The Edge Of The Cemetery (18 page)

As we waited for Morris to arrive, we did our best to straighten up the mess left by Calvin and Gilles. A van arrived and was ushered into the garage. Two stoic men came up the back stairs and gently removed Jonas from the landing. They left as quickly and quietly as they'd come.

In all the excitement, no one had bothered to check Calvin's room, so Carol took on the task and returned with the cell phone he'd been using to contact Edgar. “He got a text from Edgar about thirty minutes after I left for Phil's house. It said, '
leave now.
' ”

I looked at Dave and Eric. I didn't want to appear accusatory, but they were supposed to be in the room with Calvin, so how was he able to check the phone? Eric must have sensed the question. He said, “It beeped, like a reminder that there was a text. I started towards the sound…I knew it was under the mattress. He was sitting on the bed and casually pulled it out and looked at it, and then he smiled all crazy like. He tossed the phone on the bed and just went nuts. He threw me out the door. I hit my head, blacked out for a minute….”

Dave picked up the rest. “I tried to stop him, but he grabbed me too, like I was nothing.” He shook his head. “I outweigh that little shit by a hundred and twenty pounds…I'm not sure what happened next.” He hung his head in unjustified shame. Carol placed her hand on his arm reassuringly.

Forty-five minutes later, Morris arrived with the column. Billy volunteered to polish it, and a half-hour later, she had it down to a mirror finish. She brought it over to the counter and placed it, like Carol had done with the cup, in the upper portion of one of the papers. We all hovered around, and lowered ourselves so we were looking at it straight on. It was a map.

I'd spent most of my adult life in the commercial real estate field and was adept at reading old parcel maps. This resembled that. There were faint grid lines, what appeared to be individual parcels marked out, and a bolder outline with the word “cemetery” in the center. Inside that outline were several intertwining double lines that resembled pathways or small roadways. Between those were numbers, ranging from one to thirteen…I assumed they designated the cemetery sections. The lower left of the cemetery outline had a shaded section carved out, with a U and S in it, but nothing else. The upper half of the map had a wavy bold line running across it, with a shaded area above the line.

However, aside from that, there were no street names, and no other identifying markings. I looked closer; there was something else, and I said, “Eric, do you have a magnifying glass?” He nodded and left the room, returning a minute later.

I held the lens over the area I thought I'd seen something in, and it came to life nicely. It was very light but it resembled an arch of some sort, and was located to the northwest of the area with the U and the S.

I stood up and said, “Nothing here tells us where it is…there's no street names, nothing. But this,” I pointed to the letters, “U and S, could be for the United States, and the Presidio was a military base and has one of the oldest and still remaining cemeteries in the city. I think we should start there.” Billy had swapped out the map for the other drawing and was studying it closely. “Well?” I asked.

She said, “They look like symbols…not sure of what, but they're clear enough. They're in a particular order, so I'm guessing it's the combination.” She stood up and stretched her back.

My phone rang…it was Julie. I put her on speaker.

“Hi Julie, everything all right?”

“No.” Her voice hitched. “He called. I…he sounded angry. He rattled me a bit and I think I answered wrong….”

“Okay, slow down. Tell me what he said.”

“He said, 'There was something else with the journals, I need it now.' I wasn't thinking and I replied that I didn't have it. He knew right away that I knew what he was talking about.” I heard a slight sob. “He actually hissed at me and said, 'You traitorous bitch, you gave it to them!' Then he said, 'They die, then you die,' and he hung up.”

“It's all right, he's not coming after you anytime soon. We'll get you out of there, where he can't find you—”

She cut me off. “George, I heard someone scream in the background. They were trying to say something, but they were stopped. It sounded like flesh hitting flesh, then there was a whimper.”

I looked around the room. “Stay put, Julie. He's got other things to worry about at the moment. He doesn't have time right now to come after you. It's going to be okay,” I lied.

“What about Aunt Justine?”

I looked at Billy, who was frowning. I could tell Julie's new “concerned and cooperative mother” persona was confusing the hell out of her. I smiled lightly at her reaction and turned back to the phone. “We'll take care of her too. I need to go, please don't worry.” I hung up.

I sighed heavily; we needed a plan, it was already past 4 p.m., and we had less than eight hours to find the chamber and save Phil, and hopefully kill Edgar. I turned to Aris and Pete, who were standing next to each other, and said, “I think we should use Calvin's phone to send Edgar a text, let him know we're willing to negotiate.”

Billy said, “Are you crazy?!”

“What the hell else are we going to do? We don't know where he is, he's got Phil, and he's going to kill him. And I'm guessing he's got Calvin by now, too!”

Aris held his hand up. “Please, calm down. I agree that we should text him, start a dialogue with him. Perhaps he'll inadvertently say something that will help us find him.”

Carol had been furiously tapping at her tablet. She stopped and sullenly said, “It's not the Presidio…Phil's copy doesn't resemble any maps, old or new, of that area.”

Billy's phone rang. She looked down at the caller ID and said, “Its Justine.” She hit the ignore button and turned to Aris. “If we're going to do this, then let's do it!”

Calvin's phone was sitting on the table. I pulled it forward and said, “What do we say?”

Aris was thoughtful, finally saying, “Identify yourself and ask him what he wants.”

I tapped in the text and held the phone while I waited for Edgar to respond. Seconds stretched into minutes, and when the phone did beep with an incoming message, I jumped.

I want the key and boy.

Pete said, “He doesn't have Calvin?”

Billy tilted her head. “I don't think Calvin knows where Edgar is.” She snorted. “I guess Edgar didn't trust him enough to tell him where the chamber was.”

“That is unfortunate. If the boy is lost somewhere in the city, it will infuriate Edgar even more, because it is an additional piece that he needs and does not have.” Aris turned to me and said, “Respond to him—tell him we will negotiate the boy and the key for Phil's safety.”

“What about our other guys?” Pete asked.

“It is unlikely he will agree to that. He must have bodies for the demons to converge with.” Pete started to argue, but Aris held his hand up. “We will not abandon them.” Turning back to me, he said, “Tell him you want proof of life…video, not a picture.”

I did as I was told and again we waited. Ten minutes later another text arrived, containing only the video we'd requested. Phil was bound to a chair of some kind, his hat was gone, and his hair was matted and tangled. Both eyes were badly swollen and bruised, as were his lips. Blood trickled down the left side of his chin. Edgar growled in the background and told Phil to speak. He looked at the camera and slurred, “Ges me ousta here, there are rodens esvrywhere.” Then he attempted a wink.

“Is he trying to tell us something?” Eric asked.

“Mr. James is quite clever, and I am sure that is exactly what he was trying to do. Carol, can you analyze the background and other sounds? Perhaps they will tell us something of where he's being held.” I handed her the phone.

“Should we respond first?” Billy asked.

“Yes, tell him we will be in touch within the hour.” Carol texted the message and left the room with the phone, I assumed to go to her bank of computers in the library.

I started pacing around the room, pulling my hands through my hair in frustration. There's a certain amount of inner strength that comes with knowing you can save a life, or just make one better; there's even more strength in actually doing it. For the last several months I'd had a sense of empowerment and confidence in what I was doing. But now I felt useless and out of control. I was terrified of what Edgar was going to do, not just to Phil but to the other ghost killers. I couldn't see how we could fight something as powerful as Gilles and Calvin, because no matter how strong we were, he was stronger…and he was evil on top of all that.

Billy said, “You okay?”

I looked up and realized everyone was staring at me. I said, “I need some air,” and left the room, headed for the front door.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been sitting on the front stoop—feeling sorry for myself and desperately trying to hold back tears of frustration, which was only causing more frustration since I was too damn old to be crying in the first place—when the door opened and closed behind me.

Billy sat down next to me, so close I could feel her body heat and smell her shampoo. She put her head on my shoulder and gently said, “We're going to save them.”

I laughed; the sound was wild, bordering on insane. “That isn't going to be easy…we have no idea where to look.”

“Actually, we do. I just talked to Aunt Justine. If you recall, we filled her in the other day on what we'd learned so far, including Vokkel's mention of the 'edge of the cemetery.' She'd heard that before, but couldn't remember where until just a little while ago.”

I turned to face her. “And?”

“Back when my grandmother was in her late teens and still living in the city, Justine took her to an event at the Legion of Honor. Grandma Billy was in one of her ranting moods that night, and kept going on about how close the horrible demons were, trapped right there at the edge of the cemetery.” I looked at her now, eyebrows raised. She smiled and said, “Carol did some checking. The Legion of Honor and Lincoln Park Golf Course were built on the site of a former cemetery. It was condemned in the early 1900s, the bodies supposedly relocated to Colma. But when they renovated the museum in the 1990s, they found a bunch of corpses, and it's rumored there are still quite a few buried on the grounds.”

The Legion of Honor was one of the city's most renowned museums. It also held a large collection of sculpture. I laughed again…still wild, but the touch of insanity was gone. “I thought he was trying to say rodents, he was really saying Rodin. The museum is loaded with his sculptures…there's even a few galleries named after him.”

She elbowed me lightly in the ribs and said, “Yep. Now come on, we've got some guys to rescue, and if I have my way,” her green eyes sparkled viciously, “a man that needs to be put out of our misery.”

When we entered the kitchen, Carol was hovered over the map copy again. She had printed out two other maps as well. One was similar to our anamorphic map copy as seen in the silver column, but with more detail and all the appropriate street names and markers in place. The other was more recent and showed the museum and the surrounding areas, which included Lincoln Park Golf Course to the east and the Veterans Administration Medical Center to the west. Billy stared at it for a long moment, then started laughing. It was a dark and bitter sound.

Carol said, “You want to share with the class?”

Billy pointed at the recent map, specifically the area to southeast of the museum where Lincoln Park Golf Course was, then she pointed at the old map Carol had printed out, which not only showed the cemetery, but its name, Golden Gate Cemetery.

I definitely needed to get a grip…it took me entirely too long to grasp what had amused her, but when I did, I laughed too. “He had bits and pieces of the chamber location; 'park,' 'Lincoln,' 'Golden Gate.' He asked Billy where the cemetery was when they walked in the park. He doesn't know the city and he put it all together wrong. I think he assumed that Golden Gate meant the park, and this house is on Lincoln Way, so he assumed the 'edge of the cemetery' and therefore the chamber, were in Golden Gate Park.”

Pete moved forward, looked at the maps, and said, “You think he's wandering around the park, trying to find it?”

A phoned beeped somewhere and Carol turned around, looking at a phone on the table…Calvin's. Aris picked it up, read the text, and said, “No, he is no longer searching for the chamber, and I believe we need to act quickly.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

Aris read the message. “ '
Bring the key, 11:40pm, eagles point, or he dies.
' I believe Calvin has found him.”

I frowned. “Why so late? I thought this had to go down by midnight?”

Pete said, “Edgar probably thinks we don't know where the chamber is, but he's also cautious, so in the unlikely event we do know, he doesn't want to risk us getting to them before midnight, when Calvin needs to read the combination. Eagles Point is just down the road from the museum. Edgar's fast like us; he could get back to the chamber in ten minutes or so. I'm guessing he doesn't want to be too far away from Calvin. He's got at least seven men in that chamber with him. Our systems have a way of fighting things off, healing quickly. If Phil was right and Edgar drugged our guys, there's a chance the stronger of them could fight off the effects of the drugs. I don't think Edgar wants to leave them alone for too long.”

Aris agreed with Pete and turned to Carol. “What have you found?”

Carol said, “Right. So the video of Phil shows rough stone walls in the background. They looked damp and slimy, and when I amplified the background noise I heard moaning, probably from our kidnapped GKs, and what I thought was trickling water. So I'm assuming this chamber is underground; in fact, it has to be.”

She laid the most recent map on the table and ran her finger around the area where the golf course was. “I tapped into the city's website and pulled the utility plans for the golf course. There are no large underground areas…it's all pretty solid ground with the exception of some utility piping, so that's a no go. However, I also pulled the plans for the museum. This area….” She ran her finger between the back side of the museum and the VA campus. There was a strip of land running between the two. I knew from our frequent visits to the VA that the piece of land she was referring to was at the bottom of small hill, and the museum was perched on top of the hill. “The location of the cemetery was here. This area in between would have been reserved by the government back then, so the cemetery wouldn't have extended into that. Thus, the edge of the cemetery.” She looked up, a broad smile across her lips.

“All right, there's a large interior loading and storage bay under the museum here, and some old storm water tunnels here, here, and here.” She jabbed the map at intervals. “They're no longer in use, but according to this map, there are access points here and here.” She pointed to a spot inside the loading bay, and another on the strip of land at the base of the hill. “I think we can access them from inside the storage area under the museum. And this…,” she pointed at a little mark, “is an exterior auxiliary access tunnel that would have been accessible from this back side, by the VA. I did a Google Earth search; there's something there that looks like a concrete arch with a large steel door. I think there's probably an entrance somewhere inside these tunnels that wasn't obvious to anyone, and it will lead to the chamber.”

Pete blew out a breath. “All right, what's your idea on getting in?”

“Well, if we assume Edgar is holding everyone in the chamber, I'm guessing he's been coming and going here.” She pointed to the part between the museum and the VA. It was the general area where I'd seen the arch from the anamorphic map. “It's pretty wooded and secluded. He wouldn't want to access the tunnels through the museum, it's too public. But I think we should use that one, because I'm betting he has this entrance guarded.”

It never occurred to me that Edgar would call in reinforcements. Carol continued. “The museum closed,” she glanced at the clock on the wall, “twenty minutes ago, but there's probably still a few employees running around. And of course there's going to be security guards to deal with.”

Pete said, “We need to do some recon…this is too vague!”

“What do you propose?” Aris asked.

“After Calvin attacked I called in two more guys, which makes six total. As soon as Carol identified the chamber location, I sent two over to check things out. I'm going to have them get into those tunnels through the loading bay entrance and scout around inside.” He pulled his phone out and started texting.

“How are they going to do that without getting caught by the museum security or attracting Edgar's attention?” Billy asked.

Pete smiled at her and said, “Darlin', two things to ease your mind. The guys I've got assigned to this house were all military, with
very
special skills.” He winked. “Second, getting in and out of dangerous places unseen was my specialty back in the day.” Regardless of how concerned Pete was, he was in his element now and that made me feel a little better. I'd heard a story or two about his Special Forces days, and I believed every one of them.

Turning to Carol, he said, “Can I borrow those maps for a bit?” She nodded and he gathered them up and left the room. A few minutes later I heard Dave greeting people at the door. The voices faded quickly and I assumed Pete had them in the library, where tactical instructions were being doled out.

Any confidence I had gained by learning the location of the chamber seemed to suddenly fade away, and exhaustion and doubt seeped in. Anxiety and fear were hitting me in waves, especially when I thought about the enormous strength that the combined Gilles and Calvin had displayed earlier.

Eric said, “What's wrong? You went all pale.”

“Gilles and Calvin together are monstrously strong, and that demon storm they called in, they were drawing off their strength. Calvin damn near killed me, and he did it with ease. Even with Pete's little band of ghost killing soldiers, I just can't see how we can win against them.”

Billy said, “Well, I say we start with the obvious; we shoot Calvin and Edgar the minute we lay eyes on them.”

“Yeah, that's good for them, but Gilles can't be shot.”

“There is another way,” Aris said. His eyes moved to something behind me and I turned around to find GG standing in the corner of the room. She smiled at me, then looked up to Aris and nodded.

“As you know, Gilles was, in a way, possessing Calvin, amplifying the boy's ghost killing strength, which I believe is a great deal more advanced than we all initially thought. I believe he is very close to your and Billy's level. However, in their case, it isn't so much a possession as it is a shared consciousness. They are both present and in control, together.” He looked at Carol painfully. I had no idea why, but her sad smile said it was something important, and she nodded at him.

“This must happen willingly…both the ghost—or in Calvin's case, the demon—and the ghost killer must accept each other. Once that is complete, your combined power is amplified beyond anything you shall ever experience.” He glanced at GG again. “I believe GG is willing to do this with you, and together you will defeat Gilles and Calvin.”

I couldn't believe what he was proposing, and I stuttered. “Uh…are you saying you want GG to possess me? What about what's happening with Calvin? I mean, he doesn't seem that in control when Gilles gets in him.” I knew it was different with them, but still….

Billy said, “George, you said it yourself…Gilles has been stepping into Calvin's head for so long that he can't resist him anymore. This isn't going to be like that…this is a one-time thing, and GG isn't some son-of-Satan demon like Gilles.”

I turned to her. “So you think I should do it?”

“I will if you won't,” she replied quietly.

I turned to Aris. “How does it work?”

“GG will show you. I believe you should initiate it now. It can take some adjustment.”

I had no idea what to expect with all of this, and I was scared, damn scared. Billy could tell too, and she said, “You want me to be there, you know, for moral support or whatever?” I nodded and headed to the den.

* * *

GG was waiting for us, hovering anxiously near the far wall. I said, “I have no idea how to do this.” She smiled and came towards me.

I closed my eyes, and within seconds I felt something odd. An overwhelming sense of intrusion, of not being alone, overcame me, like a shadow was living in the corner of my mind. Then a sudden flood of images and information rushed me; laughter, tears, joy, and days flying by, my vision taking a higher stance with each image, as if I was growing. It was someone's life and I was reliving it. Then I felt excruciating pain and I knew I was dying, and then nothing…blackness.

The darkness started to fade as fast it came, and images and emotions once again took shape; sadness and loneliness, a feeling of being lost. Then I saw a little girl, smiling, but I could sense the unhappiness in her. I knew her, but as an adult…it was my mother. When GG's entire living and dead existence had run its course there was yet another sensation. An incredible surge of strength—her strength—coursed through me. It was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever felt. I opened my eyes…Billy stood to the side, staring, a combination of horror and awe lighting her face.

“I'm okay.” I smiled. “We're okay. Can you see her, like with Gilles and Calvin?” I couldn't recall if she'd seen what I had when they attacked. She must have though; she nodded her head ever so slowly.

“Does it hurt?” she almost whispered.

GG and I smiled together, then she stepped away and I felt this strange loss. But she wasn't completely gone…there was a hint of her still left in my consciousness. She was now standing near Billy, smiling her own sweet smile.

I asked, “Have you ever done that before?” GG shook her head. “That was…I don't know, weird, kind of intoxicating. I could feel the power and strength, like I…we could take out an army single handed.” GG was nodding and smiling, then she did something very un-GG like…she held up both hands and gave me an enthusiastic double thumps-up.