Hugh would probably think he was a big old pussy, but he hated fire; he especially hated when there was a lot of it where it shouldn’t be. Being surrounded by it was enough to bring on a panic attack … if his body was responding to him. Right now, it wasn’t.

Right now, he could see Louis looking around in abject shock as the fire licked up the walls, spreading like a living stain, clinging to the ceiling as if in violation of physics, but perhaps the most shocking thing to Louis was that he wasn’t responsible for this. God got himself served.

The patients were in such an angry rush to take him over that Gryphon wasn’t sure who had won the mystical tug of war; it didn’t help that he hardly knew these people, that they had become one large and vaguely psychotic blur. The one controlling him now was especially angry; his thoughts were like razor blades scraping the inside of his cranium, and maybe he wasn’t used to having vocal cords after all this time, because he seemed to be making this low keening noise in the back of his throat. As Louis turned back towards him, Gryphon felt his body lunge as the ghost controlling him jumped for Louis, grabbing him by the throat and throwing him bodily straight though the door. The door seemed to explode on impact, as if it had been waiting all this time to shatter.

The man in control of him now seemed to lumber, to walk in an odd and rolling gate, like he was trying to keep his thighs from rubbing together, and he had no fear of the flames at all. And why would he? He’d been dead for ages; nothing could hurt him anymore.

Louis was laying flat out on the dead ground, coughing and bleeding from a few splinters of old wood driven through his skin, and Gryphon felt himself go up to him, growling now, beyond the complexities of speech. Maybe this man couldn’t talk, even when he was alive. He motioned upwards, and Louis was suddenly hoisted off his feet, held up by invisible strands, but not for long.

Louis slapped his hand in the Gryphon’s direction, which not only allowed him to drop down to his feet, but succeeded in giving Gryph and all his passengers something like a cramp deep inside his chest. He felt that strange release of leaving, of the man in charge of his body suddenly departing abruptly, but he didn’t know why or how.

“You think you can hurt me?” Louis snarled. “Idiot. You unholy creatures are nothing but -”

“Shut up,” the new man who had taken his body over said, launching a heavy uppercut that landed square on Louis’s jaw. It was a hell of a hit, a lot more powerful and professional than one Gryphon could have ever thrown, and Louis stumbled, reeling from a physical blow he simply didn’t expect. The man in control of him now took advantage of Louis’s surprise, driving a fist right into the base of his neck and snapping a kick that took Louis’s legs out from underneath him, sending him crashing back down to the ground on his ass. “We are not unholy,” the man said (Gryph grokked that his name was Rufus). “Just like you ain’t holy. Having power don’t make you special; power’s easy. It’s what you do with it that counts. And you’re pissin’ it down your leg.”

Louis looked up at him, bloody lip curled back, and held out his hand in a grasping gesture. Once again, he felt someone ripped out of him, Rufus this time, and the next person who took him over asked, “How the hell can you do that?”

“Because I’m god, you stupid creature.” And with that, he tore that person away as well.

But the person who took over this time was Buzz, and he wasn’t amused. “No, you’re dead, like us; you just don’t know it yet.” He grabbed Louis’s outstretched arm, and in one swift, brutal motion, broke his arm, snapping it straight at the elbow. The crack of the bone was loud enough to make Gryphon wince, even though he wasn’t sure he could.

Louis screamed in pain and general shock, and as he seemed to crumple around his now limp and injured arm, something hit them. It was an invisible rhino or something equally massive and powerful, hard and vicious enough that even Gryphon could feel the shock of pain through the layers of passengers in the queue. He went flying, ripped straight off his feet, and slammed back into the broken fence , making the chain link vibrate and ring like a bell.

Very distantly, he could taste blood in his mouth, and feel a sharp pain in his chest as his body slumped to the ground, and he wasn’t sure if Buzz was still in control or not. Everyone was shocked, everyone was hurt; it seemed to reverberate through them all like nothing ever had before. Whatever it was that Louis could do, it was brutal.

For his part, Louis was still sitting on the ground, holding his arm to his chest and rocking slightly, face contorted in pain. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, a mantra starting to become a curse. “You can’t hurt me; nothing you do can hurt me.”

“There you’re wrong,” a voice said, and he only belatedly recognized it as his own. It also took him a moment to realize it wasn’t one of the inmates talking, but Ruby. She had come to the forefront, angry and far more focused than everyone else, who was still reeling from the shock. She was no stranger to pain, not in her sad life and even sadder death; tasting blood just made her that much more angry and focused. “Now, find out how much.”

Louis had time to look up, and Gryphon felt … something. There was nothing in his experience that prepared him for this, or for this feeling. It was like something exploded deep inside his head, something small but powerful, a bursting blood vessel of energy, an aneurysm of sheer power. It hurt, and yet afterwards there was an almost calming wave of numbness.

Did Louis do it, or did he feel it? Either way, Louis’s eyes suddenly widened, and he was yanked violently back into the burning shell of the building by invisible hands.

Gryphon felt distant resistance again, a pressure as puzzling as it was invisible, and the entire building collapsed as if stepped on by a giant; the pile seem instantly compressed on a thrashing point that could have only been Louis.

He could hear him screaming, flaming boards and burning motes of dust flying as he struggled against, but Ruby held it all down – somehow; it never ceased to amaze him how adept his passengers were at using the power they claimed to have no knowledge of most of the time – and his screams, now more of pain than rage, were horrible. Bloodcurdling and raw, Gryphon could almost hear the inside of his throat being burned away, crackling like bacon in a frying pan, the smell of baking flesh filling the night air like back smoke.

The screaming died very abruptly, but Ruby kept the pressure on a for one minute longer, on the off chance he was faking it.

He’s dead, Hugh assured her. No one can survive an inferno like that, even with a suit.

The building now looked like a large beach bonfire, with boards sticking out at all angles, the flames six feet high and rising into the sky, lighting up the surrounding grounds like a false dawn. He could feel the heat coming from it, burning sparks like fireflies riding the currents, but he still felt cold and weak. And if he was in control of his body, he probably would have vomited.

Remind me never to piss you off, Ray said to Ruby.

This was the point in the horror movie where the supposedly dead guy would pop out of the flaming heap and come for them, burning like a Roman candle and yet never faltering in his step. But it didn’t happen – this was no movie. This was … what the fuck was this?

“The better man won, whatever it was,” Ruby said. She was still in control, and sitting up, preparing to stand.

You’re not a man, Gryphon pointed out needlessly.

“Well, I’m stuck in your body, so it’ll have to do.” Even Gryphon felt something wet on his face, too copious to be sweat, and when Ruby looked down, putting her/his hands on the ground, blood pattered on the dirt, leaving dark circles and splatters, micro indents of mud. “Oh shit.”

Where am I bleeding? Gryphon asked, feeling kind of woozy. Oh hell, everybody was feeling woozy, and that was unprecedented.

Ruby wiped the back of her/his hand across her/his nose, and came away with a huge liquid smear of crimson. “Just the nose, I think. We’re good; a nosebleed never killed anyone.”

A hemophiliac, Hugh suggested.

“Shut the fuck up, smart ass.”

Let me back, Gryphon asked, although he didn’t know why. If he actually had the strength to handle it, he could have just done it.

She knew that better than anyone. “Are you sure, kid?”

Yeah. No, but he felt some desperate need to be in control of himself again, even if he couldn’t do anything.

Ruby ceded control to him, and he instantly wished he wasn’t such a dickhead, because the reality of coming back to his body so suddenly was too much for him. He’d thought he’d hurt before, but that was through the filter of all his passengers; without the buffer, the pain was terrible. He felt like a walking bruise, with a chest full of broken glass and a face that had been used for kickball practice. The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and he went plunging straight for the ground, even though he was still sitting down. Somehow he got his hands out in front of him and caught himself before he kissed the dirt, but blood sluiced out his nose, ran down his lips with a warm, salty wetness that felt like watery snot. He could taste the blood running down his throat too, nearly choking him, and he took a wild guess. “This isn’t just a nosebleed.”

He hurt us pretty bad, Ruby agreed.

“Are we sure it was him?” He could remember that feeling of something breaking inside his own mind. What if it was a blood vessel? An aneurysm, a stroke? Could you feel them like that?

He got a sense of another shift in the world, and looked up to see many of the late inmates of Serenity Acres standing before him, the grounds suddenly alive and green, a lush lawn leading to a massive, solitary oak tree, where he could hear birds singing in the early afternoon sunlight. The sanitarium itself was back intact and standing, a whitewashed cinderblock rectangle with windows reflecting the empty sun.

Buzz was there, apparently still intact, but it looked like the crowd had shrunk from its previous size. “Thank you for your help, Gryphon, but we can take it from here.”

He looked up at Buzz, confused. “Take what?”

But he saw a commotion out of the corner of his eye, a small flurry of movement near the front of the building, and suddenly, in the center of a group of patients, was Louis. He seemed to be struggling, but was being held back by the large crowd. “You can’t do this to me! I’m not one of you! I am your god!” They started to drag him into the asylum as he thrashed and screamed, and it did no good at all. He was just another dead man among the dead … and yet a newbie among the long deceased. They had a power he could only dream about now.

Gryphon waved at him sarcastically, unable to suppress a smile. “Bye, god! Write if you get work!”

Louis’s only response was a shout of frustration as he was dragged into the sanitarium by the patients, and the doors slammed shut with a finality that seemed inevitable. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Louis belonged here, far more than anyone else who’d been sentenced to this pathetic place. Maybe this was meant by the term “poetic justice”. Or karma; his mother probably would have said karma.

The scene shifted, and he was back in the real world, the grounds of Serenity Acres as they stood today, an arid wasteland, the remains of the ersatz building continuing to burn brightly and cast writhing shadows on the ground. A small puddle of blood had formed between his hand, and he watched with an almost clinical detachment as the falling drops of blood made ripples on its surface.

You need to go to a hospital now, Mr. Aronofsky insisted. We managed to hold most of them back last time. We can do it again.

Gryphon knew he was bad, because he didn’t have the strength to argue with him. “I’ll … let’s see if I can walk first.”

He sat back on his haunches, which was far harder than it should have been, and it felt like he had a tide within his head, something that swelled and receded with every movement, something just waiting to carry him away, pull him down like an undertow and sweep him into realms unknown.

He tangled his fingers in a cold metal loop of the fence, and used it to pull himself to his feet. He then had to rest against it, and his knees threatened to buckle, as the blood now streaming down his face felt as molten as lava. He could feel it on the side of his neck as well, dribbling down from somewhere else. A cut on his head? From his ears? He felt as light and fluffy as a cloud, save for the leaden heaviness of his head.

Let me take over, Hugh demanded.

“No.” It was true, wasn’t it? Stanhope had been full of shit, except for one thing – the ironic probability that the dead were killing him. He always felt a little empty and tired after one had left him, and it made a certain amount of sense that when they took off, they took a little piece of him with them. The dead kept him alive, but they also extracted a price for it. Ass, cash, or grass – no one rode for free, as the bumper sticker proclaimed.

He chuckled at the thought as he pulled himself along the fence, not sure he could stand or walk without its help, and as he circumnavigated the perimeter via the fence, it started to rain. A light sprinkle at first, but it quickly started building in intensity, pelting down like small stones from the sky. But it had yet to have any effect on the fire, and he wondered if it honestly would. Did a fire created by death psychokinesis actually ever get put out, or did it just burn itself out?

If he “asked Jeeves” about that, he wondered what the answer would be.

He felt stoned, much more drunk than he had ever been, and as he launched himself off the fence and staggered towards his car, he heard himself giggling, and he didn’t know why. No, he did. “So this is dying? This isn’t as bad as it was the first time.”

You’re not dying, Ruby said.

“You won’t let me, is that it? Am I gonna end up like that? Am I gonna be a poltergeist?” He stumbled, almost fell, and ended up splayed on the wet hood of the Buick, which made him laugh. Graceful as a hobbled duck.

You’re not going to die, kid, Hugh reiterated. But you may need a transfusion.

His blood was pattering on the hood, getting diluted and smeared in the rain. Something grated deep inside his chest as he pushed himself up, bone against bone, but he felt like such a collection of broken pottery it didn’t even matter to him. He really didn’t care; the pain wasn’t even that bad. Mainly, he was just really cold.

Okay, now I think you’re going into shock, Hugh interjected. We need to take you over.

“No,” he replied belligerently, not even sure why he didn’t like the idea.

He managed to slip in the car, even though the door seemed inordinately heavy, and plopped in the front seat, wondering for a good five minutes where his car keys were. He remembered to check his pockets for keys when the car suddenly rumbled to life all on its own.

Controlling electricity’s gotta be good for somethin’, Taneesha said.

Wow – he (well, his passengers) could hotwire a car without touching a single damn thing. That was pretty damn cool.

He drove as if half asleep, unable to focus clearly and not completely sure what it was he was supposed to do. The wipers turned themselves on, slapping rhythmically as they cleared the rain away from the windshield, but he drove off the road several times, and had no fucking idea where he was going. He was freezing, and he was tired, and he just wouldn’t stop bleeding. Maybe if he had a nap, he’d be able to think a little clearer, but his passengers just wouldn’t let him.

An oasis of light reared up on the horizon, an all night gas station, and he aimed for it, aware that he was so cold his fingers felt numb on the steering wheel. Maybe if he had one of those fleece steering wheel covers, they wouldn’t be.

You are totally delirious now, Hugh said.

He kind of parked, away from the pumps but admittedly not at the greatest angle, and stumbled out of the car, not completely sure what he was doing. He grabbed on to the door, and looking down at the pavement, he noticed his shirt was almost black with blood. Did he have a chest wound too? He didn’t remember.

He staggered to the glass door and used his body weight to force it open, briefly closing his eyes against the harsh fluorescents. The place reeked of oil and coffee that could have substituted for diesel, although it was a far more pleasant smell than that of his own blood.

He staggered up to the front counter, where a pimply faced kid was half asleep, watching a stupid action movie on a portable t.v., judging from the sound of gunshots. When the kid’s eyes scudded sleepily towards him and locked on, they grew so wide so fast it looked like an explosion of white, like they might fall out of his head like marbles. He looked that bad, huh?

He dug the Spirit Guides card out of his pocket with numb fingers, and dropped it on the counter. He vaguely noticed he left a bloody fingerprint on it. “Do me a favor,” he slurred to the boy, who had now jumped to his feet and backed away like he might be contagious. “Call ‘em and tell ‘em I’m sorry.”

Whether it was deliberate, or an accident of chemistry or biology or genes, a person’s mind could be a horrible place, a weapon and a sentence, and never was that more true than in a mental institution. No matter that it started around the turn of the century, and the things that got these people locked up for “insanity” were often not so much “madness” as things that could be ascribed to gross racism, sexism, and superstition. Although, not all of them; some of them were indeed mentally ill, naturally disturbed or driven bugfuck by this place and the things done to them here.

If hell was a concept, then it was a concept that was killing him. It was like drowning in gray water, in a sewage overflow, dirty water going down his throat and up his nose, filling him and not giving him a chance to breathe. It clogged his head, backed up in his windpipe, pooled in his gut and his lungs like a faulty drain. He may have been drunk, but he wasn’t drunk enough for this not to hurt, and not to sweep him away in a torrent of dark thoughts and black emotions, in memories he would give anything not to have ever again. He tried to let them sweep by him, over him, but it was coming in such a torrent that it was hard not to see it, to feel it, to be torn and cut and broken by the sheer weight of it. Hell; hell by definition was his life. He was the purgatory where the restless souls came to waste their time. He choked on bile, on the stale taste of pain, blood, the metallic tang of fear and adrenaline thick on his tongue.

He may have vomited, but he wasn’t sure, as he wasn’t sure he could feel his own body beyond some random sensations at periodic times. He wasn’t even sure if he was looking out of his own eyes or not. He was lost, dying in a sea of other people … or maybe he was other people. Did he know who he was exactly? Did he know he was a he? Maybe he wasn’t really anything at all.

In the blink of an eye he found himself sitting on a lawn chair under a pale sun, looking at a birdbath full of marbles surrounded by Grecian style plastic urns full of herbs and mints. His limbs felt heavy, and he wasn’t sure he could move. “You were getting in a whole freaky area there,” Hugh said. He was lounging in the neighboring lawn chair, wearing nothing but loud blue surfer shorts with a little green and yellow palm tree pattern on them, and black wraparound sunglasses. He had a tulip glass in his right hand, full of some slushy yellowish goop, with a slice of pineapple skewered through a red straw resting inside the glass. Hugh was very confident in his masculinity, but then again, he was also bisexual, so it was an odd dichotomy. “I told you not to come in here.”

“But I needed to.” He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember why that was.

“You come from a good home, don’t you?”

He let his head loll to the side so he could look at Hugh. With his well muscled bod and nice tan, he could have been a male model on holiday. “Huh? Are you goin’ somewhere with this?”

“Yes. You may joke all the time about your hippie, Renaissance Fair loving mother, but clearly she raised you well, and your home was happy, if eccentric. See, if you were from a really fucked up home, you’d know living with crazy people makes you crazy after a while; adapt or die. Ideally leave, but many people just don’t go for door number three, even when they damn well should.” He calmly took a sip of his pineapple daiquiri before continuing. “So imagine having a whole gaggle of crazy people living in your head, no matter how brief the time span. Did you really think you’d remain sane?”

He thought he could feel other people pounding at the walls of his mind, probably running through the halls and getting mud on his carpets. He was either shit faced or bugfuck himself, and wasn’t sure how you told the difference anymore. “I’m pretty sure that’s why I got drunk; I think I thought it would make it easier.”

“Did it?”

“Doesn’t seem like it, does it?”

“Nope.” He slurped his daiquiri, and Gryphon was jealous. Didn’t he get a daiquiri? This was really his mind, after all; Hugh was just renting a corner.

“So how do you know about crazy people? Don’t tell me some kinda firefighters’ manual covers that, huh?”

He chuckled, but it was dry and almost bitter. He reclined his lawn chair all the way, so he was now staring straight up at the sky, and he put his drink down on the roof. Gryph wondered if he could steal it. “As much as I wish there were secrets between us, there just isn’t, is there? No matter how hard I tried. My mind to your mind, and all that Star Trek bullshit, right? You’re me, and I’m you, and we’re all together in a yellow submarine.”

He puzzled over that for a minute. “Did you mix a metaphor, or just spin completely out of control?”

“I’m not sure. That sounded a lot better in my head.”

“Must’ve.” He turned over on his side, curling up and looking at the edge of the roof and beyond, out into the unglamorous downtown part of Denver. Gryph knew that Hugh was referring to his fun childhood, which was as dysfunctional as all get out, but not something he liked to talk about. His father was an unbalanced, occasionally violent alcoholic, who was probably bipolar but never got properly diagnosed because he hated “headshrinkers”, and his mother was a moody co-dependent who was strangely needy to her children, who generally had to take care of her. Hugh and his sisters got out of their home as soon as they could – one ran away at sixteen, and never came home again – and when asked, Hugh usually said his parents were dead, even though they weren’t. His father eventually died of cancer, and his mother ended up in a home, but Hugh only put in a perfunctory appearance at the funeral, and was high on painkillers he got from a fellow firefighter. He felt he knew crazy, because both his parents had been crazy, and he was pretty sure he and his sisters were no better. “How’d you find me and pull me in here? I didn’t even know where I was.”

“Hey, I’m trained to find people in the midst of bad shit, and drag their asses out, remember? Fire or crazy dead people, doesn’t matter either way.”

“Good point.” He was tired, groggy, but he wasn’t sure if it was the booze or the insanity or all of it. “If I fall asleep, don’t take me over and get outta here.”

“Kid, I don’t think anyone can take you over now. If three’s a crowd, three dozen is a Human tidal wave. I’d be surprised if even you had control over you after all this was over.”

He just had to mention that, didn’t he? But rather than worry about it, he closed his eyes, and felt the warmth of a remembered sun on his face, slightly better than the real thing. This was a situation where he knew he might never wake up, but he wasn’t sure if he was all that sad about the prospect.

****

He woke up on the floor, the sound of voices in his head like the chattering of crows in the distance, and once more he felt heavy and feverish, like the meningitis had come back with a vengeance. Unless it was the booze. He just couldn’t tell anymore, and he found it hard to move. It was like he was swimming through semi-solid Jello. And, knowing his luck, it was the gross kind with marshmallows and celery bits in it.

He propped himself up on his hands and knees, the dusty floor over the former asylum betraying no telltale streaks of sunlight, so he couldn’t have been out for long. Something woke him up, he was sure something had, but maybe it was the incessant babbling in his own overstuffed head.

It was then he noticed how cold it was.

The temperature had dropped quite precipitously, enough that he was surprised his breath wasn’t coming out in clouds, and he thought he could feel frost on his arms. A chorus of voices suddenly started screaming Trespasser! in his head, loud enough to make him wince, and he sat back against the thin wall as a feeling of static electricity began to build in the room. His skin prickled, like he was being jabbed with a thousand tiny needles, and he could taste blood and bile in the back of his throat. With his new heavy limbs, he wasn’t sure he could stand, so he simply waited for the inevitable.

Was this like his dream? In a way, it was. The door was shoved open, leaving a track on the dirty floor, and the man who stood there was just a void, a negative shadow of a person. But even though he couldn’t quite see him in the dimness, he could see him, mostly because of what Laurel had given him. He had a face like a knife blade, sharp and angular, with cheekbones that could have cut glass, and eyes like piss holes in snow. His hair was thinning in the front, but he grew it long in the back, giving him an oddly messianic look, like a monk who could only shave his head so far before he gave up.

“You’re the one?” he said, in that smug, slightly contemptuous voice. “You’re just a boy. For all the trouble you’re causing, I expected more.”

Just like his dream. How did he know he wasn’t dreaming now? His head was full of crazy people, and Hugh did have a point – it was hard to remain sane when you lived among the inmates, but especially when you shared their minds. “What the hell kind of trouble am I causing, Louis?” He asked, just to see if he could change this scenario at all. “I haven’t slaughtered my family and scared the shit out of the dead.”

The static electricity was increasing, warming the room, and the rage building in his mind was black and terrible, the previous chaotic nature of it given laser focus by the arrival of Louis Stanhope. Gryphon just didn’t understand why, and none of these people could tell him coherently.

Louis chuckled, coming farther into the shell of the building. He wore all dark clothes, like a burglar – or an undertaker. “Thou shalt be no false idols before me, boy, and that’s what you are; a false idol.”

Oh fucking great, the nutball royal flush. He was a religious wacko, the lethal version of Ned Flanders. “I see. And why am I false, exactly? ‘Cause I fell into this? ‘Cause I fucking hate it?”

He could see Louis now, and it didn’t help. His face was stark, his expression haughty and superior, like he had just walked into an auto showroom with the intention of buying the most expensive Porsche on the lot. “Because there can only be one god.”

He glared at him, too gobsmacked to be anything but annoyed. “You can’t be serious. You think you’re god?” And here the fucker who tried to kill him only thought he was the angel Gabriel. Apparently he was just a minor league serial killer, or he just wasn’t aiming high enough. You had to have goals.

Louis cocked his head and raised a single eyebrow, examining him like he might an insect he found in his tuna salad. “I have the power to liberate the dead, to bring them into my kingdom … among other things.”

Gryphon suddenly felt himself slammed back into the wall as if hit by an invisible truck, the force pressing all the air out of his lungs and making him see stars explode before his eyes, fragments of white phosphorus skating over his corneas. “You see? You, boy, have no idea what you’re doing. You’re giving them false hopes, false endings, damning them all. I, on the other hand, bring them into the light. You are an agent of the devil; you are doing more harm than good.”

When he could get his breath back, it was Gryphon’s turn to chuckle. In his mind, there was a lot of churning, a rising dark tide, and the voices began to coalesce into a single one. He’s a slaver, a cannibal. He eats the dead. They couldn’t have meant that literally, but it was still disgusting to contemplate.

His laughter ticked Louis off. “What’s so funny?”

“You. You sacrifice your family for this power, but you fuck it up, so you have to start over. Where? In Utah, or just along the way? There’s lots of deserts in Nevada; a lot of good places to hide bodies, to let them bake and get torn apart by animals. How many did you kill before you got the power that I so infuriatingly stumbled into?”

He pursed his lips, a moue of disapproval that made him look like he was sucking an invisible lemon. “You do not speak that way to me.”

“Yeah, I do. I speak any goddamn way I want, ‘cause you’re a fuckin’ psycho.”

The pressure on his chest seemed to increase, making his ribs creak under the strain, as Louis glowered at him, his eyes dark and as dead as glass. If he had dead in him, there was no way to see them. “You don’t get it at all, do you boy? Not even after what happened to you. You’re dying, can’t you see that? Every time you allow one of them to leave, they steal some of your energy on the way; they’re robbing you of life in increments. Why? Because you’re a flawed vessel. You cannot command the dead ; they use you. You’re the puppet. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. I am the vessel of life; their energy powers into me, and through me. It fills me, and through their deaths my life increases. Do you see? I’ll never die, because I cannot. But you? You’re already on your way out. I can see the death around you.” He suddenly crouched down, so he was more or less at his eye level, and adopted a sympathetic expression that didn’t quite fit on his face; an imperfect mask that was sliding off as he spoke. “I can make it painless for you and your … charges. You will be accepted into the kingdom of heaven.”

Now that was fucking hilarious on so many levels. He was trying to sift through his crazy talk, but wasn’t sure he could. Was that what they meant by he “ate” the dead? He used their energy – for lack of a better term – to empower himself? That might explain why the dead wanted him dead – he wasn’t their “puppet”, but he was chugging them like beers during happy hour, and that couldn’t be a good thing. (Was he dying? Was that why he got so sick?)

Gryphon couldn’t hold them back any longer. He was sweating like he was in a sauna, the enclosed space was so hot from static electricity, and he thought he could feel it making the hair on his arms stand on end. He thought at first – and he bet Louis thought it too – that this was Louis’s doing, that his power was just so great it filled this room like ozone before a lightning strike. But Louis came in a wave of cold, sucking the energy out of the very air around him, but Gryphon knew from experience that’s not how his power worked. His power was a hot, destructive thing; a thing of broken glass and frozen time, a thing that knew no barriers and rode a wave of blistering anger.

And Louis was a trespasser in the home of people who had been waiting for nearly a century for a good target to take their hate out on. A patsy who liked to play god, just like the doctors who drilled holes in their skulls and cut out their organs just to see if it did anything at all. He didn’t even know, did he? If he had such power over the dead, why wasn’t he aware he was being surrounded?

Gryphon licked his lips, which seemed painfully dry, and said, “Laurel had a message for you.”

The slightest eyelid twitch at the name, but nothing more. “Oh?” He affected disinterested, and maybe it was true, but Gryphon didn’t care.

After he got all the information he needed, he asked to be taken back to his motel, as he claimed to be completely shagged out after the whole Laurel Stanhope thing, and subsequent interrogation. No one disbelieved him; the pity was almost palpable.

But of course it was a crock of shit. He went back to his room to have a piss, and dig out the money he had hidden in his duffle bag before heading out to the Buick. You can’t possibly be serious, Mr. Aronofsky insisted.

“Would you stop saying that? I am. I’m not waiting for this fucktard to catch me unaware. I’m gonna load up, and greet him with as many angry dead guys as I can find.”

And sacrifice yourself in the process? That’s not the best plan.

I ain’t sharin’ room with a bunch more idiots, Taneesha snapped. There’s too damn many already.

You better not be callin’ me an idiot, Sylvio replied.

“Just knock it off,” he warned, climbing into his car. “For fuck’s sake, can’t you just trust me to know what I’m doing for once?”

What are you doing? Hugh wondered.

He slammed the door, and sighed, wondering how he always ended up in this position. “I have no idea.”

It is so easy to argue with you, Hugh said, clearly enjoying himself way too much. You generally defeat yourself.

“If you had my life, you would too.” He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it sounded good. In a way.

The first stop was a cyber-café, to get driving directions to the place Clay told him about. It wasn’t hard to find; a random Google search turned it up on several pages devoted to the supernatural and “hauntings”. Apparently, in those circles, it was fairly notorious, and used as a classic example of proving that ghosts were real. Supposedly; an astonishing number of people weren’t convinced.

Next, he hit the nearest liquor store, and bought a bottle of Captain Morgan’s and a bottle of Absolut, then returned to the car and retrieved his thermos.

Oh no, Ruby exclaimed. Kid, you’ve got to be kidding.

“The only way I can do this is if I get really lubed up,” he admitted, filling up half the thermos with rum. He then filled up the other half with vodka, put the lid on tight, and shook it up, so the alcohol would blend, or at the very least, mingle. “And I have to get drunk fast.”

You will be driving the porcelain bus for days, Hugh said. Possibly weeks. You’ll probably be hospitalized for dehydration again. It’ll come shooting out both ends.

Jeeze, thanks for the imagery, Sylvio sniped.

“I have to be alive to be sick.” He took the lid off, and took a couple of generous swallows of the drink he had mentally dubbed ‘Last Wish’. It tasted just like rum, as the vodka really had no taste he could discern, but this hit him twice as hard, and it burned his throat while going down. He had no idea what drinking gasoline was like, but he bet this was close. Soon his stomach started to churn, and he was reminded it’d been a long time since he ate.

Stop it now, Mr. Aronofsky ordered. You can’t drive this way.

“I’m not buzzed yet.” But he was starting to feel a little woozy; not like when he was really feverish, but different. He couldn’t say how, but then again, he wasn’t sure he had any communication skills at all right now.

He started driving, thermos of Last Wish jammed between his knees, and stopped for gas at a station that advertised that it had pizza available. What the hell kind of person bought and ate a pizza from a Gas ‘n’ Gulp? That was just asking for explosive diarrhea.

He did go in to the tiny store, where a very bored clerk was watching Letterman on a portable t.v., and gave it a healthy smack as he walked past. He wondered if he could fuck up a person’s reception on purpose, and part of him was dying to try, but he supposed that was the booze talking. So he just bought a pre-made deli sandwich – turkey and Swiss; how could you go wrong there? – and loaded it up with mustard from the condiment counter before retuning to the clerk and dumping some cash on the main counter. (Counting was for the sober.)

The man took it and made change, without once looking at him, and paused several times to give the t.v. a good whap. Gryphon knew it was his fault, and tried very hard not to laugh, but it was difficult. As soon as he was back outside, he started laughing, and he really had no idea why. It just seemed funny.

He sat in his car and laughed for a while, then started to wolf down the sandwich, which had no taste beyond mustard, but he liked mustard so he considered that good. Driving the bus, Hugh reminded him. For days and days and days.

“You can’t possibly harsh my buzz,” he told him, with a mouthful of mustardy bread. Honestly, it could be cardboard, and he’d probably still enjoy it., as long as it tasted like mustard. “Because my buzz is bulletproof.”

How the hell are you gettin’ more crazy? Taneesha asked, You were already as nutty as a pecan log to begin with.

This too made him laugh. He figured if he just added diet Pepsi or pineapple juice to his rum and vodka mixture, he’d have a killer new party drink. Last Wish just wasn’t a good enough name, though. Porcelain Bus? Now that had some promise.

He took another good couple of swallows of his drink (Gasoline Splash? Diesel Kiss? Technicolor Yawn? ) to wash down the sandwich before driving off to his destination. He thought he drove remarkably well considering how smashed he was, but he was still glad he encountered very few people along the way. Open streets and subdivisions gave way to increasing scrub lands and trees, dark barriers that made the stars brighter by comparison.

The place was actually relatively close to the coast; close enough that he couldn’t see it, but he could smell it, the air carrying just a hint of a salty tang when it blew in from the right direction.

It was surrounded by a beaten down chain link fence, with “Condemned” and “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” signs hanging from it, but considering its isolated location, it was a surprise that it wasn’t vandalized further. Or maybe it wasn’t.

As he walked up to the fence, he could feel the malice bleeding from the place, like it was an open wound of bad intentions. There were dead here all right, and absolutely none of them were happy. They were as dead as hell, and they weren’t going to take living shit anymore.

The building was really a shell, crouching in the moonlight like a malevolent stalker, its broken door a gaping mouth frozen in a scream. He took three generous swallows of rum and vodka, finishing this round, before capping the thermos and setting it on the hood of the car. If he drank any more he’d probably pass out, and while that sounded fun, he really couldn’t do it just yet.

You really shouldn’t go in there, Hugh insisted.

“I gotta. I’ve come this far, might as well go all the way.” He told himself this lame motto was his battle cry as he stepped forward , and slipped through a rip in the fence, the jagged chain link plucking at his clothes and scraping at his skin like skeletal fingers. He stumbled through, and managed not to tear too many things.

The intensity of the hate seemed to ratchet up for every foot closer he got, and he noticed, for the very first time, that the grass was all dead; not even weeds were growing here, except near the fence, where scraggly dandelions and crab grass struggled to eke out an existence. Here, inside the perimeter, nearer to the home, there was nothing but gray soil and rocks. He didn’t think it was “evil” or “bad vibes”, just general fallout from what used to be here.

This place used to be the Serenity Acres Sanitarium, a “rest home” for the “feeble minded” at the turn of the century – in other words, an insane asylum. And not just any old insane asylum, but one that proclaimed to have the most “modern medicines”, which often translated to shock treatments, trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull to “relieve pressure on the brain” – or, considering this was a “pioneering” mental health facility, perhaps let the demons out), exposure to temperature extremes, and various other things that would be considered against the Geneva Convention if done now.

It burned down in the early 1900’s; it was blamed on a “patient”, then blamed on an accident, but either way, a lot of people died, mainly patients, as the grounds were curiously bare of personnel when the place went up like flash paper. Some died of smoke inhalation, but many burned to death, trapped in their rooms, medicated or tied down to their beds. There were quite a few dead bodies found on the premises that had been dead before the fire, patients who didn’t survive their “state-of-the-art treatments”. Ironically, no one was ever prosecuted for anything; most of the patients were indigent, or had been abandoned by their families, so no one cared if they were alive or dead, and in those days, they had no idea what to do with the supposedly insane.

There wasn’t much left of the sanitarium to raze, so about ten years after the tragedy, someone bought the land with the intention of building a pulp mill on the lot, but after attempting to build on it for four days, the construction crew walked out en masse, and refused to return. They said that “things” had happened, tools had been mysteriously thrown at their heads, and boards had fallen, nearly decapitating a foreman; they also complained they felt they were being stared at, and couldn’t shake a general sense of anger. No one wanted to return, and several other people were hired, but basically abandoned the project in about a week; for some reason, that was the exact amount of time when people decided they honestly couldn’t take it anymore.

The property switched hands several times, with no one quite able to do what they wanted to do with it, starting the “haunted” rumors, although variations of that was the land was “cursed”. In the ‘40’s, a priest was brought in by the current landowner to “exorcise” the area. After the priest had done his whole spiel, and everybody was returning to their vehicles, the priest’s car started by itself, slipped into gear, and plowed right into him, running him over and taking out part of the fence. He survived, but was paralyzed. It was believed to be a bizarre “accident”, caused by a mechanical defect, but in ghost circles it was generally believed that the dead really didn’t appreciate being called demons. Again the land was sold, and again changed hands, several times in succession.

In 1974, some entrepreneur decided to build a “spiritual retreat”, to cash in on one ‘70’s fad or another, and that’s when the grounds recorded its first death outside of the fire. The construction crew got farther than anyone else, putting together the shell of this now dilapidated structure, but one day a bucket fell from a scaffolding and nailed the new owner right on top of the head, killing him instantly. It was ruled an accident, blamed on “high winds”, but the family let the property rot, not even trying to develop it, and tried to unload it several times. This time they were unable to find anyone who would buy it, as now the place was notorious. Eventually they did sell it to a self-professed “spiritualist”, who claimed he could contact the “restless spirits” of Serenity Acres. Not only did he apparently fail, but he went missing shortly afterwards, and was eventually found floating off the coast of Oregon, an “apparent” suicide. It was unclear what had happened to the property since then – some rumors had it as state property – but no one had officially owned it or set foot on it since ‘86.

There was some quality irony in the fact that a place known as Serenity Acres was one of the most violently haunted places on the entire West Coast.

Gryphon held his arms open, and shouted, “Bring out your dead!” He then doubled over laughing, as it was probably one of the funniest damn things he’d ever heard.

I’m taking over, Ruby threatened.

“No, no, I hafta do this,” he said, taking a deep breath and getting a hold of himself. Why was it so funny? He couldn’t even remember anymore. “These might be your people, but I’m the interpreter. Before we all get snug, they can only talk to me.”

You’re too wasted to do any good, kid, Ruby continued. And believe me, I should know.

“Trust me. I know what I’m doin’.”

You said that earlier, and you were lying.

“Yeah, well …” he just petered off, as he had no further rebuttal.

The door, broken or not, seemed to loom larger as he staggered onward, a mouth slowly opening, preparing to swallow him whole. Luckily he was so drunk he felt indestructible, fearless, and he knew that was exactly what he needed to go through with this. He shoved it all the way open, letting it dangle on its one remaining hinge, and went inside.

There wasn’t anything to see inside, it was an abandoned husk of a building frame, with temporary walls and a thin, bare floor, not even marred by mouse or bird poop, as animals were smarter than people, and just stayed the fuck away from here.

But he only saw that for a moment.

The bare room, illuminated only by moonlight, was suddenly replaced by a crowded room with white washed walls and potted plants, a common room where sunlight streamed in from windows in the ceiling, far out of reach of the patients. They surrounded him, maybe two dozens, mostly wearing the shapeless white gowns that rendered the wearers strangely sexless and shapeless, while their eyes seemed too wide and too dark in all their faces. Some at the far edge of the crowd wore straightjackets, probably the gear they died in, or had shaved heads bearing scars and marks from various treatments.

Rage seemed to come off them in waves, inchoate and incoherent, a random hatred of the world of the living and everything in it. “Living,” the nearest one growled at him, making it sound like a curse. “You don’t belong here.”

“But I’m not, not really,” he explained, feeling disappointingly sober. Well, sober-er. “I’m a … oh fuck, I dunno, agent.”

They didn’t know what that was, or they didn’t care. They closed in on him, like this was a gang bang and he had been selected as the fuck towel, and he felt more sober by the second. Maybe he hadn’t thought this out. They were dead, all right, but some of them had been tortured, others were genuinely mentally ill, and all had had pretty violent experiences even before their own violent deaths. He had dealt with dead like that separately, but never in a group. “He’s coming.”

That made them stop in their tracks. Gryphon didn’t even know why he had said that, but he had to say something. Lucky for him, it was the right thing. They looked to each other as if seeking answers, but no one seemed to have one. “He?” The presumed leader asked. He had a scar bisecting his upper lip, and a nose that had been broken and badly reset, leaving it a flat, mangled thing in the center of his face.

“Yeah. You wanna kick his ass? Then you gotta help me do it.”

More murmuring, the sound of wind through dry grass. Then the leader – his name had been Bernard, but everybody called him Buzz – looked at him with his hard, dark eyes, and asked, “How?”