by its rim back to the graveled space. Treading onto the gravel felt comparatively safe, as if she’d escaped quicksand. The ghoul had definitely been bound beneath that barn. It wasn’t just her nerves creeping her out. The place exhaled a cold dread.

  Gravel rattled as she upturned the bucket and set the video camera on it. As the camera beeped acknowledgement that it was now on, and the red light showed it was recording, she had a moment to wonder if they might even manage to record something of the ghoul’s manifestation.

  Then, abruptly, she staggered back toward the pentagram with its five candles and Dean beyond it.

  A pressure had forced her back; not with violence, but out of revulsion.

  “It’s coming,” she whispered hoarsely, hugging her arms around herself.

  “I feel it,” Dean said steadily.

  He’d encountered and escaped the ghoul twice. The old saying was three times the charm, but what was the charm? Beulah would never forgive herself if the ghoul managed to possess him. That personal protection amulet had better work.

  They both wore jeans and long-sleeved shirts beneath their jackets, as well as boots. Only their faces and hands were bare. They had to be careful. They couldn’t bleed. The ghoul wanted blood for a reason. It had used the blood of animals to mark its territory, and Beulah suspected it had used his blood to possess Nate Smith.

  She forced herself to walk through the oppressive atmosphere back to the pickup and the old family bible resting on its hood. The pressure that had tried to keep her from coming home yesterday hadn’t been as strong as this. Even encountering the ghoul last night hadn’t felt as if she walked into the power of a hurricane. Not that the force battered at her. It was more as if it sought to fix her in place. Her lungs struggled in the heavy air and her heart beat too fast.

  She opened the bible to one of the marked pages. The Bible had numerous passages dealing with evil. Never lose hope. Never surrender who you are and your beliefs.

  Dirt kicked up and the five candles of the pentagram went out.

  The ghoul stood in the center of the sudden darkness.

  Beulah whirled to face it, the bible abandoned behind her. She heard its pages rustle and flip in the wind.

  The creature in front of her—between her and Dean—laughed.

  It seemed more solid than last night. Its blue fog body was almost blank, dense and wider than before, although perhaps a fraction shorter.
It still stood taller than Dean. And it was him that it faced.

  “Why did you burn down my aunt’s home?” Dean demanded. It was the question they’d decided to open with. It established who Dean was, telling the ghoul that by human reasoning, he had a right to be on the land. It also misled the ghoul. They already knew that it had been the Stag mercenaries who set the fire, and thus, released the ghoul. But would the ghoul correct the assumption in Dean’s question or claim the destruction of Millie’s home as its own work? Its answer would reveal the strength and nature of the entity’s ego.

  “Mine. Mine, mine, mine.” The same theme as last night. But the first shouted “mine”, was followed by whispers that seemed to echo and swirl, laying claim. “Fire freed me.”

  “What are you?” Beulah asked.

  It turned to her in an odd movement that wasn’t sinuous or flowing, but which wrenched and regathered its form. Devouringly empty eye sockets and mouth gave it an horrific appearance. “I am Ghoul.”

  “Are you a ghost?” She didn’t mind pretending both naivety and ignorance. Both wasted the ghoul’s night hours that it could use to hunt children, and presented the faint chance that it might actually tell them something useful.

  “No, no. No living. Not ever.”

  Well, that was a fair description of a ghoul’s existence.

  “Eat the living!”

  Beulah stepped back so sharply that her back hit the side of the pickup. Hard. Ow!

  The ghoul laughed, its hungry humor resembling a wolf’s howl.

  Death is coming. Start the hunt. Beulah’s skin prickled with the instinctive response of facing a predator. She had the bible behind her, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn her back on the ghoul to pick up the book and read.

  “We’re recording you for television,” Dean said. “People will see you.”

  “You see me now. And you are scared.” The ghoul turned back to him, its girth narrowing but its height increasing.

  With its attention distracted from Beulah, she struggled to stick with the plan. They wanted to lure the ghoul into talking about itself. Its language skills seemed limited, but it was definitely self-aware and intelligent.

  Dean had attempted to focus its attention on fame—but darn it, wouldn’t you know they’d encountered a ghoul without a desire for celebrity status? Her shaky humor helped her suppress the urge to pull out what weapons she had: a cross and holy water. Her magic also fought her. She’d coiled it tight into her center, needing to hide it from the ghoul, but the magic wanted out to fight the evil and protect her.

  And yes, she was aware that magic wasn’t sentient. It was her fear, her subconscious, fighting against her and Dean’s plan, and wanting to protect her. However, her rational mind knew she couldn’t risk a fight until she had more information as to the ghoul’s nature. A hint as to its weaknesses would be brilliant.

  “I smell your fear.” The ghoul leaned toward Dean.

  To Dean’s credit, he stayed in place. That was probably the marine in him. He refused to cede an inch of ground to the enemy. “What is a ghoul?” Clever man. He was improvising based on the entity’s earlier response.

  “A ghoul is me. Fear is good. I like its smell. But frozen pain is better.” The ghoul spun—literally. The blue fog of its body swirled and reformed to face Beulah. “I am born of despair. No life. Never alive. When life is gone, there is me.”

  “When hope is gone,” she responded.

  The ghoul’s mouth split wider and wider in a travesty of a grin. “Yes.” Its howling wolf laughter echoed around the empty yard, and seemed to bounce off the burned-out shell of Millie’s house.

  Beulah shook, her fear nearly a living thing inside her, urging her to lash out with her magic to buy herself a little time, and then, use that time to run. But Dean had stood his ground, and so would she.

  She challenged the ghoul. “You were without hope. You were bound, trapped beneath the barn.” She pointed with a trembling hand to the flattened barns, but kept her gaze on the ghoul.

  It was growing shorter but wider. Spreading out. Its edges were thinning.

  Is the damn thing trying to corral us?

  “A slave bound me,” the ghoul said. The more it talked, the more lucid it became. It was either learning, or remembering, language. “A slave!” Now its laughter was the hissing of a snake. “She had nothing to hope in. Only lashes and rape, and yet, she fought me. She bound me to keep me from the others—even from those who hurt her.”

  “She was a brave woman,” Dean said. He’d crouched and was relighting one of the five candles.

  Beulah could just see through the ghoul that its storm of dirt had smudged out the lines of the pentagram, but the candles remained. The sole flickering flame was a light in the darkness.

  “She was a fool,” the ghoul said.

  How did she bind you? But Beulah didn’t dare ask the question aloud. The ghoul was talking and they needed it to continue, not startle it into silence and action.

  “Too long knowing nothing, being nothing.” There was a fretfulness; an angry restlessness that indicated the ghoul was talking about itself and its imprisonment. It was as wide as the graveled area now, but spread thin; transparent enough for objects to be clearly distinguished through it.

  Was it talking to distract them? What did it plan?

  Beulah felt behind her, found the bible on the hood of the pickup and pulled it around, hugging it to her chest.

  “I won’t be trapped, again,” the ghoul told her.

  “I believe you.” The force of the entity, its size and ominous presence, convinced her that her choice in dealing with the ghoul was vanquishment or failure. Containment was not an option.

  “She cried.” Its voice was the low mournful wail of a blizzard with an edge of terror to sharpen it. “She used her own suffering, gathered her tears and made a mud figure. Then she buried me. You don’t have her courage.”

  “To transform intense suffering into forgiveness and salvation?” Beulah felt the weight of the family bible in her arms. It, too, preached forgiveness, but there was one person she couldn’t—wouldn’t—forgive. To do so would be a betrayal. It would also mean forgiving herself along with Samuel; forgiving herself for trusting too easily; forgiving herself for failing the one person she should have saved, the one person who’d been utterly dependent on her.

  No. I can’t.

  The ghoul howled with triumphant laughter and as it did, its transparent, immense form encircled the pickup and closed around Beulah.

  She dropped the bible. The pain of it hitting her booted feet barely registered. She was cold and she was lost. She deserved this agonizing oblivion. Nothing mattered, not any more.

  A tiny part of her railed against her despair, but it was submerged by her devastating guilt and loss.

  She bowed her head, frozen in her world of pain.

  Chapter 5

  Dean let the flame of his lighter go out. Four extinguished candles lay scattered in front of him, while a single candle flame burned steady and strong, without flickering. There was no wind to disturb it. The ghoul had brought stillness to the overgrown driveway at Aunt Millie’s farmhouse, especially to this patch of weed-grown gravel. Dean recognized the unnatural quality of the quiet. This was the moment of absolute calm before all hell unleashed. He’d experienced it in combat.

  And as in combat, his heartbeat steadied and his brain moved at lightning speed, making connections, assessing his options, deciding.

  Rising from his crouch, he sprinted through the ghoul’s transparent form straight for Beulah.

  The ghoul’s ectoplasmic body sucked against Dean’s body and soul, then flung him out. He was afraid. He’d be an idiot if he wasn’t. But the terror he’d felt in yesterday’s encounters with the ghoul, didn’t hold him now.

  The protection charm hanging around his neck worked!

  He was nearly to Beulah when she dropped the bible she held. It bounced off her toes and thudded to the ground. S
he bowed her head, her strong straight spine and shoulders crumpling so that she huddled as a prisoner would, as a victim stood.

  No! Dean grabbed her and hauled her into him, against his chest where the protection charm hid beneath his shirt. He’d had a crash course in magic, but he still didn’t know how it really worked, especially for him when he had no magic of his own.

  “She is mine,” the ghoul said. Its voice surrounded them. Its form was a fog that filled the clearing. It felt as if the trees tried to lean away and that the ruined house decayed further, faster, at the ghoul’s presence.

  “She is her own person.” They weren’t elegant words, but Dean believed them completely. Every person had the right to their own identity and choices. Every person deserved protection. How the hell did he extend the charm’s protection to her?

  “The guilty are mine,” the ghoul said.

  Within Dean’s embrace Beulah didn’t move. There wasn’t a flinch or a shiver. But she grew colder. “Fight it, Beulah.”

  “She deserves me.” The ghoul was thickening again, its body condensing before Dean’s eyes, and too close. Something akin to a hand reached out and stroked Beulah’s hair.

  “Get away!” Dean’s arm passed through the blue fog. He couldn’t fight the damn thing alone. He wrenched the protection charm from beneath his shirt and pressed the silver disc to Beulah’s forehead.

  She shuddered.

  The ghoul howled, but not in triumph this time. Not with laughter. It retreated as light flared from the charm; silver light, like moonlight.

  And memories poured into Dean’s mind as his own nightmares streamed out to Beulah.

  The light from the charm shone brighter and brighter.

  The ghoul screamed and fled a second before the charm broke.

  Dean heard the snap as the silver disc cracked in half and its light vanished.

  “We overloaded it,” Beulah whispered. She shook as if with malarial fever. “The charm was meant for one person. It saved both of us.”

  “The ghoul ran.” Dean stared at the house, but his instincts said the ghoul was already far beyond the house. The town and cemetery were in that direction.