American Ghost by Paul Guernsey

Author:Paul Guernsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Talos
Published: 2017-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Not long after Alice Poe-York had sacrificed her afterlife to save the church, we began to receive further uninvited company. Our new, mortal visitors were neither artists nor arsonists, but were probably the next-worst thing: a group of people obsessed with the idea of making contact with the dead. They must have gotten permission to enter the abandoned building, because on their first visit they arrived in broad daylight and parked their shiny white van in plain sight along the edge of the gravel road. They came with a key to the padlock that linked the ends of the heavy chain fettering the handles of the two front doors. Their long vehicle, on either side, sported elaborate murals of a haunted house, complete with airborne bats, and large lettering that said:

GHOST HOUNDS: Paranormal Researchers of New England

(ParanormalResearchersOfNewEngland.org)

Virgil and Gib stopped playing chess when they arrived, and the three of us watched through the walls as they piled out into the late-summer growth of waist-high weeds—there were six of them, including two young women—and walked to the entrance. The chain rattled and clanked as they removed it and dropped it to the ground, and Virgil said, “Sounds like the Ghost of Christmas Past, coming for a visit.”

One door groaned open and, carrying a white candle burning on a white china dish, in stepped a bearded young dude in a leather jacket whose blazing brown eyes darted above a sharply pointed nose. He tip-toed across the vestibule and stopped just inside the sanctuary to gather in as much of the scene as his flickering candle could illuminate and then, in a dramatic gesture, he pushed his open palm into the air and declared, “I am sealed from all imperfect energies!”

Gib, who had risen and moved toward the front of the church and was now hovering about an arm’s length from the guy, looked back at us and said, “Oh, shit. I’d almost rather they just go ahead and burn the place down.”

Speaking loudly enough for his friends outside to hear, the man in the leather jacket said, “In the name of all that is good, we beg safe passage!” This request was echoed by his five companions who then, carrying their own white candles on white dishes, all but the first of them gripping the shoulder of the person in front, single-filed into the church, together murmuring Safe passage! Safe passage! as they shuffled, caterpillar-like, through the vestibule. They continued chanting this hopeful mantra until they had assembled in the sanctuary and formed a circle by pinching thumbs and forefingers against the edges of one another’s candleholders.

“Let us pray!” said the man with the beak-like nose, and they all fell silent and bowed their heads. He then recited:

“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Divine Power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

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