The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane

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СКАЧАТЬ time was over. He turned and crossed the last fifteen feet or so until he reached the lip of the well, sunken into the barren earth, and looked at her.

      Chess couldn’t figure out why they’d had the conversation to begin with, unless Bump had ordered it. He was almost garrulous for a few minutes there. She wiped her forehead with her sleeve and caught up with him.

      “You tie back on,” he said, bending down. A heavy disc of rust-crusted iron covered the mouth of the well. Terrible pulled a crowbar from his bag and fit the flat end into the barely visible gap between metal and cement. “Best clear out the way.”

      Chess took a few obedient steps back before he tilted the crowbar and grabbed the edge of the disc with his hand. One quick heave and the disc lay in the scorched grass.

      “Oh, shit.” He took a few steps back, covering his face with his palm, then grabbing the bottom of his shirt and using it instead. It only took a second for the smell to reach Chess, too. Her stomach heaved as she jumped to the side, trying to get upwind.

      Decay and rot and putrefaction. She knew what the smell was without having to be told, without ever having smelled it before. Something had died down there, maybe animals or …

      The well had been covered, though. How could an animal get down there? How could anything get down there, unless someone had deliberately put it there?

      “Hand me over the light.” Terrible held his hand out, palm up. His other hand still clutched the fabric over his nose and mouth. In the otherwise unrelieved black of his outfit the strip of white undershirt it exposed looked like a flag of surrender.

      Chess fumbled for the flashlight and gave it to him, her face averted. If it was an animal down there … no matter what it was down there, she couldn’t enter that well. Who knew what sorts of germs had multiplied in the cool, damp air? It was a perfect breeding ground. She pictured bacteria dancing on the breeze and tried again to move so it didn’t hit her.

      Terrible bent over, shining the light straight down the well. For a second only his hand moved, examining the bottom. Then he jerked back, coughing, and turned away from her, resting his hands on his bent knees and hanging his head as if he was about to throw up.

      “Terrible, you okay?”

      He waved his hand, whether to signal he was or that he wasn’t she didn’t know. Either way the safest thing to do was to stay away, so she did.

      After a minute or so he got himself under control and turned to her. “Bad news, Chess. Bad news.”

      “Is it … is it an animal?” She knew it wasn’t, knew what he was about to say before his mouth opened.

      “Naw, no animal. Person. Dead body in there, all cut up.”

      The words hovered in their air between them, covered in their own sort of filth that had very little to do with what ever bacteria came from the well. Chess thought of the circle on the field, of the coin and the worms, and held out her left hand. “Give me the light.”

      “You ain’t wanna see it, Chess.”

      “No, I don’t, but I probably should. If it’s related to all of this …”

      He nodded and placed the light in her hand. The metal was warm from his skin.

      Most of the well hid in shadow as the sun’s angle sharpened. It was almost four o’clock, late enough that the homes on the other side of the fence started to come to life. Shift workers started returning home. Chess and Terrible themselves wouldn’t attract much attention—everyone knew Terrible, knew who he was with—but if they tried to drag a dead body out of there? It wasn’t even possible for them to do it, just the two of them. She certainly didn’t want to go tie a rope around a dead body in the dark depths of the well, and she wasn’t strong enough to lift Terrible if he did it. The man was at least six foot four or five and solid as the black ’69 Chevelle he drove.

      Standing as close to the edge as she dared, Chess tilted the light so it shone straight down. For a moment she thought Terrible must have made a mistake, that it was an animal after all. Then the beam slid across a pair of dead, whitish eyes, and she saw the open mouth, the pasty unreality of the face. The entire image came to focus just that fast, like a slide snapping into place.

      Cut up, yes. But not the way she’d pictured. This wasn’t a dismembered body. It was a disemboweled one, the flesh on the abdomen and chest stripped away to reveal stained bones horribly naked in the light. As she watched, a rat skipped over the mess of dull dark red where the internal organs should have been.

      Chess wasn’t as strong as Terrible. She barely managed to stumble away from the gaping mouth in the ground before she collapsed, her almost-empty stomach twisting on itself and forcing out the remains of the noodles and Coke she’d had at the Market. Tears stung her eyes and her nose ran, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything about it until the world stopped spinning beneath her.

      Debunkers weren’t investigators of murder. But they did investigate witchcraft-related crimes often, since so many times such things went hand in hand with ghosts. The sight of that body rang bells in the back of her head, bells that had nothing to do with her physical discomfort or her embarrassment at looking like a pussy. She was going to have to get a closer look at it, repugnant as the idea was.

      Terrible nudged her shoulder, waving a semi clean rag by her face. She took it and a deep breath at the same time and wiped her heated skin. “Thanks.”

      He shrugged and bent down to hand her something else, a small black bottle. Funny, she’d never imagined him as someone who followed health trends.

      “Bitter cardesca?”

      He nodded.

      “No thanks.”

      “Just take it, Chess. True thing.”

      She steeled herself for the taste and found it wasn’t so bad, even if her eyes did start tearing up again. More to the point, he was right. Her stomach settled almost immediately and her head cleared. A lot of guys had taken to carrying cardesca when they went out drinking or drugging, the theory being it would prevent hangovers the next day. The fact that it cost over a hundred dollars for one tiny bottle didn’t hurt when it came to showing flash, either, but maybe it wasn’t just an affectation.

      “Thanks,” she said again, handing the bottle back.

      He tucked it into his pack and pulled out his cell phone. Chess didn’t ask. He was going to call Bump, and at some point tonight she was going to have to tell Bump the airport he wanted to take over was either truly haunted, or some seriously dark shit was going down there.

      Sadly, she had to hope for the former. Battling black witches wasn’t part of the deal.

      The horizon glowed pink and orange before the grisly relic finally emerged from the well. Chess stood, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching Bump’s men milling around, trying to act like they were too tough to be bothered by the condition of the body, and debating the best way to remove it, none of which had a chance of working. Finally two unlucky souls had to be lowered in after it. It would have been funny if she hadn’t been so chilled.

      It—he, actually; a scraggly beard still clung to his weak chin—looked even worse once they laid him out on the ground. He was naked, his genitals gone, his midsection only visible ribs and a spine. СКАЧАТЬ