Chapter 22

Being stuck in a wall was one of Sean’s most terrifying nightmares. But now that he was in one, physically, moving the the molecules of the drywall, rebar, and wooden studs, Sean found that it was actually an amazing experience. But the thought of thrill and his emotion of exhilaration were quickly extinguished when he had noticed Medraut had seen him and Elise phase through the back wall of Smyth’s office. There was no time to enjoy the experience of sneaking through walls undetected anymore. It was no longer a game of stealth. It was a matter of getting out. To stay alive.
    Even though Sean’s physical make-up was practically nonexistent, everything that had previously been on his body, like his clothes and tanto knife and gel com earpiece, those stayed on his person. Percy had suggested Sean take off as many articles of clothing as Sean was comfortably in sneaking around in, because when one wanted to walk through walls using the Medallion, anything the wearer had on his person hindered him on his travels through walls. So Sean had stripped down to a shirt and pants cut to shorts to aid in smoothing and quickening the transitions of going into one wall and out the other side. So when Sean had dragged Elise through the back wall of the office, it took all of his strength from his side to pull her through. It was like trying to pull a one hundred and fifty pound weight out of a chasm. Although Sean wasn’t exactly sure how much Elise weighed, the act of phasing her through the chair and then the wall itself took all of Sean’s strength in doing. And even as they passed through the wall, Sean knew the wraiths were directly behind them. Searching and sniffing, like police hounds on a criminal’s scent.
    Once Sean and Elise had made it out of the back wall of Smyth’s office, Sean motioned with his hands at Elise. She stared at him for two valuable seconds, confused. Two more seconds later, her eyes opened wide as she realized. Sean pointed at Elise’s trench coat, mouth forming wordless commands. Elise nodded at the same time as she shed her heavy clothing. She held it in her hands, crumpled it in a hasty ball, drew back her hand and sent it flying down the end of the large hallway. The instant it left her fingers, it flickered into the real world, becoming a physical, camouflage green trench coat once again as it sailed across the hallway, away from where Elise stood. Sean pointed down at her boots and flapped his hands up and down, signaling her to hurry. Elise went to work untying her laces. Sean looked over his shoulders and scanned the corridor. He squinted and focused in and out. They were in the center hallway of the museum, directly behind Smyth’s office. To run straight down the hallway would take them to the foyer where some of Medraut’s men were still stationed in the ring of tables. Behind them was a flat marble wall with a giant banner that had the letters HALLWAY OF EXOTIC ANIMALS typed in large blocky print. It was a two way street in which there was only one option. Unless. . .
    A quavering disturbance in the air twenty feet away from Sean made his eyes grow wide. The blob of rippling air moved steadily through a wall. Phasing into the corridor. Sean could see a head and shoulders push through the wall. He looked down at Elise, still holding Sean’s hand and using the other to untie her boot. Sean wanted to scream at Elise to hurry, but instead shook her hand in an awkward quick jolt. She responded by lifting her head up at Sean. She couldn’t see the detail in his eyes, the hurry up quickly we’re going to die expression on his face. Sean opened his mouth, saying words that couldn’t be heard. Elise looked back down at her feet. She had already discarded one boot and was beginning to start on the other. But by the time she would be finished, the wraith would already be out of the wall and on Sean and Elise, doing whatever wraiths did when they caught slow people.
    Sean figured the wraith had already seen them, considering the wraith was now writhing out from the wall instead of just floating through. So, to make Elise go faster, Sean simply let go of her hand. He knew he would get a bunch of flak over it later if they lived, and that was exactly what Sean was hoping for. To live.
    Releasing Elise’s fingers from his, Sean watched as Elise materialized, her body becoming physical matter. Her expression was that of shock and surprise and anger as she looked up at Sean, who simply floated there as a rippling wave in the air. He motioned for her to hurry, rolling his hands around and around, hoping she would get the message. He even pointed at the wraith that was halfway through the wall by then, but she couldn’t see his finger.
    Elise stared daggers up at Sean, and hurriedly pulled off her other boot. Sean looked to his right and saw the wraith moving forward steadily at them. Shoulders hunched, head low. Its long feet taking long strides down the hallway, only fifteen feet away from its prey. Sean cursed mutely in his apparition-like form and snatched at Elise’s hand and drew her up, already pulling her haphazardly to the banner at the end of the hall. The wraith covered the distance in between with incredible speed, closing the gap by several feet with every lunge. Another nightmare Sean had hoped would never come true. It was like running underwater, no other direction but forward. Nothing else in Sean’s mind but to move his legs purposefully and with all the strength he could force through his seemingly useless calves and thighs. Every step was a strain and every push off the ground was heavy and weighted. The wraith came closer, now ten feet out.
    Sean and Elise did not look back as they both headed directly for the banner ahead of them. They were in sync, two bodies moving together as one to a single, unifying goal. To reach the end of the hallway. To live. Both Sean and Elise moved with a marathon runner’s pace, left foot then the right, one after the other moving continuously like a well oiled machine. The banner came at them like a slow moving truck. Either they wouldn’t be able to phase through or they would. There wasn’t anytime to rethink himself now. No room for doubt. Sean treaded along stubbornly, pushing through the air as his weightless legs seemed to drag through wet cement.
    Then they reached the end.
    The wraith was behind them, Sean could feel it. It was a million needles being placed at the entire surface of his back that was facing the wraith. An immense chill that could only come from standing on top of a freezing mountain peak with gale force winds without having any clothes on. Every thought in Sean’s mind urged him to stop. Every sensory organ in Sean whispered for him to stop running and give up. And he almost did. He almost paused for a second and listened to the voices, to listen to the whispers that flooded his body. Almost.
    At his side, Elise squeezed Sean’s hand, and that was all it took to remind Sean that the voices weren’t true. They were lying; they were false. If he gave in now, there would be no more hope. Even though it shouldn’t have been possible, Sean could feel warmth in his grasp with Elise’s hand, the warmth that heated his non-corporeal fingers. It energized his spirit and he took one hard step forward, his face barely a foot away from the tail end of the banner that stretched down the ground and Sean pushed off the marble. He moved effortlessly through the air, his initial velocity carrying him through the banner and into the wall. Sean wasn’t prepared for the instant shock of pain that tore through his body. It felt like he was moving through a car wash that had sandpaper for cleaning bristles and water and soap replaced with vinegar and mud. Sean closed his eyes and endured the pain, a silent scream escaping from his mouth.
   

    “Sean, wake up!”
    Percy’s voice echoed in Sean’s brain. It tumbled and coursed through the young custodian’s head until it ran out his ears and dribbled along his shoulders. Sean stood shakily, darkness surrounding him. Then bile jumped to the roof of his mouth, the sour taste of the liquid was so bad he bent over and spat it out. Once Sean was done expelling the small amount of regurgitated soup onto the floor, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “The wraith. . .”
     “Vanished. Not really sure where it went, so keep an eye out.” Percy answered, his voice cutting in and out. “I’ve lost visual of you two. Where did you go?”
    “We’re. . . Um. . .” Sean looked around. They were in a closet space no bigger than twelve feet by ten. The ceiling was barely a foot higher than Sean. He wiped away the rest of his spittle from the corner of his mouth. “We’re in a really, really old room.” Sean coughed into his fist, as he steadied himself on a decayed desk.
     Percy didn’t respond. Sean sneezed, looking down at the desk. It was as debilitated as the room it lay in. The floor was a minefield of grungy broken boards, nails and sharp spikes jutting up in the middle of the room. The only light source that Sean could detect was a soft yellow glow coming from a thin slit in the corner of the dank room.
     The stale air in the room sent Sean into a coughing fit, as the thin beam of light illuminated the dust particles, it was as if he were looking at thin spotlight. Almost like a laser beam.
    “My Medallion.”
    Knees shaking, Sean backed up his rear end onto the edge of the desk. It creaked and whined, but he ignored it. He stared at Elise, laying on the floor. She had thrown up as well, dark blobs of foul looking chunks that were already emanating an even more foul stench. It wafted towards Sean. He waved it away and coughed, bile rising in his throat again. He swallowed it down with saliva and tried not to breathe in the stench.
    Elise sat up, her legs crumpled underneath her body, her hands planted on the rickety floorboards, shaking. Her hair lay in tangles, still and sweaty against her flushed face. Her eyes were slits pointed up at Sean.
    “You used the Medallion. That’s-I never thought it possible.”
    “Yeah,” Sean huffed, feeling his stomach churn, uneasiness wrestling his organs into a knot. “I feel sick.”
    “That’s normal.” Elise said, crossing her legs in front of her in a criss cross pattern, her knees on top of her feet. She forced a smile up at Sean that turned to a grimace. “I’ve tried phasing before. I never really got the hang of it.”
    Sean looked down at the ground and nodded, a wry grin on his lips. “You can teleport. How come you can’t phase?”
    “Why do you think?”
    “‘Cause it sucks, I guess.”
    Elise snorted, raising a hand up in the air. “There you go.”
    “Can we teleport out of here?” Sean asked, looking around the empty musty room. Elise stood, shakily, and dusted herself off, which was pretty much useless. Dust was everywhere, now that they had disrupted the atmosphere of the room. It was almost as if the room had been boarded up for a hundred years.
    Elise said. “Not possible.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean,” Elise began, pointing at the glowing Medallion hanging around Sean’s neck. “If you try vaulting, you’ll likely take us somewhere in Siberia or somewhere equally unforgiving. But I can only vault once a day.” Elise licked her lips, sniffing. “That’s my limit. If I vault more than once a day. . . bad things happen.”
    “Like what?” Sean asked warily, gulping.
    “That’s not important.” Elise said sternly, her voice breaking. She waved away the matter, stirring the rising and falling of dust motes in the air. The beam of light coming from the crack in the wall became more solid, taking shape.
    “Right,” Sean said, staring at the crack in the wall. “Where are we?”
    “-orry? Hello, Sean, hello. Anybody there. Hello?” Percy’s voice crackled to life in Sean’s ear, and he tilted his head down, a smile dominating his mouth.
    “Percy! Great-yes, hey!” Sean chuckled nervously. “Okay, good. Where did you go?”
    “The line was buggy for some reason,” Percy responded, his voice sounding far off and flat. “The connection isn’t so great right now either. It took me a few channels to find you. Where are you now?”
    “I said we’re in a room of some kind. Really old, hasn’t been touched for years.” Sean scanned the room again as he spoke, his nose itched from the tide of dust. “It’s pretty small in here. Seems ancient, even.”
    As Sean spoke, he watched Elise stare at a large hole in the middle of the room’s floor. It was as wide as a small trampoline, the little crater taking up most of the middle of the room. Elise stepped around it and examined the hole that light streamed through.
    Percy said. “Any other vague and unassuming details you can give me?”
    Sean looked up at the ceiling and began to sigh, but then started to cough. After his fit was done, he said, “Hey, I know I ain’t a poet, but just give me a bit of sla-”
    Elise whipped around, a finger to her lips. Sean stopped talking, his eyes wide and his mouth half open. She waved him over to her, turning back to her peephole.
    “Percy,” whispered Sean, as he made his way around a large hole in the wooden boards.
    Elise moved aside for Sean to look through the thin slit in the corner.
    “I didn’t go anywhere,” Percy answered, after a few second delay. His voice sounded choppy. “Your infrared images are blinking in and out. I can barely keep track of your position. Have you found out where you guys are, exactly?”
    “If you can see us by infrared, can’t you tell where we are, Percy?”
    “Okay, I don’t think you heard me right,” said Percy, the end of his words sounding like crackling twigs in a blazing fire. “I can see your heat signatures, but they’re bouncing all over the place. My infrared equipment isn’t functioning properly. I don’t actually know where you guys are specifically. You got it?”
    Sean muttered. “Got it.” Elise turned to face Sean, glaring at him, motioning for him to be quiet with a frantic wave of her hand. Sean frowned at her. Elise glanced at the hole, then at Sean, and then back at the hole, pointing at it with a finger. Now that he was closer to the slit, Sean saw that the crack was so small, if he reached up and flattened his thumb against it, he would extinguish the light completely. Sean took Elise’s place in front of crack. He peeked through the hole. Once his eyes adjusted to the mellow light, to the room on the other side of the crack, his blood almost froze. Ten feet out from where Sean was placing his eye in the crack stood a wraith. At first Sean thought it was just a trick of the light combined with some kind of speck in his eye, but he blinked several times to make sure. The Adam’s apple in Sean’s throat plummeted as he tried to not make a sound; he tried not to take a single breath. Sean could see through the ghostly apparition’s figure. It was like looking through a jellyfish. Nothing on the inside and completely transparent. The air rippled around the ghostly creature the same way water gushes past a boulder at the edge of a waterfall. Sean could feel the wraith’s cold presence through the wall, in his fingertips that were pressed against the rotting wood.
    The wraith barely moved; he was a statue among two other of his brethren, creating a triangle in the center of the room. The room the three wraiths stood in was bright, the walls unfinished canvasses. The floor was wooden and bare. Sean moved side to side to get as much of a picture of the entire room as he could through the small hole he saw through. Buckets lined one side of a wall while on the opposite he could spot painting blankets, paint cans, brushes and rollers. Sean looked down, through the wraith, and saw a giant book in the middle of the apparitions. It was comically huge, at least half a foot thick and twice that in height. It was covered in black leather that peeled at the edges. The bindings were crusty bronze and rust splattered its corners. Then movement from the left side of the room attracted Sean’s eye. He focused in and saw Medraut walking in from an unseen door. The captain’s face was as dark as the cover of the book in the middle of the floor, and his expression chilled Sean to the bone. Medraut’s face was twisted and gnarled like an ancient tree knot, hatred and anger fusing together to create a malevolent snarl on his face. Speaking words that were muffled by the wall separating him and Sean, the captain’s lips moved as he stepped closer to the book.
    “Something weird is happening,” breathed Sean, not daring his voice to reach any desirable tone. His own exhalation sounded loud in his brain, along with the pounding of his heart.
    “What?” Both Elise and Percy responded at the same time. Elise scooted forward, bumping Sean away. She exhaled a silent apology to Sean and tip toed to look into the peep hole.
    Sean backed away, licking his crusty lips. “Percy. The captain’s doing something with a big black book. Should we be worried?”
    Sean listened closely, hearing nothing. A cough. Then Percy said, “Are you kidding me?”
Next to him, Sean could feel Elise’s quick exhalation through her nose on his shoulder. “We should start worrying. That book he’s got is the Occisio Caudex. This isn’t good-nothing about this is good at all.”
“Well, what are we gonna do?” Sean stared at Elise next to him. She stood straight and slowly turned to Sean, staring down at the Medallion on his chest. It lit up her face and Sean could see the indecision in her eyes. She held up her hand, palm face up, staring at the young custodian purposefully.
“What?”
“The first thing we’re going to do, is you give that back to me.” She looked up at Sean, her lips in thin line. “Give it back. That’s mine.”
Sean looked down at the glowing coin on his chest and then glanced back at Elise. She glared at him now, tilting her head forward. Something in her eyes, a certain look made Sean obey. She didn’t need the Medallion to change someone’s mind about something. She had mastered an ageless stare that was just as powerful as magic itself. Sean sighed, looking at the crack in the wall, at the beam of light poking through into the dark room. Reluctantly and slowly, Sean held the Medallion in between thumb and finger as he lifted it over his head and placed it squarely in Elise’s open palm. He breathed out heavily as if he had shed a large burden from his shoulders. His knees all of a sudden felt weak. His feet ached and his neck felt tense and knotted. He rubbed it as he watched Elise hang the Medallion over her neck, stuffing the glowing pendant into the inside of her shirt. He could see her face change instantly in the dim light. The bags under her eyes decreased and the tone of her skin became unblemished. Although dirt and blood still covered her face, her bruises disappeared completely, no longer visible. Her green eyes flashed, her black pupils dilated and pinched together, a sight that unnerved Sean. She let out a pent up breath and a cough.
“Thank you.” she said, her voice sounding smoother and lined with silk. “You made the right choice. Honestly speaking, if you hadn’t given it to me, I would have slit your throat.”
Sean smiled weakly. “Um. . . okay then.”
Elise gave Sean a toothy smile filled with joy. Noticing his uncomfortable expression, she frowned.
    “What?” she asked quietly.
    Sean shook his head, moving around her and placing his right eye against the peep hole. He said, “Nothing.”
    “Guys,” Percy said. “I need visual on Medraut. What is he doing with the Occisio?”
    Staring through the crack, Sean watched Medraut kneel over the book. Sean squinted, sniffing away a building sneeze.
    “He’s opening the book.” Sean hissed. Elise stared at him, eyes stolid. In the other room, crouching inside the triangle of wraiths, Medraut flipped the pages with an air of theatrics, almost as if it were for Sean’s benefit. As if he knew Sean were watching him. Medraut even smiled as Sean thought this, a grin cracking the half side of his face in grim humor.
    “He’s got the manual to summon pure evil itself,” Percy’s voice was a pitch higher than before. He coughed and cleared his throat. “Wait. No. Oh. . . No. Quick, tell me where the book is opened to.”
    Sean whispered. “What difference does that make?”
    Percy repeated, his voice becoming strained. “Where does he have the book open to?”
    “How should I know? They don’t put page numbers on the outside of books, you know.”
    “Sean. Just shut it.”
    “Right.”
    Sean caught Elise glaring at him from the side. Chagrined and ears flaming, Sean returned his eye to the peep hole and focused hard on the large tome.
    “He’s opened it to the exact middle, from what I can see from my angle.” Sean squinted and wiped dirt from his eye. “Yeah,” He confirmed quietly. “He has it opened to the middle of the book.”
    Beside him Sean heard Elise groan. He leaned back and stared at her. Elise was rubbing her eyes with one hand, her head turned down to the floor.
    Percy’s voice crackled in Sean’s ear. “Yup. He’s opening a portal; I can see a quantum field appearing on my screen. Hold on a sec. . .” Percy’s voice diminished, being replaced by the sound of a keyboard clacking.
    “A portal to where?” Sean asking, still staring at Elise. She noticed him staring at her. She stared back for a long second before saying, “He’s creating a bridge to the Plane of Spirits.”
    “How is that possible?” Sean asked.
    “He has the book,” Elise shrugged.
    “Darn that tome,” snapped Percy in Sean’s ear. The short breathes that exited his nostrils seemed loud in the quiet cramped room he and Elise stood in as they stared at each other for a long moment.
    “What happens when he opens that portal, Elise?”
    Sean looked back into the room. He saw Medraut standing now, his face pointing down at the open tome’s pages, the captain’s arms spread wide, his palms facing up to the ceiling. Sean could see the flicker of Medraut’s lips moving as a slow tremor began to build steadily from the ground and into Sean’s knees. It rocked the foundation of the room, plumes and clouds of smoke and dust falling all around Sean and Elise.
    “No,” Elise said dumbly. Her tone was flat as she looked at the wall to her side, as if staring through the drywall and seeing Medraut.
    “What’s happening over there?” Percy began, his voice over the line distorting and bending the same way the audio sounds on a damaged cassette tape being played back. “I felt a rumble over here. The Sync doesn’t usually rumble-what’s Medraut doing?”
    “He’s saying something I can’t hear,” Sean replied. The room shook again, and Percy said. “He must be summoning the portal. You need to stop him before he reaches halfway.”
    “What happens when he reaches halfway? Halfway of what?” Sean felt his teeth clatter and his hands quiver as the very air seemed touched by every vibration that came from Medraut’s mouth. Even the hole where Sean peeked through shook slightly; as if he were standing on a line of railroad tracks where a cargo train was barrelling down on him.
    “Don’t let him get halfway through the spell!” Percy was shouting now. He had to. The sound coming from the opposite room from Sean was now becoming an overpowering force that almost seemed physical. Sound punched at Sean’s diaphragms in two second increments that were lined with ground shaking tremors that rattled the inside of his head. Sean had to back away from the hole in the wall, the crack beginning to grow and take shape. A century’s old dirt rained down on him, blanketing him and Elise like snow. They edged together towards the corner of the room, both of them looking at the hole in the wall widening to the size of a golf ball.
    “Percy?” Sean said as loud as he dared without Medraut hearing him from the other side of the wall. “Percy, how do you expect us to stop three wraiths? We’d never make it past them!”
    The ground shook, the walls jittered, the beams ached, and the very museum itself sounded like it was about to split at the seams and blow open like firecracker. An earthquake had taken occupation of the room Medraut was summoning in. The sound became deafening. Sean thought he heard Percy shouting instructions to him in his ear, but his voice was drowned out by the mellow chanting that emanated from the unfinished room adjacent.