Shadow's Wrath: The Shadow Hunt Series Book 3

Chapter 2: Panic Room

The door at the bottom of the stairs was locked. James always kept it secure, and few people knew it existed. The basement beneath his shop was a secure facility for storing things he could not risk storing elsewhere. It served a variety of other purposes over the years, some less savory than others. Some of the secure rooms were locked as tightly as he could make them. The things within them could never get out, nor could anyone be allowed to enter.

One of the most useful things James had discovered, though he could not claim ownership of the idea, was lead-infused glass. The Cult of the Endless Night had made extensive use of it in their ghost zoos, putting spirits on display without having to worry about sealing their haunted items in lead boxes or bags of salt.

A ghost trapped behind lead glass could be seen and even spoken to, but it was as secure as if the haunted item was under lock and key. James had several such cells in his basement, a few of which were not occupied.

He was under no illusion that he could capture the Hound that was after him. Luring it into one of the lead glass cages would be next to impossible, and the only bait he had was himself. The last thing he wanted was to become trapped in a room with a ghost that couldn’t escape. But that was not his only idea.

James unlocked the basement door and let himself in before sealing it securely behind him. It was not a lead door, and even if it was, the walls around it would not keep the ghost out. Whoever brought the ghost, however, might be looking for him. James would make sure they’d have to work to find him.

He turned down a hall to his left and passed several sealed rooms. The basement was larger than he needed, and a lot of the space was empty. Some of it was just storage: He kept some files and even old furniture tucked away down there. Some of the rooms held haunted items that he stored for clients, and a few held more dangerous items, with higher security than he could offer in the shop upstairs.

He kept the lead glass cells in the back hallway. Two were occupied, and he rarely went into those rooms. No one else knew about them, and no one but James knew what was in them. He had no interest in entering either of them now.

The first cell, however, held an empty cell.

James unlocked the door and let himself in. He looked back quickly and saw nothing in pursuit. The Hound had not made it down to him yet, so he still had time.

Nothing was remarkable about the glass cages. They looked like something that any zoo might have to keep an animal on display. Just simple, average-looking glass panels and a door with a locking mechanism.

The technology to make it was advanced enough that the glass had the same color and clarity as regular glass. Lower-quality stuff might be thicker and have a slight gray hue to it, but James did not pay for lower quality.

He grabbed two bottles of water from a cabinet near the door—there was one in every cell room in the basement—and the lone chair from inside the room. Once he had his supplies, he let himself into the cage. The door closed behind him and sealed, a security feature of each cell. No door could be mistakenly left open.

James reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He had only reached his contacts list when the partially flayed face of the Hound pushed through the wall and looked into the room.

The ghost’s empty eyes fell upon James, and the two stared at one another. He set the phone on the chair next to him and waited. The walls, ceiling, and floor were paneled with reinforced glass. Short of the building collapsing on him, the ghost should not be able to reach him. In theory, at least.

The Hound stared at him from the door without moving for a long moment, and then, seemingly unprovoked, bounded forward.

James stood his ground and watched. There was nothing else to do but have faith in his plan. The deformed but muscular spirit crossed the room in just two strides of its broken limbs, and then, it leaped.

The lipless mouth parted, and the skeletal jaw hung wide open. It was on a collision path. The aim seemed clear. It would leap on James and close its teeth over his throat. But it never got that far.

The ghost’s extended hands hit the glass first, and a vibration rang through the surface like a gentle tap with a cushioned stick. Not a thump or a ping, just a resonant hum.

James watched as the ghost’s arms bent involuntarily, folding in on its body. The face hit, and all forward movement stopped as its head skidded across the surface.

The Hound’s body followed suit. First the shoulder, then the arm, then the side until its hips made contact, and it tumbled to the ground.

It was clear the spirit had never encountered such glass. As James watched, it got to its feet and tried to push one of the glass walls out of its way. The ghost paced the length of the cage, testing each of the glass panels. There was no way inside.

The Hound made no noise, but it tried to dig under the glass and climb over it. It tried the door and the seams between the panels while James watched silently, observing how it worked.

The name “Hound”, the look of the creature, and the way it moved in the obvious purpose with which it was sent all gave it bestial qualities. But it was still made from a man. The ghost must have had the properties of reason, even if it could no longer speak, and was turned into a broken monstrosity. No matter how intelligent it was, though, it could not overcome what it was and its weaknesses. Ghosts could not pass through lead.

James watched it closely, both repulsed and impressed. That someone could forge such a ghost seemed impossible, but he was seeing it. Shane had said there were many of them, each designed similarly. Formed from living subjects who were tortured to death in the hope that their ghost would manifest and display the practical attributes of the horrors the living subject had endured. It was a nightmare beyond compare.

“What was your name?” James asked, drawing the Hound’s attention.

He crouched until he was eye to eye with the spirit with just the thin pane of glass between them, and stared into the empty sockets in its skull. He could see inside the spirit’s head where the brain had once sat, now gone as a result of whatever torment the victim had endured.

James had no doubt the Hound saw him, even though there were no eyes or a brain. Spirits were beyond such physical necessities. It retained all the senses the man it was forged from had possessed in life. He wondered if it still felt the pain or had a memory of what had happened to it.

It was hard to imagine anyone enduring what this poor creature had. For it to be what it was, it must have lived until the point it became what James saw before him.

That meant the man, whoever he had been, had been alive when they broke his joints. He had been alive as they shattered his ribs and forced them through his flesh. He had been alive as they cut skin from his face in the caricature of a Halloween decoration.

Death must have come when they pulled out the brain. And in that moment, the ghost had been created. James had never heard of anything so cruel and inhuman. The fact that it had been successful multiple times was too terrible a thought to entertain. So many of the victims must have died on the spot; others would have died before they got to that point. And yet more, if they returned as ghosts, might have only returned as they looked in life. Dozens upon dozens dead so someone could create custom nightmares.

“You need not do this,” James told the Hound. “Whatever they did to you, whatever they forced you to endure, you can be free of it now. You have that power.”

James was not necessarily as sympathetic to ghosts as someone like Frank Benedict was. He couldn’t say for certain if he would be as harsh sometimes as Shane Ryan was, either. He was pragmatic. Like people, ghosts were a mixed bag. Some were tolerable and some were not. But no one, living or dead, deserved what had happened to this nameless, nearly faceless man.

The Hound chattered its teeth. James doubted it could communicate. He wondered if the human victim had retained his sanity before death. It seemed unlikely. And if that was the case, the mind of the Hound could be a scrambled, unreachable thing. It was likely better off being destroyed. That would be the only true freedom for it, but it was a freedom that James could not provide.

People were waiting for the Hound to return. Someone had brought it to James’ shop. If Mr. Shadow was a ghost, it wasn’t him. There were human servants, Harvesters, doing the legwork for him. They were outside somewhere, and if the ghost didn’t return, there was a good chance they would come looking. The lead glass cage could not keep out the living.

If James had had more time to prepare, he could have better armed himself. He could have come up with a defense, but he had reacted hastily. He only had one weapon left.

He retrieved his phone from where he had set it down and pulled up the contact list once more. The Hound watched him keenly with empty eyes as he scrolled and found the number for Shane Ryan.

“Hello?”

Shane’s voice sounded gravelly like James had awoken him, even though it was not that late in the evening.

“Shane, it’s James Moran. I’m trapped in the basement of the shop, looking at one of your Hounds.”

“You gotta be kidding,” Shane replied.

“I’m quite serious,” James continued. “I suspect Harvesters are close by. I’m not sure how long I can hold them off.”

“What’s the Hound doing now?” Shane asked.

“Looking right at me.”