The Edge of the Cemetery

Chapter 3

Chapter 3The following evening….

From somewhere to my left came Billy's scream of frustration and anger, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I'd spent the last ten minutes getting pummeled by a possessed man; he was about my age, but much bigger and much stronger. Linebacker comes to mind. I had managed a few well-placed round-house kicks and a series of body-blows, but he just kept coming. As big and strong as he was, he was also pale and sickly. I'd seen him vomiting earlier, but none of that mattered because his illness was caused by the demon that had complete control of him, and that demon would force the unwitting man's body to fight to the death.

I hated having to physically hurt these poor possessed souls, but at that point, it was me or him—his demon was so adept at keeping the man between us that I hadn't had a single opportunity to vanquish him with my trusty yellow friend. I was even willing to risk the ultimate shock and jab him bare-fingered, but I just couldn't get close enough. This was an incredibly powerful demon, and he was making his already strong victim that much stronger.

They'd been backing me down the lawn toward a four-foot wall, which bordered a seaside cliff. The wall was the only barrier between me and a thirty foot drop into the frigid Pacific Ocean. I thought I could survive a dunk in the water, but not if I hit the jagged rocks that made up the shoreline instead.

I decided to charge him, if only to get some distance from that wall. I held my pencil out in front of me and crouched into a run, and so did the man. He was so much bigger than me, and when our tired and battered bodies met, he caught me off guard by grabbing ahold of my shoulder with one huge hand and my thigh with the other, essentially lifting me up off the ground. His momentum kept us going all the way to the wall, and suddenly I was flying through the air.

When I hit the water, all of the fogginess from my recent beating evaporated. I was terrified, and survival was my only concern. Fortunately, I landed about fifteen feet out from the rocky beach, but the waves were pushing me toward the rough shoreline at an alarming pace, and if I didn't get control, I'd end up pulverized by the rugged rocks.

On the drive up from San Francisco, I'd used my phone to look up the property on Google Earth, and recalled seeing a small pier at the base of the cliff. If my internal compass was working—and I had doubts due to the recent blows my head had taken—the dock should be close by. I turned in the direction I thought it was, took a sea swell to the face that felt like a sharp slap, and went under for a minute. When I surfaced, choking out salt water, I saw white safety lights and realized it was the dock. Before another wave rushed me closer to the shore—and what would surely be my death, or at least extreme disfigurement—I swam like my life depended on it…and of course, it did. I hit the pier piling with my forehead, causing a bright flash across my vision, but still managed to grab at the barnacle and oyster encrusted wood and hold tight. Although they were sharp and cutting into my hands, the sea life attached to the piling was keeping me from slipping on the otherwise slimy surface and back into the rushing ocean waters. I pulled myself along the wooden cross supports until I reached a ladder that descended into the water, and climbed to relative safety.

I needed to catch my breath, but more importantly, I knew Billy was in trouble back up at the hotel that sat near the cliff. The sound of Billy's voice yelling down at me spurred me into action, and I scrambled up the cliff-side staircase. I was halfway to the top when I realized that she wasn't yelling in distress—at least not her own distress—but yelling at me to, and I quote, “Stop screwing around, George, and get your ass up here!”

I laughed. It hurt like hell, but I couldn't help it. The earlier pounding I'd taken had included several upper-cuts to the lip and chin, and even more body blows to my ribs and stomach. Not only that, but my hands were chopped liver from the sharp barnacles and oysters that I'd recently clung to. I was a mess…but still, I kept going.

When I reached the top, Billy was fending off a tall, athletically built woman in a lovely silver evening dress. The woman had a large carving knife in her hand and a nasty demon at her back. The women lunged, knife aimed directly at Billy's chest. Fortunately, Billy was damn fast and quickly leapt to the side, then darted back with lightning speed and stabbed the woman's demon with her chopstick, vanquishing it into a swirling grey mist. The woman, who had no idea what was happening to her, promptly fainted.

The wide expanse of lawn, which spanned from the hotel to the cliff wall, was brightly and beautifully lit by the full moon. Unfortunately, that beauty was spoiled by the macabre scene before me. In addition to the woman Billy had just saved, two other people were sprawled unnaturally on the lawn, and I was pretty sure they were dead. A teenage boy stood off to the side, nearest the path to the parking lot, with our new archenemy, the 17th century musketeer, at his side. I didn't think the boy was possessed, but based on what I'd seen of him earlier, there was plainly something wrong. They were observing the mayhem, and I thought I saw pleasure in their expressions. Two more demons and their victims remained…Billy was in pursuit of one, and the other was my linebacker nemesis and his oh-so-powerful demon.

Billy was now at the top of the lawn by the hotel terrace with a female demon and her victim. The demon was wearing a graceful 18th century evening dress in a dark chiffon fabric that flowed elegantly around her as she moved, and of course she wore round-rimmed glasses. The lights from the terrace lit her face, and I could see that she'd probably been quite beautiful in her more corporeal days, but death had changed that. I'd become quite adept at identifying the fashion of the last several centuries…it was a necessary tool in order to determine the strength of the demons we faced—the older the clothes, the older and more powerful the ghost or demon. Aside from the demon who'd been standing next to the boy, these final two were the oldest we'd come across on this particular ghost killing adventure, which was probably why they had been walloping us with such ease.

The 18th century ghost's victim was a man; not a very tall one, but broad with an athletic build. He was swinging a croquet mallet with demon-fueled force at Billy, keeping her from killing his demon and saving his life. I heard her cuss loudly as the unwilling man connected with her leg. I could see her out of the corner of my eye…she went down, and the man, with his demon at the helm, grabbed her by the arm and tried to drag her towards the parking lot, and the musketeer. I started after them; however, my cliff-tossing foe and his demon had other plans.

The linebacker's demon was decked out in the traditional uniform of a British regular…or if you prefer the more colloquial term, he was a redcoat. His uniform was dusty and dirty and his pants were stained in what I thought was probably the blood of his centuries-old enemies. Even his round-rimmed glasses seemed to be coated in dust.

The man, who'd been quite ill from the demon's haunting over the last several hours, looked less formidable than he had just a short time ago. But I knew that no matter how sick he was, as long as the demon had control, the man's body would fight viciously. He rushed me, but I wasn't going to be caught again. I went left, then right while simultaneously jabbing the former British soldier. With a sigh of relief, I watched his ghostly form turn to mist and float away as his victim slumped to the ground.

Just before vanquishing the redcoat I'd caught a glimpse of Billy again—she'd managed to separate herself from the man, but he'd recovered and was backing her up toward the terrace. Now that the redcoat was eradicated I headed that way. The terrace was strewn with overturned patio furniture and broken planters and their contents. I heard a low moan and headed in its direction. The man Billy had been battling was slumped against some lounge chairs, covered in dirt and battered flora. Aside from the fact that he was beat up and more or less unconscious, he looked to be okay. I looked around for Billy. A string of expletives rang out from my left and I smiled. Ah, there she is.

“Billy, you okay?” I asked, trying to catch sight of her amongst the wreckage.

“No, I'm not okay! What the hell was that?” Billy snarled.

“I don't know…,” I said quietly. There are technically three categories of ghosts; low-level, which are the newly dead, meaning they've only been dead for twenty to forty years; mid-level ghosts are older, usually having died forty to eighty years back; and the high-level are the oldest, sometimes hundreds of years dead. Those I considered demons instead of just ghosts, because the longer a ghost haunts and the more victims it kills, the more powerful it becomes. The powerful demons were always a threat, physically, but usually only to their victims. However, as Billy had mentioned the day before, it felt like we were being lured into these battles so the demons could hurt us as well as their victims. But the teenager was the most disturbing, because I was positive that he killed two people by using the power of the 17th century demon that seemed to be his companion and not his tormentor. I was also positive that I'd seen him before…unfortunately, my brain was a bit too rattled at that moment to focus on where.

I glanced toward Billy's voice. She'd managed to push most of the debris off herself, and now that I saw her face clearly, it wasn't pretty. She had a gash running across her forehead; the blood that oozed down her face was infused with potting soil, giving it a thick, muddy appearance. She had more cuts on her left cheek and chin, and her shirt-sleeve was ripped and soaked in blood. I checked the man again, and then went to Billy. She pulled away and swatted at me when I tried to assess her wounds.

“Stop that. I need to see how bad this is.” I grabbed the back of her neck to hold her still. She said something very unladylike, but very Billy-like, and I smiled painfully. Her injuries looked superficial and her belligerent attitude was spot-on…she was going to be fine.

I slumped down on the terrace floor next to her and tried to take a deep breath. I was pretty sure I had a broken rib or two, and now that the action had stopped and the adrenalin flow had slowed, I began to shiver uncontrollably from my dunk in the very cold ocean.

“What happened to you? Why are you all wet…? s**t, look at your hands, they're wasted!” Billy's tone was gruff, but I heard concern too.

“The redcoat's victim beat the crap out of me and threw me off the cliff.” I held my hands up for a better look. “I had to climb up that dock I told you about, it was covered in barnacles and oysters…. I'll be fine.” I moaned and promptly passed out.