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"Ashes From a Distant Fire"
"Ashes From a Distant Fire"
10/22/2019
I.
At dusk, Bane pulled into the HAVAREST MOTOR LODGE outside Brockton, Maine and sat for a minute behind the wheel. It had been a long day of asking questions and comparing stories and even staying in the local library for two hours doing research. He smiled very faintly at the realization that he had sat quietly at a desk searching through huge reference books about local history and even using a microfilm reader to study a newspaper story from 1994 that was not online. What struck him as amusing was that, back in 1994 itself, he had would have been too hyper and jittery to have ever done that research without constantly getting up and pacing.
I'm getting old, he thought. Fifty-seven wasn't ancient but it was a point where you could expect changes in your mind and body. He still looked basically the same as he always had. He was a gaunt six feet tall, still wearing the usual black slacks, turtleneck and sport jackjacket that had long ago become his trademark. There were more white hairs scattered over his head, and faint lines around the grey eyes, but from a few feet away he would be hard to tell from the Jeremy Bane of 1977.
Getting out of the Toyota Matrix, the Dire Wolf stretched and unlocked the door to cabin 7 at the far end of the strip. Out of long habit, he stood there with head close to the door and slowed his breathing to a minimum. After a minute, the Tel Shai training kicked in and his hearing sharpened many times above normal. No one was in there, he decided. He opened the door without even realizing that his left hand had moved behind him to rest on the grip of the Smith & Wesson .38 holstered behind his hip. The empty room awaited him. Still acting from habits developed in years of surviving ambushes, Bane checked the bathroom and the closet, looked to see if various objects were at the precise angles where he had left them and in general searched the room. He did not fool foolish at all, even after finding nothing suspicious. He was only alive to have reached semi-retirement because of precautions like these. Certainly, he had found enough traps and snares in earlier years that he would be dead if he hadn't been cautious.
Finally, he went over to the bed and picked up the beat-up old knapsack he had fitted with concealed pockets and compartments. Getting a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water, he sat on the edge of the bed as he ate and went over the case in his head. He had arrived here the previous morning to investigate the "Ghost Boy" sightings of the past month. One of his army of observers who owed him favors lived in the area and had called him to report that something weird was definitely going on. There had been nothing brewing for the Dire Wolf Agency the past week or so, and Bane was easily bored, so he had driven up here and rented the room for the next three days while he investigated.
Getting up and pulling the curtains aside to gaze out at Route 9F, Bane organized what he had learned. He had located the four people who had seen Ghost Boy on a four separate occasions and at four different locations. The apparition had been seen twice looking out the window of a residence, once standing under a tree and once standing in front of the Dutch Reform Church on the outskirts of town. He was described the same each time. About seven or eight, wearing simple clothing, standing motionless and staring. And he was solid white with eyes that looked dark in contrast, white as if covered with dust or talcum powder. Bane had introduced himself, explained that he was not publishing anything either in print or on some blog, and gotten the witnesses to talk even though they had gotten tired of telling their stories to skeptical locals.
Bane had not taken notes. Long ago he had developed the ability to repeat lengthy conversations verbatim. Finishing the last interview and thanking the witness, he had felt still detached from the situation. There seemed to be no threat here that he was needed to fight. No one appeared to be in danger. Ghost sightings were interesting but not his area. In all his decades in the Midnight War, he had only encountered two ghost sightings and they had been inconclusive to the point where he had just disregarded them. Yet, as long as he was in the area, he felt he might as well have continued to check things out.
It was getting dark outside and Bane felt a quickening of interest in the situation as night fell. He had always been basically nocturnal. Watching traffic go by, the Dire Wolf decided to find a restaurant and load up on a solid meal. The price of his enhanced speed was a metabolism that kept him always restless and ravenous. Before he left, he checked his Link for messages and saw only one. His legal counsel reminded him that he needed to file a statement with the NYPD by next week about a case that was going to court. Plenty of time for that, he thought. Bane left the motel and hopped back in his Toyota after only having been out of it a few minutes. He swung right and headed down the highway to a Mexican restaurant he had spotted before. ROSITA's sat between an auto parts store and a place that sold swimming pools and hot tubs. There were five cars in the parking lot, and he pulled in a distance away from them.
Seating himself in a corner booth where he could watch both the door and the parking lot, Bane studied the layout as if expecting a gunfight. He did this everywhere he went. To his right was a waist-high partition behind which the waitresses walked into the kitchen. There was an exit door behind him but the sign warned an alarm would go off if it was opened. The Dire Wolf caught himself doing all this prep for an attack and made himself relax a bit. He ordered a turkey dinner with the usual trimmings, devoured it and then asked for scrambled eggs and bacon as well. As he ate the follow-up meal more slowly, he decided he needed to physically go to the scene of the death which started the ghost story.. the house which had burned down with a young boy trapped inside.
II.
The sky was clear and without a moon, and starlight shone down its oddly deceptive illumination. Now Bane felt fully alive as he seldom did during the day. Back in the hectic KDF days, his teammates had told him that he was as much a creature of the night as the monsters he hunted. He couldn't argue. The Dire Wolf drove out on Statler Lane, a narrow back road with houses set back at increasing intervals. When he found the site, he knew it instantly. Pulling off the road, turning off the engine, he stared at the vacant lot now overgrown with rank weeds and unhealthy looking grass. The knee-high stone wall formed a rectangle. That would be the foundation of the house which had gone up in flames in October 1994, almos exactly twenty years ago.
Staring at the spot in the gloom, Bane tried to picture the scene. The Halwick house had been a two-story home with beige-colored aluminum siding and a shed nearby which held the lawnmower, rakes and snow shovels and such. On that night, with the family going for ice cream, a sudden blaze had sprung up that engulfed the house within minutes. Someone driving by spotted the conflagration and had called the volunteer fire department, but they had been too late. As they arrived, the top floor had sunken down and taken the rest of the structure with it. It was then that everyone had heard the screaming.
Seven year old Ben Halwick had stayed home because of the flu. His family had thought it okay to leave him alone for the few minutes it would take them to drive to Dairy Queen and back, and naturally they were traumatized and guilt-ridden for the rest of their lives. The parents had gotten a separation although not an actual divorce, and both sisters had been in and out of trouble with the law ever after. No one had tried to rebuild on the site. It sat untouched, year after year.
Now, standing under the stars on a chilly October night, Jeremy Bane somberly studied the scene. He had no psychic sensitivity at all, the Teachers at Tel Shai had given up on training him in that department. Standing there, he felt nothing spritual except a vague sensation that the child's death was a tragedy and all that, but it had been a long time and nothing could be done about it in any case. He strode around the lot. On one side, there was a steep hill going down that was almost a cliff. It dropped nearly straight down thirty feet to a dried creek bed full of pebbles. A log ten feet long had been laid out along with the edge, probably to mark where it was dangerous to stand.
Going back to where the house had once stood, the Dire Wolf felt he should be going. He was not sure exactly what he had been expecting to find here. A confrontation with a ghost? A hallucination reenacting the fire for him? It was just an empty lot. Getting impatient, Bane started back to his car when he saw headlights approaching down the road toward him. Instantly, he stepped behind an elm and drew back from sight. As always, he was wearing the Trom armor under his clothes and the matching silver daggers were sheathed at his forearms. At his left hip was holstered the long-barreled Smith & Wesson .38. He was always ready but somehow his sense of being in danger had not been triggered. Bane concealed himself and waited.
A dark maroon Ford Taurus pulled slowly up and stopped behind Bane's Toyota. As the headlights clicked off, a fat man in a long oilskin coat got clumsily out and closed the door. He was of only average height but hitting morbidly obsese status. He had curly black hair that hung to his collar, and a straggly beard of the same texture. For a minute, the man searched for whoever must have left the Toyota but he caught no glimpse of Bane. In his all-black outfit, the Dire Wolf was close to invisible under conditions like the night.
Stepping up to place one sneaker on the foundation, the fat man said, "I'm here." Then he took a breath and screamed, "I'M HERE! Get it over with! End it now!"
Nothing happened, and Bane silently moved up behind the man to stand just beyond arm's-reach of him. In a normal conversational tone, he said, "Excuse me."
III.
Then he had to help the man up off the ground after he shrieked like a scalded cat and leaped straight up to fall on his back. Bane took the obese man by both arms and hauled him to his feet. "Little jumpy there, mister."
"Who are you? Were you TRYING to give me a heart attack? My God, I feel all shaky."
Bane steadied the fat man with both hands. "You'll be fine. Deep slow breaths. Slower. Good. My name is Jeremy Bane. I'm investigating the Ghost Boy sightings in this area. Are you are...?"
"Phil. Phil Dunham. Oh you scared me. I was hoping to meet that ghost myself and I guess my nerves are all on edge." He seemed to be getting control of himself. "What do you know about the apparition?"
"Just what everyone seems to know. What about you? What brings you to this place tonight?"
"I know.. too much," Dunham said. "I've been holding it inside me for twenty years and it's eating me alive. Listen. The fire that burned the Halwick house down was not an accident. You understand? It was not an accident."
Very evenly, Bane responded, "Go on."
"Jodi Halwick was a beautiful woman. Local girl, homecoming queen, popular at every PTA function. More than one man was hopelessly in love with her." Dunham took a deep shuddering breath. "But one guy, let's call him X, went way overboard. He pestered and harassed her and her polite rejections didn't stop him. Her husband had to slap X around a little to keep him away. Then, one night, almost exactly twenty years ago, X was lurking in the bushes, staring at the house just to get a glimpse of Jodi. He saw the family get in the car and drive away. Then, for some reason, X went over and got a can of gasoline from the shed and some newspapers. He torched the house. Believe me, he had no idea the son was upstairs and was going to burn to death." Dunham was visibly trembling. "I can't explain why he did such a thing. It doesn't make any sense of me."
"Displaced aggession," said the Dire Wolf. "He had come to hate Jodi Halwick but couldn't bear to think of harming her herself. So he took it out on her house. And her son." His voice got a steely edge to it. "What happened to X?"
"Not long after, he left the area. Moved far away. But something drew him back here from time to time and whenever he returned, the Ghost Boy materialized too. It was nighmarish. No one knew he was triggering it. No one ever found out."
"But you know," Bane said. "The guilt for what you did has been tearing at you all these years. You're X of course. Am I right?"
Phil Dunham did not answer for a long moment. "Are you a cop?"
"Me? No. I'm a licensed private investigator but I'm digging into this on my own. So, Phil, why do you keep coming back?"
"The nightmares. They're getting more vivid and more frequent. I see a little boy covered in white dust, just standing there staring at me. It has to be little Ben Halwick. Dead for two decades and he will not go away...!" Dunham swung away and started walking a few feet toward the log which marked the edge of the cliff. "It's not the town who's haunted, it's me...."
Bane had no idea what to say. If he could contact his old partner Garrison Nebel, maybe that blind mystic could disperse the Ghost Boy. If there really was such a thing. Maybe not. Maybe this Dunham deserved to suffer. It was all beyond Bane's area of knowledge. He glanced over and saw the fat man was just standing with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the bottom of the cliff.
Turning back to focus on the stone foundation that was left when the house had burned, Bane had to admit he was stumped what to do. It was an unfamiliar feeling for him. Should he try to arrest this Dunham, take him to the local sheriffs to see if they could get a confession? What would be the point? Bane certainly had no evidence and after two decades, it would be impossible to get a case together that had a chance of even making it to court. The Dire Wolf reflected sourly that it would simplify matters if Dunham attacked him. Let the guy pull a weapon and Bane could get rid of him and claim self-defense, but there seemed no chance of that happening either.
It looked as if the situation would just continue as it had been doing. If Phil Dunham moved away out of state again, then the apparition would stop appearing and in time Ghost Boy would be just another local legend. Just as well.
The sudden full-blown scream rang out from when Dunham was standing. It was so unexpected and so blood-curdling that Bane dropped into a crouch and whirled about as the 38 appeared in his left hand like a conjuring trick. He froze into position and felt a cold jolt form in his chest. Phil Dunham was gone from sight. Standing by the log, gazing calmly over at the Dire Wolf, was a young boy in pajamas. He was covered with white powder as if he had been dusted and his eyes looked dark in contrast. Seeing Bane, the Ghost Boy grinned and then fell apart into a swirl that settled to the ground. It was as if he had been a cloud held together by some force.
Despite everything he had experienced in the Midnight War, all the horrifying deaths and bizarre creatures and narrow escapes, Jeremy Bane felt terrified. His heart was pounding and he couldn't catch his breath. Then his basic unimaginative nature restored its no-nonsense approach. He stood up and started marching over to the scene, still holding the revolver even though he had no reason to think it would be of any use. Stepping past the small pile of white dust, he leaned over the edge and spotted a broken body lying directly below him. Bane holstered the gun, picked a level spot below and hopped off the edge of the cliff. Dropping thirty feet, he landed with bent knees, rolled to absorb the impact and was back up on his feet in an instant.
Phil Dunham was dead. The angle at which his neck was bent left no doubt, but Bane checked for a pulse anyway. Well, that had been a quick death. The fat man was lying face down and on the broad surface of his jacket were two white marks. Feeling that same sensation of repulsion and terror, the Dire Wolf took a pencil flashlight from an inner pocket and examined the marks. The left and right handprint of a child, clearly left by that white dust. Dunham had been pushed.
Rising slowly to his feet, Bane inhaled and held it, then let it out slowly. He had fought monsters and maniacs all his life, nothing supernatural was going to throw him for long. After facing a Kushelan and Quilt and the Sulla Chun itself, what was a ghost? He scrambled rapidly up the face of the cliff and vaulted over to kneel beside the log which marked the edge. There was the small area with the pile of white dust.
Bane took a pinch of the powder between thumb and fingernail. It was dry and fluffy. He sniffed it tentatively and once more his heart sank. The odor was unmistakable, this was ash from a wood fire.
11/26/2014
10/22/2019
I.
At dusk, Bane pulled into the HAVAREST MOTOR LODGE outside Brockton, Maine and sat for a minute behind the wheel. It had been a long day of asking questions and comparing stories and even staying in the local library for two hours doing research. He smiled very faintly at the realization that he had sat quietly at a desk searching through huge reference books about local history and even using a microfilm reader to study a newspaper story from 1994 that was not online. What struck him as amusing was that, back in 1994 itself, he had would have been too hyper and jittery to have ever done that research without constantly getting up and pacing.
I'm getting old, he thought. Fifty-seven wasn't ancient but it was a point where you could expect changes in your mind and body. He still looked basically the same as he always had. He was a gaunt six feet tall, still wearing the usual black slacks, turtleneck and sport jackjacket that had long ago become his trademark. There were more white hairs scattered over his head, and faint lines around the grey eyes, but from a few feet away he would be hard to tell from the Jeremy Bane of 1977.
Getting out of the Toyota Matrix, the Dire Wolf stretched and unlocked the door to cabin 7 at the far end of the strip. Out of long habit, he stood there with head close to the door and slowed his breathing to a minimum. After a minute, the Tel Shai training kicked in and his hearing sharpened many times above normal. No one was in there, he decided. He opened the door without even realizing that his left hand had moved behind him to rest on the grip of the Smith & Wesson .38 holstered behind his hip. The empty room awaited him. Still acting from habits developed in years of surviving ambushes, Bane checked the bathroom and the closet, looked to see if various objects were at the precise angles where he had left them and in general searched the room. He did not fool foolish at all, even after finding nothing suspicious. He was only alive to have reached semi-retirement because of precautions like these. Certainly, he had found enough traps and snares in earlier years that he would be dead if he hadn't been cautious.
Finally, he went over to the bed and picked up the beat-up old knapsack he had fitted with concealed pockets and compartments. Getting a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water, he sat on the edge of the bed as he ate and went over the case in his head. He had arrived here the previous morning to investigate the "Ghost Boy" sightings of the past month. One of his army of observers who owed him favors lived in the area and had called him to report that something weird was definitely going on. There had been nothing brewing for the Dire Wolf Agency the past week or so, and Bane was easily bored, so he had driven up here and rented the room for the next three days while he investigated.
Getting up and pulling the curtains aside to gaze out at Route 9F, Bane organized what he had learned. He had located the four people who had seen Ghost Boy on a four separate occasions and at four different locations. The apparition had been seen twice looking out the window of a residence, once standing under a tree and once standing in front of the Dutch Reform Church on the outskirts of town. He was described the same each time. About seven or eight, wearing simple clothing, standing motionless and staring. And he was solid white with eyes that looked dark in contrast, white as if covered with dust or talcum powder. Bane had introduced himself, explained that he was not publishing anything either in print or on some blog, and gotten the witnesses to talk even though they had gotten tired of telling their stories to skeptical locals.
Bane had not taken notes. Long ago he had developed the ability to repeat lengthy conversations verbatim. Finishing the last interview and thanking the witness, he had felt still detached from the situation. There seemed to be no threat here that he was needed to fight. No one appeared to be in danger. Ghost sightings were interesting but not his area. In all his decades in the Midnight War, he had only encountered two ghost sightings and they had been inconclusive to the point where he had just disregarded them. Yet, as long as he was in the area, he felt he might as well have continued to check things out.
It was getting dark outside and Bane felt a quickening of interest in the situation as night fell. He had always been basically nocturnal. Watching traffic go by, the Dire Wolf decided to find a restaurant and load up on a solid meal. The price of his enhanced speed was a metabolism that kept him always restless and ravenous. Before he left, he checked his Link for messages and saw only one. His legal counsel reminded him that he needed to file a statement with the NYPD by next week about a case that was going to court. Plenty of time for that, he thought. Bane left the motel and hopped back in his Toyota after only having been out of it a few minutes. He swung right and headed down the highway to a Mexican restaurant he had spotted before. ROSITA's sat between an auto parts store and a place that sold swimming pools and hot tubs. There were five cars in the parking lot, and he pulled in a distance away from them.
Seating himself in a corner booth where he could watch both the door and the parking lot, Bane studied the layout as if expecting a gunfight. He did this everywhere he went. To his right was a waist-high partition behind which the waitresses walked into the kitchen. There was an exit door behind him but the sign warned an alarm would go off if it was opened. The Dire Wolf caught himself doing all this prep for an attack and made himself relax a bit. He ordered a turkey dinner with the usual trimmings, devoured it and then asked for scrambled eggs and bacon as well. As he ate the follow-up meal more slowly, he decided he needed to physically go to the scene of the death which started the ghost story.. the house which had burned down with a young boy trapped inside.
II.
The sky was clear and without a moon, and starlight shone down its oddly deceptive illumination. Now Bane felt fully alive as he seldom did during the day. Back in the hectic KDF days, his teammates had told him that he was as much a creature of the night as the monsters he hunted. He couldn't argue. The Dire Wolf drove out on Statler Lane, a narrow back road with houses set back at increasing intervals. When he found the site, he knew it instantly. Pulling off the road, turning off the engine, he stared at the vacant lot now overgrown with rank weeds and unhealthy looking grass. The knee-high stone wall formed a rectangle. That would be the foundation of the house which had gone up in flames in October 1994, almos exactly twenty years ago.
Staring at the spot in the gloom, Bane tried to picture the scene. The Halwick house had been a two-story home with beige-colored aluminum siding and a shed nearby which held the lawnmower, rakes and snow shovels and such. On that night, with the family going for ice cream, a sudden blaze had sprung up that engulfed the house within minutes. Someone driving by spotted the conflagration and had called the volunteer fire department, but they had been too late. As they arrived, the top floor had sunken down and taken the rest of the structure with it. It was then that everyone had heard the screaming.
Seven year old Ben Halwick had stayed home because of the flu. His family had thought it okay to leave him alone for the few minutes it would take them to drive to Dairy Queen and back, and naturally they were traumatized and guilt-ridden for the rest of their lives. The parents had gotten a separation although not an actual divorce, and both sisters had been in and out of trouble with the law ever after. No one had tried to rebuild on the site. It sat untouched, year after year.
Now, standing under the stars on a chilly October night, Jeremy Bane somberly studied the scene. He had no psychic sensitivity at all, the Teachers at Tel Shai had given up on training him in that department. Standing there, he felt nothing spritual except a vague sensation that the child's death was a tragedy and all that, but it had been a long time and nothing could be done about it in any case. He strode around the lot. On one side, there was a steep hill going down that was almost a cliff. It dropped nearly straight down thirty feet to a dried creek bed full of pebbles. A log ten feet long had been laid out along with the edge, probably to mark where it was dangerous to stand.
Going back to where the house had once stood, the Dire Wolf felt he should be going. He was not sure exactly what he had been expecting to find here. A confrontation with a ghost? A hallucination reenacting the fire for him? It was just an empty lot. Getting impatient, Bane started back to his car when he saw headlights approaching down the road toward him. Instantly, he stepped behind an elm and drew back from sight. As always, he was wearing the Trom armor under his clothes and the matching silver daggers were sheathed at his forearms. At his left hip was holstered the long-barreled Smith & Wesson .38. He was always ready but somehow his sense of being in danger had not been triggered. Bane concealed himself and waited.
A dark maroon Ford Taurus pulled slowly up and stopped behind Bane's Toyota. As the headlights clicked off, a fat man in a long oilskin coat got clumsily out and closed the door. He was of only average height but hitting morbidly obsese status. He had curly black hair that hung to his collar, and a straggly beard of the same texture. For a minute, the man searched for whoever must have left the Toyota but he caught no glimpse of Bane. In his all-black outfit, the Dire Wolf was close to invisible under conditions like the night.
Stepping up to place one sneaker on the foundation, the fat man said, "I'm here." Then he took a breath and screamed, "I'M HERE! Get it over with! End it now!"
Nothing happened, and Bane silently moved up behind the man to stand just beyond arm's-reach of him. In a normal conversational tone, he said, "Excuse me."
III.
Then he had to help the man up off the ground after he shrieked like a scalded cat and leaped straight up to fall on his back. Bane took the obese man by both arms and hauled him to his feet. "Little jumpy there, mister."
"Who are you? Were you TRYING to give me a heart attack? My God, I feel all shaky."
Bane steadied the fat man with both hands. "You'll be fine. Deep slow breaths. Slower. Good. My name is Jeremy Bane. I'm investigating the Ghost Boy sightings in this area. Are you are...?"
"Phil. Phil Dunham. Oh you scared me. I was hoping to meet that ghost myself and I guess my nerves are all on edge." He seemed to be getting control of himself. "What do you know about the apparition?"
"Just what everyone seems to know. What about you? What brings you to this place tonight?"
"I know.. too much," Dunham said. "I've been holding it inside me for twenty years and it's eating me alive. Listen. The fire that burned the Halwick house down was not an accident. You understand? It was not an accident."
Very evenly, Bane responded, "Go on."
"Jodi Halwick was a beautiful woman. Local girl, homecoming queen, popular at every PTA function. More than one man was hopelessly in love with her." Dunham took a deep shuddering breath. "But one guy, let's call him X, went way overboard. He pestered and harassed her and her polite rejections didn't stop him. Her husband had to slap X around a little to keep him away. Then, one night, almost exactly twenty years ago, X was lurking in the bushes, staring at the house just to get a glimpse of Jodi. He saw the family get in the car and drive away. Then, for some reason, X went over and got a can of gasoline from the shed and some newspapers. He torched the house. Believe me, he had no idea the son was upstairs and was going to burn to death." Dunham was visibly trembling. "I can't explain why he did such a thing. It doesn't make any sense of me."
"Displaced aggession," said the Dire Wolf. "He had come to hate Jodi Halwick but couldn't bear to think of harming her herself. So he took it out on her house. And her son." His voice got a steely edge to it. "What happened to X?"
"Not long after, he left the area. Moved far away. But something drew him back here from time to time and whenever he returned, the Ghost Boy materialized too. It was nighmarish. No one knew he was triggering it. No one ever found out."
"But you know," Bane said. "The guilt for what you did has been tearing at you all these years. You're X of course. Am I right?"
Phil Dunham did not answer for a long moment. "Are you a cop?"
"Me? No. I'm a licensed private investigator but I'm digging into this on my own. So, Phil, why do you keep coming back?"
"The nightmares. They're getting more vivid and more frequent. I see a little boy covered in white dust, just standing there staring at me. It has to be little Ben Halwick. Dead for two decades and he will not go away...!" Dunham swung away and started walking a few feet toward the log which marked the edge of the cliff. "It's not the town who's haunted, it's me...."
Bane had no idea what to say. If he could contact his old partner Garrison Nebel, maybe that blind mystic could disperse the Ghost Boy. If there really was such a thing. Maybe not. Maybe this Dunham deserved to suffer. It was all beyond Bane's area of knowledge. He glanced over and saw the fat man was just standing with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the bottom of the cliff.
Turning back to focus on the stone foundation that was left when the house had burned, Bane had to admit he was stumped what to do. It was an unfamiliar feeling for him. Should he try to arrest this Dunham, take him to the local sheriffs to see if they could get a confession? What would be the point? Bane certainly had no evidence and after two decades, it would be impossible to get a case together that had a chance of even making it to court. The Dire Wolf reflected sourly that it would simplify matters if Dunham attacked him. Let the guy pull a weapon and Bane could get rid of him and claim self-defense, but there seemed no chance of that happening either.
It looked as if the situation would just continue as it had been doing. If Phil Dunham moved away out of state again, then the apparition would stop appearing and in time Ghost Boy would be just another local legend. Just as well.
The sudden full-blown scream rang out from when Dunham was standing. It was so unexpected and so blood-curdling that Bane dropped into a crouch and whirled about as the 38 appeared in his left hand like a conjuring trick. He froze into position and felt a cold jolt form in his chest. Phil Dunham was gone from sight. Standing by the log, gazing calmly over at the Dire Wolf, was a young boy in pajamas. He was covered with white powder as if he had been dusted and his eyes looked dark in contrast. Seeing Bane, the Ghost Boy grinned and then fell apart into a swirl that settled to the ground. It was as if he had been a cloud held together by some force.
Despite everything he had experienced in the Midnight War, all the horrifying deaths and bizarre creatures and narrow escapes, Jeremy Bane felt terrified. His heart was pounding and he couldn't catch his breath. Then his basic unimaginative nature restored its no-nonsense approach. He stood up and started marching over to the scene, still holding the revolver even though he had no reason to think it would be of any use. Stepping past the small pile of white dust, he leaned over the edge and spotted a broken body lying directly below him. Bane holstered the gun, picked a level spot below and hopped off the edge of the cliff. Dropping thirty feet, he landed with bent knees, rolled to absorb the impact and was back up on his feet in an instant.
Phil Dunham was dead. The angle at which his neck was bent left no doubt, but Bane checked for a pulse anyway. Well, that had been a quick death. The fat man was lying face down and on the broad surface of his jacket were two white marks. Feeling that same sensation of repulsion and terror, the Dire Wolf took a pencil flashlight from an inner pocket and examined the marks. The left and right handprint of a child, clearly left by that white dust. Dunham had been pushed.
Rising slowly to his feet, Bane inhaled and held it, then let it out slowly. He had fought monsters and maniacs all his life, nothing supernatural was going to throw him for long. After facing a Kushelan and Quilt and the Sulla Chun itself, what was a ghost? He scrambled rapidly up the face of the cliff and vaulted over to kneel beside the log which marked the edge. There was the small area with the pile of white dust.
Bane took a pinch of the powder between thumb and fingernail. It was dry and fluffy. He sniffed it tentatively and once more his heart sank. The odor was unmistakable, this was ash from a wood fire.
11/26/2014