Checkmate

Checkmate

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  After two months, Tyson Lynche was getting antsy.

  He knew it was only a matter of time before the anti-ectoplasm shield around the mansion failed again. Tired of living like a refugee, he wanted to fight back.

  It had taken weeks of dangerous scavenging forays through the deserted streets of New Orleans, dodging roaming gangs of ghosts. He’d had several failed attempts that ended with small explosions and singed eyebrows. But he was now convinced he’d figured out a way to resist the wicked spirits that had taken over the world and murdered six billion people.

  “The next time a band of spooks comes through this neighborhood, I’ll be ready to give them battle,” Lynche told his ex-wife Karla as they sat in the huge dining room eating canned soup by the light of a hissing propane lantern. The circle of light illuminated the once-beautiful walls and ornate crystal chandelier of the Royal Street mansion that was now an abandoned restaurant.

  “Battle?” Karla asked incredulously. “Ty, they’re dead. How can you kill a ghost?”

  “By wiping them out of existence – dishing out a second death.”

  Karla Josephs had come knocking at Lynche’s door the night it had all happened – the night the world had come under the power of a dark Voodoo hex that raised all one hundred billion spirits of the earth’s dead. The night almost everyone was killed – the few survivors herding themselves into makeshift houses of worship across the country, dormitories repellant to the evil that had washed over the planet.

  Knowing her ex was deeply involved in the study and combat of the occult, Karla had been right to guess his place would be a safe haven.

  She’d shown up minutes after the onslaught of ghosts had swept through town, her eyes heavily darkened with eyeliner and running mascara. Her black trench coat filthy around the hem, and one of the heels on her leather boots broken off. Her black hair standing up in all directions – normal for Karla.

  She and Lynche holed up in his little sanctuary all that night, with his forensics lab, his occult artifacts (for study purposes), his morbid goth décor (for personal taste) and his eighty-inch plasma TV (for sci-fi movies). By morning, most of the world had perished at the hands of the ghosts.

  Now, two months later, it was almost as if they were married again.

  “How?” Karla asked, spooning the last of the baked beans out of her bowl. “How will you destroy them?”

  “Karla, I’ve spent all my adult years obsessed with death and the supernatural. It started as my hobby, and it became my job. Now, it’s my life.”

  “It was your life long before now,” she cut in, scowling. “Why do you think I left?”

  “Must we rehash that?” Lynche shot back. “Besides – I bet you’re glad for it now.” He pushed his dish away. “If I hadn’t been hunting down Victor Delphine – the Voodoo priest – the night he caused all this with his cemetery hex, we’d probably both be dead. Anyway, I’ve developed a weapon. An anti-ectoplasm weapon. I call it the ectoblaster.”

  “Cute name. You gonna market that?”

  Lynche ignored her. “If I’m right, it will destroy the ghosts by disintegrating the spiritual matter that composes them.”

  “So then they’ll just be . . . gone?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Something caught Lynche’s eye in the corner of the dining room window over Karla’s shoulder. He squinted past her.

  “What is it?” she asked, catching her breath and turning to look.

  “I dunno – I thought I saw something. I thought it was – someone.”

  Lynche stood, picking up his gun from the dining table without a thought – it was never more than an arm’s reach away these days. He peered out the window.

  Nothing.

  “Hmm.”

  “What did he look like?” asked Karla, her hand shaking slightly.

  “I’m not sure – it was so quick. Pale, ghostly face. He had weird hair – kind of –”

  “ - Poofy in the front, and sticking out on the sides?” Karla interrupted.

  “Yes! You saw him, too?”

  “Not just now, but I think I’ve seen him poking around here before.”

  Lynche returned to the table and laid his gun down. “I think this is a perfect opportunity to test the weapon. If that one doesn’t run, he’s dead.”

  “You mean, dead-er.”

  “Right.”

  Lynche went into the kitchen/laboratory and unhooked his ectoblaster from the solar generator that charged it.

  “Wish me luck.” Then he looked at Karla the way he used to – before things had fallen apart between them. “Don’t come out, no matter what happens.”

  He threw on his trench coat, stuck his black New Orleans Saints cap on backwards, hoisted the heavy ectoblaster over his shoulder and stepped outside, passing right through the invisible ghost-shield that protected the building and into the street.

  The ectoblaster was a chunky shoulder cannon, like a bazooka, but with glowing tubes, buttons, and high-tech gadgetry protruding from every surface. At the front end, it came to a point encircled by thin rings of repurposed pure silver dinnerware acting as amplifying rings.

  The streets were wet, as usual, but there were no street lights to reflect off the pavement. Lynche moved cautiously, listening. After checking around the mansion grounds, he headed into the darkness toward the cemetery. Perhaps some ghosts still loitered around their old resting places.

  A gang of wraiths came tearing around a blind corner, directly at Lynche - eight of them, maybe more.

  Screaming and blubbering like insane people, the ghosts immediately spotted Lynche and converged on him.

  He lifted the ectoblaster and took aim.

  A high-pitched whistle came as he pulled the trigger, and a wash of red, shimmering waves escaped the tip of the weapon. The ghosts on the receiving end of the blast recoiled, as if hit by an ocean wave while standing on the beach.

  Then their wild faces became even more ferocious, and they charged forward with greater determination.

  Lynche fumbled with the controls, frantically trying to boost the gain. He fired again.

  This blast was a brighter red, and he held the trigger for a full ten seconds, buffeting the ghosts with the energy until they finally dissolved like fast-melting ice, and disappeared.

  Lynche lowered the weapon, breathing hard.

  He used a small device to scan the ground where the ghosts had been - minute traces of ectoplasmic residue showed up.

  He’d destroyed the ghosts.

  “It worked!” he yelled triumphantly as he burst back into the mansion. “Karla, it worked! I blew the ghosts away!”

  Karla didn’t seem as enthused. “Oh, that’s great,” she said, half-smiling.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. I just wonder what became of those ghosts now. I mean, they were people, sort of, right? Did you just permanently extinguish their existence?”

  “I sure hope so.”