Conan Doyle pulled thoughtfully at his gray beard. At that point, Clay and Eve had already departed on their mission. That left only Ceridwen, but he could not imagine that she would even consider allowing an inexperienced youth to accompany her.
"I… I know he's… different," Julia Ferrick stammered, "but he's still just a kid…" Her eyes began to tear again, and she pressed a fist to her mouth to as if she might stifle the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.
Conan Doyle wanted to tell her otherwise, to explain what little he knew about the creature that she had raised as her son, but he erred on the side of sensitivity. He could be a callous man, at times. He knew that. But he never meant to be.
"Mrs. Ferrick. Julia," he began. But his words were interrupted by a sudden roar that rattled the windows in their frames, and caused the pressure in the house to change so dramatically that his ears painfully popped.
"What the hell was that?" Julia asked, blinking, wincing as she opened and closed her mouth to relieve her own discomfort.
Conan Doyle was already in motion. The sound was familiar to him, and he knew that it signified answers. A traveling wind had arrived, but it would never have created such a thunderous roar unless it had been conjured quickly and carelessly.
"What was that?" Julia demanded as she pursued him from the dining room. "Doyle, answer me!"
He did not want to get her hopes up, choosing instead to lead her to the answer, and hopefully the relief of her distress.
Danny Ferrick knelt in the center of the living room, a puddle of vomit on the carpet before him. Conan Doyle glanced around the room, but to his dismay, Danny was alone. Ceridwen had not returned with him.
"Danny," his mother cried, kneeling at his side, throwing her arms around him. "I was so worried! Are you all right?"
The boy struggled from her embrace, pushing his mother away as he climbed to his feet. He lunged at Conan Doyle, gripping the man by the lapels of his jacket, starring wildly into his eyes.
"Danny?" Julia said, her voice hollow, crushed by his rejection.
"Ceridwen," the boy croaked, his breath stinking of spoiled milk. "She sent me away to tell you." The boy's legs were trembling, barely able to hold his weight.
"Then tell me," Conan Doyle urged, icy dread running along his spine. "What have you learned?"
"The Nimble Man," Danny said, wavering on his feet, a shudder passing through him. "She wanted me to tell you that Morrigan is trying to free the Nimble Man. I wanted to stay — to help her — but she made me come back to warn you."
Conan Doyle nodded wordlessly. The boy was about to fall down, so he steered Danny to the sofa and helped him to sit.
"Is it bad, Mr. Doyle?" Julia asked as she settled on the arm of the sofa, fussing over her son. She glanced up at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. "Is it bad?"
He wondered what he should tell them, just how much of the truth this woman in particular could stand. But Arthur Conan Doyle was not a man who minced words.
"Worse than you could imagine."
The smell of decaying flesh made her angry.
Eve wasn't sure why exactly, other than the fact that once the smell got on her clothes, it was hell to get out.
A rotting, undead executive type in a navy blue suit hissed at her, baring jagged Jack O'Lantern teeth that jutted from blackened gums. She and Graves had cornered four of the walking dead in the museum's gift shop, but this asshole was the feistiest.
"You can hiss all you like, Gomer," Eve snarled. "None of you are going anywhere until you tell me something useful."
A chill washed over her as Dr. Graves moved closer. He stood with his arms crossed and she imagined how formidable he must have been when he had been a man of flesh and bone.
"You don't think they'll just volunteer the information, do you?" Graves asked, hovering weightlessly in front of the gift shop doors.
"Sure," Eve said with a shrug. "They look like a reasonable bunch of dead guys. Why not?"
The executive lunged with a gurgling scream, hands hooked into claws and mouth open to bite.
"Then again," she said, driving her fist into the cadaver's face. It felt as though she had punched through a rotting melon. The corpse danced horribly at the end of her arm, its face and skull collapsed around her hand.
"That's just fucking gross," she spat, yanking her fist free with a wet, sucking pop. Further disgusted, she snapped a savage kick to the dead man's chest, hurling him backward into a T-shirt display. The corpse seemed to break upon impact, what was left of its head lolling obscenely to one side as it crumpled to the floor in a twisted heap.
"Quite effective," Graves said, slowly nodding his head. "Perhaps if you were to break them up into smaller pieces."
Eve flicked her hand at the ground, spattering the Linoleum with rotting brain as she tried to shake off the gray matter on her fist and arm. "Look, I didn't say I was an expert. I said that I've been known to be pretty good at getting information out of guys who didn't feel like talking. Obviously my technique doesn't work so well on dead folks."
The three remaining corpses began to circle around them, as though they had gained courage — or at least motivation — from the destruction of the fourth.
"If you'd like to give it a try, be my guest," Eve said, turning toward the shambling corpse of a woman so withered she seemed almost a scarecrow. Eve snatched her up by the front of her dress and hurled her into the others, knocking them all to the floor.
"Perhaps I will." Graves drifted from his place at the door to levitate above the undead that thrashed upon the floor, trying to stand. "I doubt I could do any worse."
One of the corpses untangled himself from the others. He had been a middle-aged man, obviously cut down in the prime of his life, his white shirt soiled from the grave. In his recent activity, the buttons had been lost, revealing the pale flesh of his chest and stomach. Eve noticed the serpentine stitching that writhed vertically from esophagus to navel.
The zombie leapt up at Graves with a hungry snarl, but his fingers passed harmlessly through the substance of the ghost.
"You'll do," Dr. Graves said.
The specter plunged one of his hands into the corpse like a magician reaching into his magic hat. The zombie froze, its decaying form snapping rigid. Graves pulled his hand free, withdrawing a white, writhing shape from inside the dead man's remains.
Eve watched, fascinated. "What is that, its soul?"
"Near enough," Graves replied, holding onto the squirming ectoplasm as its rotting shell collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The two other corpses grew still, staring at the ghost, as though they understood what he had done.
Eve was not sure if they were frightened, or envious.
The amorphous thing in the spirit's grasp writhed, vaguely taking on the shape of the man it had once been.
"Listen to me," Graves said.
Eve smiled. The man's voice just oozed control. It was damned impressive that even dead, the guy could still exude that much authority. She remembered how the world had been captivated by this man when he was still amongst the living, never really understanding the attraction. But as Eve watched him now, she began to see what she had not taken the time to notice before.
The ectoplasm retained the shape of a man, reaching up to the ceiling, but Graves prevented it from flowing to where it yearned to go. The soul moaned, not so much a sound that was heard, but one that could be felt, a low bass vibration the she could feel in the center of her chest.
"You will talk to me," Graves told it. "What was it that you sought here?"
"The Eye," said the soul, what passed for its head staring toward the ceiling.
"Did you find it?"
The spirit made another futile attempt to escape Graves, but the ghost held fast. "Want to go," it pleaded. "Need to be away from this place."