A high-pitched whistle came as he pulled the trigger, and a wash of red, shimmering waves escaped the tip of the weapon. The ghosts on the receiving end of the blast recoiled, as if hit by an ocean wave while standing on the beach.
Then their wild faces became even more ferocious, and they charged forward with greater determination.
Lynche fumbled with the controls, frantically trying to boost the gain. He fired again.
This blast was a brighter red, and he held the trigger for a full ten seconds, buffeting the ghosts with the energy until they finally dissolved like fast-melting ice, and disappeared.
Lynche lowered the weapon, breathing hard.
He used a small device to scan the ground where the ghosts had been - minute traces of ectoplasmic residue showed up.
He’d destroyed the ghosts.
“It worked!” he yelled triumphantly as he burst back into the mansion. “Karla, it worked! I blew the ghosts away!”
Karla didn’t seem as enthused. “Oh, that’s great,” she said, half-smiling.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I just wonder what became of those ghosts now. I mean, they were people, sort of, right? Did you just permanently extinguish their existence?”
“I sure hope so.”
#
The next evening, Lynche was in a decidedly better mood than the previous evening meal time, feeling like he was actually accomplishing something.
Fighting back, instead of merely surviving.
“So,” he said, speaking through a mouthful of instant mashed potatoes, a few days’ growth on his gaunt face, “I think I’ve got it. If I connect the ectoblaster’s dissolution core to a high-yield dispersal modulator – I can basically broadcast the weapon’s energy world-wide.”
“In English?” said Karla, taking a drink of water.
“A bomb, Karla. A freaking ecto-nuke that’ll take them all out at once! I just need a sufficient power source – something bigger than our little generator here.”
Karla shook her head slowly. “I dunno, Ty. I know we need to do something, but I just wonder – isn’t there some other way? We don’t know what happens when a ghost is destroyed.”
“Yeah we do,” said Lynche, walking into the kitchen with his empty dish. He called over his shoulder as he washed the plate at the sink. “We know that they’re gone – no longer able to kill the Living and run amok in the world.”
Karla didn’t respond.
A minute later, he returned to the dining room – but she was gone.
“Karla?”
He picked up his gun and rushed to the entry hall, where Karla stood by the double front doors, facing him, stiff as a board, pale, and sweating.
A ghost stepped out from behind her, his silvery shimmering hand grasping Karla’s neck from the back.
Lynche automatically raised his gun in a two-handed stance, pointing it at the ghost’s head – despite the fact that a bullet would do nothing to a spirit.
“I’m sorry,” Karla whispered. “I thought I heard something, so I came in here to check it, and –”
“Shhh,” said the ghost.
“How did you get in here?” Lynche demanded.
The ghost, a male in his late forties, was white like water vapor, but with clearly defined features. His whole body, very slightly translucent and glowing gently, seemed to hover mere millimeters above the worn hardwood floor. Lynche noticed the air in the room had turned noticeably colder.
The ghost’s hair was poofy in the front and sticking out on the sides.
Except for his brief encounter with the attacking ghosts last night in the street, this was the closest Lynche had been to a real live apparition in all his years studying the subject.
“My name is Paul Morphy,” said the ghost calmly. “I was once a master chess player - one of the best ever, they said. Of course, that was over a century ago. I died in 1884, and was entombed not far from where your friend, Victor Delphine, got himself killed by the very spirits he’d unleashed.”
“Delphine was not my friend,” Lynche hissed. “Now how did you get past my shield?”
“I found a weakness in your defenses – which is my expertise – but don’t worry,” he said, still gripping Karla by the neck, “I won’t tell any of the others. The dead, or the Living.”
Karla shivered.
“Let her go!” Lynche demanded.
“I will,” said Morphy. “If I wanted to hurt either of you, don’t you think you’d be dead by now?”
Lynche did not lower his weapon. It somehow made him feel more secure and powerful, despite its futility as a weapon against a ghost. He wished he had his ectoblaster handy, but the thing was too heavy to lug around everywhere, and was currently charging in the kitchen anyway.
Morphy continued. “I’ve been watching you, Mr. Lynche. For several weeks now. I’ve been observing your development of a powerful weapon, and saw you test it successfully last night.”
“That’s right,” said Lynche. “I’m going to finally get rid of you ghosts, and free the few remaining Living from the prisons they’ve been forced to live in. That we’ve been forced to live in.”
Morphy said nothing, but he did slowly release Karla’s neck. She slumped a little, then glanced toward Morphy and leapt away toward Lynche, clinging to his chest, panting and wiping away the tears and cold sweat from her face.
“Don’t you wish to understand why I am not harming you? Why I am no threat to you?” asked Morphy, cocking his head slightly.
“All right,” spat Lynche, lowering his useless gun. “Explain.”
Morphy floated slowly to an armchair near the door and settled into it. The cushion seemed to be untouched as he lowered his non-corporeal body into it and crossed one leg over the other. “Mr. Delphine not only raised the spirits of the dead that night he placed his hex, but he placed a controlling spell upon them, robbing them of their normal will and intellect, turning us into vicious, crazed savages bent on destruction and murder. Mere pawns.”
Lynche and Karla remained standing, listening intently to this creepy visitor with his eerily calm voice that sounded like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Karla trembled slightly as she continued to hold tight to Lynche.
“So, I used the one thing you can take with you. As a master chess player, my mind is trained to have incredible powers of concentration, control, and strategic thinking. My mind is so disciplined, it was only a matter of time before I was able to use my intellect to overcome the hex. As the foggy forefront of my consciousness was engaged in the rampages that nearly wiped the Living from the face of the earth, the back of my mind was clear, working on the problem – solving the riddle of the hex – and eventually, I undid it.”
The ghost scratched at his head. “I came to myself, fully aware once more, as if waking from a strange trance, in the middle of Baton Rouge, surrounded by several hundred other spirits. They were still, unfortunately, lost in the madness of the hex. I slipped away and returned here to my home.”
“Here? Your home?”
“Why, yes. This empty restaurant was once a mansion that belonged to my family. You can imagine my surprise when I found myself locked out, so to speak.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “I died here, you know. In the bath, upstairs.” He gazed upward, as if looking right through the ceiling. “The one checkmate I had not anticipated.”
“So what do you want from us? Why are you here?” asked Lynche.
“Why, my good man, isn’t it obvious? I want you to refrain from destroying us.”
Lynche stared at the ghost. “Are you serious? No way – next chance I get, I’m gonna activate my ecto-nuke and blow away every last one of you murderous freaks.”
“Are you sure you should do that?” asked Karla.
“You bet I am,” said Lynche. “The ecto-nuke will send an energy wave in all directions – pass right through the earth like cosmic rays – and take out
every ghost on the planet. And I’m almost ready to deploy.”
“No!” barked Morphy, rising to his feet and balling his fists. “You cannot do that. It would be wrong to destroy one hundred billion souls – can’t you understand?”
“They’re an invading force that’s murdered almost everyone on the planet!” yelled Lynche. “What’s to understand?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Morphy, his voice quieter as he sat back down. “This artificial resurrection – caused by the Voodoo hex – is unnatural. I want to return to the world I’ve known since my death – a place much like this, only – different. All of my family members were there. We were happy. Do you really want to destroy entire families? Erase our souls – make us all extinct? It’s simply not fair.”
“Fair? I’ll give you fair. Try the near-complete decimation of the human species! Genocide!” said Lynche.
“Ty,” said Karla tentatively. “He has a point – wouldn’t what you plan to do be no better? Wouldn’t it be genocide?”
Lynche turned as white as Morphy. “I can’t believe you’re actually siding with him! Karla, they killed almost everybody!”
“They’re sick, Ty! They’ve been hexed – it’s not their fault. Look at him – he’s perfectly normal – for a ghost, I mean. All those other ghosts just need to do what he did and shake the curse!” She turned to Morphy. “Can’t you teach them to overcome the hex like you did?”
Morphy steepled his fingers. “My dear, you overestimate my considerable talents. It took me years of training to discipline my mind – and I was already a natural genius, having become a chess prodigy before I was ten years old. Do you really expect me to reason with – and mentally train – one hundred billion crazed, hexed ghosts?”
“Exactly,” said Lynche. “That’s why they must be destroyed. Survival of the Living is at stake.”
“I beg you to reconsider, sir.”
Lynche pondered this highly intelligent specter who sat conversing with him in his home. A ghost who had been under the wicked Voodoo hex, but now was not.
He seemed reasonable. Normal.
What if there were others like him, who had somehow shaken the hex and become “normal” ghosts once again? What if Karla was right? What if the ecto-nuke would mean the complete obliteration of a hundred billion souls whose only crime was to be caught dead with a hex on them? The ecto-nuke would cause them to cease to exist, with no way to undo it. What if all those other ghosts were simply afflicted, and could be healed, like Morphy?
Lynche glared at the ghost and thought of the billions of people who’d been murdered a few months ago, and the handful of surviving Living condemned to hiding in churches.
No – he couldn’t take the risk.
“I’m sorry,” said Lynche, “It has to be done.”
In an instant, Morphy shot across the room like a blur, grabbed Karla, and retreated.
He clutched her neck tightly – she wheezed, clutching at her throat, trying to breathe as Morphy’s hand seemed to pass through her flesh.
Her eyes wide, she croaked “Ty, help me,” then collapsed to the floor before Lynche could act.
He ran to her aid, then recoiled in horror, backing across the room.
From her lifeless body, a spirit rose – Karla’s ghost.
“I’m so very sorry, Mr. Lynche. You’ve forced me to capture your queen.”
Shocked, Lynche dropped his gun and fell to his knees. “Karla?”
Karla’s ghost stood there as surprised as Lynche. “He killed me, Ty. I’m – dead.”
“I had no choice,” said Morphy, sounding genuinely remorseful as he spoke to Karla. “I’m sorry. I hope,” he looked back at Lynche, “that her sacrifice will not be in vain.”
Lynche stood and shifted from foot to foot, like a cornered king. His breathing heavy, his eyes wet, he looked at Karla’s shimmering ghost. “How come she’s not – you know – freaking out and trying to kill me?”
“She’s a perfectly healthy ghost,” said Morphy. “No hex. Nobody who’s died since that initial night of terror has been affected – they just went to the other world in peace. Karla is here because she has unfinished business.”
Karla floated close to Lynche and held up a hand, her face sorrowful. Lynche tried to touch it with his own, but it passed through her with a chilly sensation. He jerked his hand away and backed up from her.
He suddenly turned, ran to the kitchen, and returned with his ectoblaster. He flipped a switch and a whining sound grew from the weapon as it warmed up.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t destroy you right here and now!” he yelled, aiming the weapon at Morphy’s head. “You’re a murderer!”
Morphy looked genuinely remorseful, and not the slightest bit threatened. “Perhaps that would be best, Mr. Lynche. I know changing Karla’s state against her will was wrong. But surely you see why you must not use your ecto-nuke – you’ll be extinguishing the normal as well as the afflicted – including Karla.”
Lynche considered his words and lowered the ectoblaster, then buried his head in his hands. “You have an alternative strategy, I take it?”
Morphy smiled ruefully. “I think I have just the right move.”
#
Between Lynche’s expertise with all things supernatural, and Morphy’s brilliant strategic and technical mind, the two made quite a research-and-development team – despite the tension between them.
The first order of business was to seal the breach in Lynche’s shielding that had allowed Morphy to sneak into the house in the first place. Lynche set the new shielding up with a passcode to temporarily disable it so Morphy could come and go freely.
For the following few weeks, they worked hard to determine a way for the ecto-nuke to deliver a blast that would undo the Voodoo hex, rather than destroy the ghosts.
But their work was not without danger.
Attacks on the house increased, making it harder and harder to venture out to resupply.
“We’re connected, you see,” said Morphy, as Lynche leaned over the bomb, tweaking one of the incorporeal potentiometers on the device’s detonator. Morphy leaned back against the counter.
“They can read your mind – know what we’re up to here?” asked Lynche.
“No, no – we have a sort of a hive mind – not directly fused thoughts, but as though we’re all in the same swimming pool, aware of the movement of the water caused by one another’s actions. They can’t read my thoughts, but they are generally aware of what’s happening here – as aware as they can be in their frenzied state. Their minds are still addled with the hex – but they do have a base survival instinct, which is why they have been converging on this home and trying to kill you. I suppose they’d try to kill me and Karla, if they could.”
“Ghosts killing ghosts?” asked Karla, gliding into the kitchen. “How could that be possible?”
“I do not know,” said Morphy, frowning deeply. “But if there’s a way, they’ll do it. They see us as a threat, even though we are actually trying to help them.”
“I’ve almost got it,” said Lynche, making another adjustment to the eidolon power converter. “But there’s something missing.”
“I know,” said Morphy. “It needs a sample. A way to duplicate the logical algorithms I utilized to throw off the hex. It needs a piece of me.”
“But I have no experience removing a part of a ghost’s mind,” said Lynche. “How can I do that?”
Morphy stepped toward the ecto-nuke, and leaned in for a closer look. “What if you reverse the polarity of the phantom-wave inducer?” he said thoughtfully. “That should allow you to extract a portion of my ectoplasmic neurons.”
“How do you know that?” asked Lynche, his eyes wide. “You’re a nineteenth century man. What do you know about neurons – let alone ectoplasmic ones?”
“Do you think that when you die, you stop learning and growing and enlargin
g your intellect? Young man, you have much to learn about death.”
Lynche shook his head in awe, then proceeded with the technical modification.
“Okay, ready?” he asked Morphy, powering up the device.
Morphy stood next to the machine, and with a flourish, said, “I hereby donate this portion of my sanity, in order to benefit all of humanity!” He smiled at his rhyme, then bent over, placing his head directly inside the machine – a bizarre feat to witness.
Lynche pressed a button on the console, and the deed was done. Morphy raised his head and said, “Tada! None the worse for wear.”
Karla smiled.
Lynche didn’t. He still had trouble accepting that this man had killed Karla – even if she was content to be dead. Working with Morphy was a struggle sometimes, despite their common goal. Other times, however, he couldn’t help but like the guy – he was charming and smart.
“I suppose all that’s left is to test it,” said Lynche. “If all goes right, it’ll erase the Voodoo hex, leaving the spirit intact.”
“Better yet,” said Morphy, “if it works as I hope, it will also enable a ghost to return to his own realm, where he belongs. It will set things right.”
Lynche looked at the ethereal Karla. She looked him in the eyes, and nodded.
#
That night, the two men left the house. Lynche had armed his shoulder weapon with a sample fragment of the ecto-nuke’s core, enabling it to do the same thing as the bomb, but on a portable and more targeted level.
It didn’t take long to run into one of the banshee-like ghosts. It came flying at the pair at high speed, screaming maniacally.
Lynche took aim and fired without hesitation.
The ghoulish ghost stopped in its tracks, seemingly frozen. Then it shimmered a little, convulsed slightly, and a look of lucidity and comprehension appeared on its white face. Its eyes seemed clear, and it was not screaming or gnashing its teeth anymore.
“What on earth has happened to me?” the ghost asked.
“You were under a Voodoo hex,” said Morphy kindly, acting as liaison to his own kind. “We’ve freed you. Try, if you will, to return to your realm. Go on,” he encouraged the ghost, “you may go home.”
The ghost looked momentarily bewildered, then a look of comfort and joy crossed its features. It closed its eyes, exhaled, and its whole form suddenly contracted into a tiny ball of light – a mere speck of intense brightness, before vanishing into the earth with a tiny popping sound.