Read Online Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane - Free Book Online

it so well I felt like I did. Then later I did see it. In the bedroom. Just as I was drifting off to sleep.”
“And what did it look like?”
“It was just horrible. Like a…a ghoul, or something. It made the room so cold, it felt so…evil.”
She gave a delicate shudder. “Gray, and sort of wrinkly. Moldy, if you know what I mean. It wore just rags, might have been a dress once but I couldn’t tell. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman, but it had been dead a long time. Did it escape from the City of Eternity? I thought they couldn’t escape from there, but then if they really couldn’t we wouldn’t be haunted, right?”
“Some spirits never made it to the City. We’re still cleaning up the old religions’ messes.”
Chess made another note on her pad. Intensely interested in placing blame on the Church. Cannot describe entity with any degree of detail . Then, below that, she added: Vodka. Laundry soap. Toothpaste .
Mrs. Morton must have seen something in Chess’s blank expression, because she added, “Not that we blame the Church! Of course we don’t. But this…this is pretty scary. Poor Albert is afraid to sleep in his own bedroom, and none of us are too comfortable being here by ourselves, and, well, this is our home. And we can’t even sell it, not with some unnie hanging around!” Her hand flew to her mouth.
Chess ignored both the epithet and the exaggerated look of shock on Mrs. Morton’s carefully painted face. When it came down to it, “unnie”—short for “undead”—was one of the less offensive terms she’d heard for them. Sure, it was worse than the Church-sanctioned “ghost,” “spirit,” “specter,” or “entity.” But as slang went it was pretty harmless.
“We hope you can help us.” Mr. Morton spoke up for the first time, his voice surprisingly deep and pleasant for such a slight man.
“I’m sure I can. Perhaps you could show me all the places where the entity has appeared? I’d also like to see any locations where its presence was felt in some other way. Sounds, any symbols etched on the walls or maybe in the mist on the shower doors or mirror? They often try to communicate like that.”
The Mortons stared at her, their eyes so wide they looked artificial.
“Has anything appeared on any other walls or windows? Any feelings of being watched? Movement seen out of the corner of your eye? Odd smells? Touches? Anything of that nature, now’s the time to show me where it happened.”
She pulled her tape recorder and Spectrometer out of her bag and switched them on.
The Mortons didn’t move. Chess fought the urge to look down and see if something had spilled on her blouse when she wasn’t paying attention.
“Is there a problem?”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Morton said. “I just…you scared me. We haven’t had anything as bad as some of that. Is that going to happen?”
“It might.” Chess watched them carefully. Sometimes she could see the little wheels spinning in their heads as they planned how to stage a more potent manifestation. She’d caught someone out that way in her second year of work, when she’d finished her list and the client had blurted out “Messages in frost? I never even thought of doing that!”
“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Morton clutched at her sweater. Her blue eyes examined the room, sweeping back and forth as though something was going to materialize and jump out at her any second. Either she was a great actress, or she was genuinely frightened. Was it possible the son—Albert—was doing it without his parents’ knowledge? Or that Mr. Morton was behind it? That had happened once, too, a husband faking a spooking so his wife would be too afraid to ask for the house when he left her for another woman.
She scribbled on her pad: Girlfriend Mr. M?
“I’m sure we can take care of it before things start going really badly,” Chess said. “Now, if you could please show me around the house…?”
All three of the Mortons came along on the