Read Online The Frighteners by Michael Jahn - Free Book Online Page B

shot. He scrambled to his feet and ran through the cemetery gates. Far away across a sea of headstones, his funeral was under way.
    “Ray! Wait up!” Frank yelled, and began to run after him.
    Lynskey had gotten a few paces inside the gates when a huge, ogrelike spirit that Bannister knew went by the name of the Gatekeeper rose up out of the ground in front of him. This being was the size of a Toyota someone had stood on end. It had fangs that stuck out of puffy jowls, and claws that projected from the ends of fat fingers. But it glowed pure white and didn’t ooze ectoplasm.
    Ray stopped dead in his tracks and screamed.
    “State your business,” the Gatekeeper growled in a voice as deep as a tiger’s.
    Trembling with fear, Ray was unable to speak.
    Frank ran up behind him. “He’s with me.”
    “You’re not welcome here, Bannister,” the ogre growled.
    Frank held his ground, and even stepped in front of Lynskey to protect him. “It’s the guy’s funeral,” he said. “We’ll only be ten minutes.”
    Frank took Ray by the arm and pushed past the Gatekeeper, who puffed out his mammoth chest as a threat but did nothing.
    “What in hell was that?” Ray gasped.
    “Take it one thing at a time, Ray,” Bannister said. “Get used to the idea of being dead first and then we’ll deal with the kinds of customers you’re going to meet down there.”
    By way of illustration, Frank swept his arm across the horizon. As Ray looked around the cemetery he found that it was filled with creepy emanations scuttling furtively among the tombstones. Some were humanoid and wore regular clothes. Others resembled clouds, toadstools, skeletons, dead trees, or bits of tumbleweed. They had one thing in common. They all hurried around the graveyard hiding from Hiles—the ghostly cemetery master they all feared.
    “Get back in your graves,” this newest figure growled, backing up its words with a burst of machine-gun fire.
    The emanations that had been creeping from headstone to headstone across the cemetery suddenly dived back into their graves like frightened gophers as the burst of ghostly machine-gun fire echoed over their heads.
    Ray and Frank whipped their heads in the direction of the sound. Hiles was a wiry little authoritarian spirit, wearing what looked like a ghost’s idea of army fatigues and carrying a ghostly Uzi. Unlike Frank’s decomposing emanation friends, heavenly spirits like Hiles glowed with a radiant white light. They seemed to be in a permanent state of physical perfection.
    “Bannister!” Hiles growled.
    Frank told Ray, “Keep going . . . I’ll deal with this.”
    “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Lynskey said, and headed toward his grave site.
    “What are you doing in my graveyard?” Hiles asked Bannister. “You have been told to stay away.” The spirit walked slowly and determinedly toward the man, carrying the smoking Uzi with its muzzle pointed skyward.
    “It’s a public place, Hiles,” Bannister said.
    “I don’t like you,” the spirit yelled. “You cannot bring your spooks in here without my permission.”
    Hiles shoved Frank, sending him staggering backward. Frank angrily lashed out at Hiles with a left jab and a right cross, but his blows passed right through him.
    “I’m not one of your shitty emanations, Bannister.” Hiles sneered. “You can’t push spirits around.”
    “I don’t want any trouble, Hiles,” Bannister said.
    Hiles gestured around the cemetery. “You have no understanding of my situation here,” he said. “We got a lot of lowlifes here . . . a lot of gutless creeps who are too scared to meet their Maker. I provide an armed response at the first sign of trouble. They must be contained.”
    “For God’s sake, Hiles, I get this speech every time I set foot in the place.”
    “You are scum!” Hiles screamed. “Exploiting a lower species for your own material gain . . . using spooks to put the frighteners on people . . . That makes me physically