Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(60)

“Please tell me you didn’t electrocute people’s brains to make them healthier.”

“No, no, it was a field of influence, not a direct current. Electrical impulses can be amplified or dampened through the precise manipulation of concurrent energies. It was an exciting project. The early results were mixed, though. Some subjects responded astonishingly well to the treatment—increased strength, speed, stamina, even heightened motor skills and capacity for problem solving. A few showed adverse results, though—lethargy, and a sort of hypnotic state that left patients highly susceptible to suggestion.”

“I can think of a few things a sinister organization could do with a super-scientific machine that can brainwash targets with the push of a button,” I said.

“Jenny had precisely the same concerns, but neither one of us had any sense of the scope. They were putting all of it together—all of our designs were culminating into one machine. They weren’t housing an observatory; they were building a transmitter, one that overlooked a bustling metropolis. I began to understand it when I could finally see the thing up close. The power, the control, the range—it was a weapon unlike the world had ever seen. Or it was going to be.”

“What did you do?”

“I did what they had brought me to do. I worked on my part of the machine. Pavel was my watchdog, but it was a wonder that simpleton could even work the buttons on his coat—he had no idea what I was creating. He watched me build it. He even helped. He had the chemicals I asked for delivered by the barrelful. By the time I had finished, it was too late to undo what I had done.”

“The explosion! You’re the one who sabotaged Poplin’s project! That was you!”

We were hovering outside the building again now. The neighborhood was coated in velvet darkness until the bomb went off with the light of a miniature sun right in the heart of the city. Cogs and pipes and bricks rocketed past, and when the light died down enough to see anything, the building had been reduced to rubble and fused scraps of metal. A broad sheet of steel halfway down the hillside shifted, and out from underneath it crawled Howard Carson.

“You survived!” I said.

“Nearly—but we wouldn’t be having this conversation if I had, now would we?” said Carson’s ghost. Below us, a second figure whipped in front of Howard Carson with inhuman speed. Pavel’s hair looked even thinner from above. He was short, and his clothes were old and frayed, but that made him no less intimidating as he rounded on the battered scientist.

Pavel was enraged. He gripped Carson’s shirtfront and held the man’s feet off the ground as he roared a stream of curses at him. Carson attempted to land a punch across the pale man’s face, but Pavel batted his fist away like it was a pesky fly. Carson groaned. His hand hung at an unnatural angle from the wrist. Pavel snarled. Two sharp fangs glistened in the moonlight, and in another second they were buried in Carson’s throat.

Beside me, Carson’s ghost chuckled.

“You just died!” I said. “What about that is funny?”

“My last invention,” the spirit replied. “It was crude, but effective.” He nodded down at the scene and I saw Pavel reel backward. The vampire howled in pain and surprise, clutching at his mouth. When his hand dropped I saw that he was missing a tooth.

The Carson standing beneath us grinned at the small victory. It was a tired, defiant smile, as though he knew it would be his last. Just beneath his collar glinted a glimmer of bronze. In another instant the pale man was upon him again. He ripped a concealed metal guard off of Carson’s neck and hurled it down the hill with a clatter. His fingers buried themselves in the man’s jugular and the scene went suddenly black.

Howard Carson’s ghost hung in the empty void beside me. “And here we are,” he said.

“That was very noble of you.”

Carson shrugged. “I was a dead man anyway. I couldn’t leave my Jenny with that awful machine hanging over her. The Dire Council had made me their puppet, but I would be damned if they were going to use my life’s work to make puppets out of everyone I ever loved. It’s best he finished me off, really. If I had managed to escape they would have come for me. They would have come through Jenny to get me. This is better. I hope she’s living a happy life without me.”

I cringed. “She hasn’t been entirely unhappy,” I hedged.

“What is it?”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Carson,” I said. “You did the right thing, but Jenny was already—” I swallowed. “They had already come for Jenny, long before you demolished the building.”

Carson’s expression hardened. “No. She isn’t dead. I would have felt her cross over. I’ve searched!”

“She didn’t cross over,” I said. “She waited for you. She’s up above. She’s outside the gate right now.”

Carson’s eyed scrutinized my face as though searching for a lie.

“It’s true,” I said. “Come with me! Come and see for yourself. And I have more than enough obols left to pay the boatman to ferry us both.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You could, Mr. Carson, and you should. You did the right thing all those years ago—but it isn’t over yet. Help us stop the Dire Council from using your research. Help us lay your past mistakes to rest once and for all. Besides,” I added, “you’ve left Jenny waiting long enough, don’t you think?”