Hollowmark and Lovelace 2

Chapter Two:
January 7th : Arrhythmia

My blaring alarm cut into my sleep-softened brain like a scalpel into melting balaton cheese.  I covered my head with the flat pillow and groaned.  Then I made an easy decision and swept the clock off the desk.  Hard.  There was a loud crack, and then the incessant beeping cut off.

It was too early to be up.

"You're still a total ponce about sleeping in, aren't you?"

"Proudly," I murmured into the sheets.

"Even when we've got work to do."

"Especially then…"  I wanted a day off.  Just walking around with Joseph was awkward now.  I was too used to just turning and talking to him whenever I felt like it.  It put me off my stride when he was the only one who could talk.

Here at the dormitories, things could be pretty much the way they'd always been.  Everyone could see him in any case, but even if they couldn't, they'd at least know I wasn't crazy.

A voice very close to my ear made the skin on my neck begin to crawl, slow enough to make me itch.  "If you don't get out of bed, I'm gonna poke your liver."  When I didn't respond for three seconds, he added, "Twice."

I got up.

To my relief, Joseph moved back to what had been his side of the room.  Anyone could feel the chill of a spirit's nearly physical presence, but I had always been oversensitive to it.  This wasn't really a mediator trait, more a personal aberration.  I yawned, stretched, and then slumped against the bedpost.  "How'd the night pass for you?"

"It was just as damn dull as the one before."  He'd been 'smoking' more than he honestly had in his life, but I wasn't sure if it was because it was the most familiar thing he could still do, or if he was just used to doing it to calm himself down.  Maybe a mix of both.

I yawned again.  As remote as the organization's local headquarters and accommodations were, the city was branching out every passing year.  The roads were getting busier, and I was a light sleeper.  "Sorry," I said, scratching my ear.  "Maybe I can turn on the radio or something before I go to bed."  That sort of thing would keep me up for hours, but I would eventually fall asleep.  Very eventually.

I should have felt like a heel for being relieved when Joseph shook his head.  "Nah.  Next time I'll just test how far away from you I can go, what new tricks I've got.  Only boring people should let themselves stay bored, I guess."

"So you were a boring person last night?"  I chuckled as I tugged my shirt off.  "Good thing I was asleep."

"Hardy har."

Laundry day was coming up.  The hamper was more full than the dresser.  I found a clean set of clothes and got dressed, trying to remember where we kept the laundry quarters as I searched for a pair of clean socks.  Half of the hamper was filled with Joseph's clothes.  He had…  It had been rather sudden.  Not the sort of thing even we could plan, not usually.

The comb was old, and I wasn't surprised to hear it snap in my hair.  I sighed and tossed it into the bin, then picked the plastic teeth out with my fingers.  "I think I've finally caught whatever disease you used to have in your hair," I said, not yet looking away from the mirror.

"Serves you right for stealing my other pillow so often."

There wasn't much I could say to that.  After all, I had often taken his extra pillow, just to be irritating.  Not lately, though.  It was too disrespectful.  The fact that he was still around made it even more so.  "You said we have work to do."

"We always do."

"Did you mean anything specific?"

If the cigarette smoke had been something real and alive, the room would have stunk of tobacco by now.  And whatever else was in those things.  Joseph looked like he was trying to become the world's first spiritual chimney.  "I think Abney is back."

My jaw stiffened.  "You're sure?"

"No.  But I am sure I don't want to find out the hard way that I'm right."  He went to put out the cigarette on the ashtray he kept on the bedside table, but his hand went through it.

I put on my shoes, pretending I hadn't seen.  He could have mimed the action if he'd been paying careful attention.  This Abney business had him severely distracted already.  Understandably.  "It's a little soon, isn't it?"

"It's been over a week."  Joseph looked flustered.  The cigarette had disappeared, and his hair was standing on end.  "I think he might have been at my funeral.  Killer's pride, maybe, or checking to see how things stand for us."

"How do they stand?"

"For me?  So far my biggest complaint is having to hear you snore all night.  I used to be able to get up and shake you or something."

Right.  I knew I didn't snore, but Joseph was convinced that I did, had been for years.  It was hard to believe he could even have an opinion about it, he'd always slept like a person in a vegetative state.  "I'll leave a book open for you.  You can blow the pages back and forth."

"Stop worrying about that," he snapped, as though he hadn't been the one to bring it up.  "If you're done primping, we have to get out there and find Abney before he gets to someone else."

"Where is he?"

Joseph closed his eyes and for a moment, his face went blank.  I looked away, knowing I was acting like a know-nothing coward.  It was still creepy.  I didn't turn around until I heard him say, "Sanchez Street."

"…That's rather vague, Lovelace."  Where I had I put my toothbrush?  It was never in the same place two mornings in a row.

He shrugged sullenly.  "You know how intuition is.  Why don't you get the laptop?  You can run a search while I look for your toothbrush."

I blinked at him.  "How did you…?"

"You always scrunch your face like that when you can't find something you need.  It was a guess."

"Good guess," I muttered.  "Go ahead, I'll do my part."

At least the laptop was in the right place.  Moving the thing was next to impossible.  It was an enormous old heap of plastic and metal held together by duct tape, hope, and atheistic prayer.  It looked like a thirty-year-old television that had gone through four methods of garbage compaction before being forcibly married to a keyboard and mouse set that didn't match.  And somehow, assigning the ghost of a computer programmer to possess it was enough to make the slag pile run and access the internets.  Amazing didn't cover it.  The word horror did a better job.

I pulled out the desk chair and slouched into it.  I could have powered the computer on myself, I could have even typed and all the other technical aspects.  The ghost, Scott Petersen, ensured that it worked, as long as he was possessing it.  But I wasn't very comfortable with normal technology to begin with, and there were stains on the laptop that looked almost sentient.  "Petersen?"

A whirring rumble issued from the cracked and probably oozing box.  "Good morning, Johnathan," Petersen replied in his usual cheery manner.  "How's the family?"

Only Petersen would ask me that.  Unable to tell a baldfaced lie with Joseph in the room, I dropped my gaze to the greasy keyboard and mumbled, "Fine.  Still very far away."

"That's nice."

I picked what appeared to be dried banana off the esc key.  "D'you think it mightn't be a good idea to take a vacation every now and again?"  Behind me, I could hear Joseph laughing, and I wished I didn't know why.

"A vacation?  I'm dead.  What use have I got for a vacation?"  The screen seemed to gutter out for a second, but then it lit up as bright as usually was.  And never should have been.

Inwardly, I could come up with lots of 'uses' he could have for a vacation.  "From the laptop, I mean."  His memory occasionally suffered in very noticeable ways, and not quite like a ghost that was going peculiar.  He hadn't been dead long enough for that to happen.  He was just getting too integrated with the blasted computer.  I could barely remember the last time he'd poked his head outside of it.

"I don't think I understand what you're getting at."

I gritted my teeth.  If Abney was back already, worrying about the mental stability of a computer programmer haunting a defunct laptop would have to take a backseat.  "Never mind.  Petersen, I need you to locate any roads called Sanchez Street in a…"  Joseph popped his head out from my dresser drawer and called out a moderately sized radius.  I leaned back in the chair.  "There can't be that many."

Images winked on and off the screen with eye-hurting speed.  I was used to constantly seeing gates open and close around me, some even flickered a bit sometimes, but the combination made my eyeballs want to give up and retire to Guyana.

"Found it!"  It was Joseph.  I turned around in the chair and opened my eyes.  He was standing—for lack of a more accurate word—on my pillow and pointing at the closed bathroom door.  "In the medicine cabinet," he said, "the door is probably sticking, though."

Grimacing, I thanked him and got up to brush my teeth.  Both the bathroom and cabinet doors were stuck, and the air felt damp.  We were below ground level, but not far; the grassy lawn just outside the window was eye level with me, and I was only 6'4".  Perhaps it was going to rain soon.  Or snow.  So far, it had been a mild winter, but there was still a good two months left of it.

I spat in the sink one last time, then rinsed the toothbrush and put it carefully away in the same place.  Then I rooted around the medicine cabinet for a very strong painkiller.  Aspirin was all well and good in its place, but its place was not a skull-busting migraine.  I felt like the top left part of my head was pulsating into an enormous knob, slowly sucking my eye into the painful rhythm.  It had to be the stress.

Joseph's blue head poofed through the door.  "Petersen found some streets called Sanchez," he said, then eyed the painkiller meaningfully.  I scowled back at him, daring him to reprimand me.  Then he shook his head and pulled his arm in to wag a finger at me.  "Idiot."

"Sod off, I'm going to shower."  I hadn't been, but I was bloody well going to now.  

"No time, Nancypants," he chirped.  "One of the streets is right near the cemetery.  Within haunting range for a nasty like Abney, assuming he's set up quarters."

"Which you're unshakably certain he has."

"Bingo."

I gulped down the painkillers, then drank a fistful of tap water.  My head roared for instant gratification, but it would take time for the pills to kick in.  "He took something from you," I said, low enough that Joseph might not have caught it.

He swooped the rest of himself through the door and looked at me, hands in his pockets.  "Of course.  That's his MO, has been from the start.  I bet it goes back into his life, too.  But that's not really our jurisdiction, is it?"

I shook my head.  Sometimes I really wished it was, but not very often.  None of us fit in the living world, not without some snipping round the edges and banging into place with a ball peen hammer.

When I stepped back into the room, Petersen had switched off the computer and was sitting on the edge of the desk, looking rather forlorn.  It had been over a year since he'd last come out of there.  I stared at him, trying to remember when he had even died.  It had to have been recently, he knew so much about technology that was still modern, even up-to-date.  He had been young, his red hair looked to be recovering from a severe haircut, and his face was still a bit chubby.

"It's going funny on me," he said.  "I'll have to try and fix it from out here…"

I would have liked to question him further, but Joseph walked out the door without me, so I had to follow him.  He couldn't leave me far behind, but I felt so awkward and jumbled when I couldn't see him.  It hadn't been like that before, not for years.

Not having legs gave him the advantage of speed, and he was halfway down the corridor.  I had to jog, then all-out run to catch up.  When I did, I was out of breath and we'd reached the main staircase.

"Why didn't you…" I stopped to gasp, leaning on my knees.  You aren't twenty-three anymore, Johnathan Hollowmark.  "…slow down?"

"And just let you catch me up?"  He laughed.  "You did all right, for a guy with a body.  Though you could put in a few hours at the gym."

"Never mind."  I fished my car keys out of my pocket and started up the stairs to the carpark.  I was still trying to breathe normally, but damned if I was going to let him hear me gasp.  Smug git.

As I pulled out of the carpark and into the street outside the dormitories, I could see snow dropping out of the sky, sort of like confetti.  It came down in lazy unguided dots.

"It's not cold enough to stick, is it?"  Joseph seemed annoyed that he had to ask.

I rolled the window door to feel the air.  "I shouldn't think so."  The window stuck for a moment on the way back up, but I jammed the button until it was firmly shut.  "So where is this street?"

"Just head for the cemetery, but turn left instead of right when you get to Umbrella Avenue, then another couple of lefts."

Interesting.  Going that way, I wouldn't pass the cemetery.  "Wouldn't it be quicker if I kept going and went down Overside Lane?"

"No."  He flicked nonexistent cigarette ash through the closed window.  "Stop fishing.  You won't even catch a mudsucker."

He had me there.  I schooled my features into a pointlessly polite smile and kept my eyes on the road.  "So I'm wrong?  Passing by your own grave wouldn't bother you."

"Would it bother you?"

It would, and he knew it.  I'd never liked passing by anyone's grave, even as a child, and working as a mediator hadn't done anything to change that.  "Umbrella Avenue," I said blithely, making the turn.

Umbrella Avenue was in one of the poorer residential districts in the city, but architecturally rich.  The houses were modestly designed in a variety of styles, although the only one I knew the name of was a small lightly-colored adobe.  Next door to it was a more contemporary two-story job constructed farther back from the street, to allow for a larger front yard.  A group of four children was playing at something there.

"Turn left here," Joseph said, breaking the quiet.

I did so, waiting for him to add a demand for the radio.  When he didn't, I reached for it myself.

"Hold off."

"Why?"

"I saw them too."  He jerked his head in the direction of the kids.  "Everybody needs to wallow in silent self-pity for a few minutes of the day.  Go for it."

For him, that was a kindness.  That is, he meant it as one, and expected me to take it as one.  That didn't mean it really was one, though.  I took the turn a bit on the sharp side, then sped up to the edge of the speed limit.  "I do not wallow."

"Oh, you try not to, I know.  Unhealthy, that."  He put out the cigarette on the sleeve of his jacket, then tucked it back behind his ear.  "Look.  You miss your family.  Anyone would."

"No one should have to."

"Don't I know it."

I nearly missed the next left.  "You're sure you only know the street?"

"Just cruise for a bit, I bet you could pick out the right place as we pass.  That much spite and evil fair glows in a spirit."

"Right."

The neighborhood continued much the same here, although there was no one outside.  Too cold for most people to be out even without the snow.  It was already stopping, though.  On the side of the street that was technically closer to the cemetery, I could see a few rather run-down buildings.  One or two of them was haunted, but not by anything like Abney.

"There."  He didn't need to point, it really was close to glowing.  I slammed on the breaks and stared.

It looked like a cut-out from a magazine.  A black slanted roof for the snowy weather that tapered down to cutesy white trim where it met the somewhat brighter white of the walls.  There was even a flower garden guarded by a gnome in a blue Hawaiian shirt.  No car in the driveway, though.  My stomach knotted.  "You don't think…"

"Deaths in this area would catch our attention," was all Joseph said.  It wasn't very reassuring.  Someone did live here, or had.  There weren't any weeds in the garden.

I parked the car and started to climb out.  Then a feeling like intravenous ice shot through my shoulder and neck, and I froze, rather literally.  I looked at Joseph, for an apology as much for an explanation.

He shrugged in contrition.  "He isn't there anymore."

"What?!  Then why did we come all the way out here?"  I tried to rub some warmth and feeling back into my shoulder, with limited success.

Joseph wiped his nose with his jacket, and I couldn't imagine why.  "Pay attention.  I said 'anymore'.  He was there."

My shoulder was still cold, and my neck just refused to move.  "Please don't tell me you're proposing to break into someone's house."

"Well, they aren't home, are they?"

"Sometimes you are a totally utterly total brainless prat, do you realize that?"

Freezing cigarette ash flecked onto my knee; I kicked out reflexively and banged my shin.  Joseph chuckled.  "Hah.  Don't see how other ghosts can complain.  I've got plenty of control over the nonethereal plane."

I got out of the car, then shut the door and leaned on it.  "I don't like the smell of any of this."

"I could go in alone, if you're gonna be a squeamish little girl about it."  His voice sounded like it always did, although he was industriously looking away from me.

There was something just barely familiar about this.  It put me in mind of traction and diluted potato soup.  He was…  Oh hell.  "Don't try to protect me, you sodding—"

"I'm not!"

Liar.  I took off my gloves and blew on my fingers.  The snow was starting up again, with a vengeance.  Abney was in that house, he had to be.  Joseph wouldn't have dragged me all the way out here for less.  If this really was just recon, he would have insisted on sending a team of scouters, and he wouldn't have bothered about joining them.  Revenge corroded living minds, and it did no less to a dead one.  "Were you hoping for a last heroic showdown?"

"No!  Cut it out"  Blue eyes that had once been nearly black bore down on me, furious and hard.  "I told you, none of it was clear.  If he did go to my funeral, he had to have set himself up somewhere close, right?  And I got the name, Sanchez Street."

I wasn't quite ready to let go yet, but work was work.  "You think he just up and left after your funeral?"

"Right, yeah."

I fumbled for my keys, just to give myself something to do.  "Better check in with Christine at the Desk."  I ought to have thought of it before we'd even left the dormitories.  Petersen could say something for us, but he hadn't looked well.

"Do that then, Goody-Two-Shoes.  I'm still going in the house alone," Joseph said, his teeth gritted in that stubborn way that made him like a jaundiced donkey.  "If you get caught breaking into so much as a doghouse, I'll be stuck protecting you from huge prison inmates with names like Killboy Bubba."

I rolled my eyes, just so I wouldn't have to look at him.  "Fine.  I'll stand in the front, we can find a phone and call Christine later."  I took up station by the stupid-looking pink flamingo.

It was boring.  Just standing next to an inane ornament and waiting for my partner to come back.  And getting snow down the back and front of my shirt.

I blew on my fingers again, then put my gloves back on.  I wished I hadn't quit smoking.  It would have been something to do.  And a box of matches would have been just the thing to start a bonfire in one of the garbage cans.  It would have been good camouflage.  No one could be more certain of invisibility than an apparently homeless person.  But stand on a street corner wearing a fedora and a long brown coat that smelled of fresh laundering, and you'd get funny looks all day.

It had been twenty minutes.  I was about to start walking away.  Sooner or later, if I went far enough, he'd have to snap back to my side.  And then I could find a restaurant and drown myself in badly-brewed herbal tea.  Ginseng would be favorite.

Then, at last, Joseph drifted through the kitchen window, looking dejected.  I could hear cursing before I could make out his face.  When I could do that, I frowned until my own face hurt.

"Let's clear out these other houses and get going," he said, his voice barely audible.  Either he was whispering, or he wasn't trying hard enough to make his presence felt, even to me.

Getting him to pay attention might be hard.  Getting Joseph Q. Lovelace to do much of anything he didn't feel like doing was like trying to make a lifelong vegetarian raise, slaughter, cook, and eat a platter of chicken marsala.

At least the first house was farther down the street.  I had time.  "You didn't find anything, then."

"Not even a pinkish sardine."

"Then why do you want to bother with these other houses?"  I indicated the street at large with a wave of my arm.  "Low level clingers and lost souls, all of them."  To my left, a particularly large gate shut with a showy flash of white light.  I blinked the aftereffects away.

"Right," Joseph said woodenly, his hands so deep in his pockets he looked as though he were looking for change in his stomach.  "All of them.  Did you take a second to count?"

"No, why should… oh my."

"You're catching on."

Even from this end of the street, I could feel at least eight.  Nearly a round ten of confused spirits.  No wonder they were all lost or clinging, there were far too many.  In a quiet place like this, it was stupid.

I forced myself to keep walking until we were in front of the first house.  It looked as though it had been abandoned for decades.  The windows were smashed in, and the wood was ruined by damp and neglect.  Even the thick double doors shrieked of accelerated age.  One hung off its hinges while the other had fallen off completely.  Someone might have even stolen it for kindling.

"Not recent, then," Joseph said, his voice muffled by the hands cupping a match to his cigarette.

It had snowed here before the current flurry.  It was ankle deep and looked at least a few days old, blackish in places from footsteps, debris, or dirt.  Something about this house seemed hard set on keeping the area as cold as possible.  As I made my way through the yard, icy snow popped and cracked under my feet.

"How many in this house?" I asked, hoping the exact number was significantly less than what my senses were telling me.

"Six."

"What?!  Surely there's only five…"  I wanted there to be none.  These people hadn't died of anything natural, and as far down the spectrum from 'pleasant' as hedgehogs were from Turkish bus stations.

"Six," Joseph insisted, bitterness making his voice twang.  "One's a baby."

In the sudden burst of rage that sent me into, I missed my step and plowed through the rotted porch.  Splintered wood stabbed and scraped my leg.  I was too surprised even to swear.

I was nearly down to my knee, and the thought of what that squishy thing I was stepping in might be knotted my stomach into something like braided cord.  Joseph helpfully flitted down to look, possibly nudged gleefully along by the look of horror I knew I was wearing.

"I don't think I should tell you what you almost stepped in," he said cheerfully.  "But I think your best bet is to punch the wood down around your leg and just make the hole bigger."

In deference to years of this man telling me what to do and rarely going wrong with it, I looked for something to widen the hole with.  A gray hide-a-key rock leaned against the railing by the steps; it stretched my shoulder near a breaking point, but I grabbed it.

Four quick downward strikes at the planks trapping my knee, and I was able to lift it out.  Choosing my place carefully, I sat down and pulled the larger chunks of wood out first.

"Status?" Joseph asked, sounding genuinely concerned for once.

This inclined me to forgive him the smugness, so I smiled wanly and said, "Snafu, to be honest."

"Really?  Bad luck."

My pants were thick, though, and had kept out smaller splinters that would have been difficult to grab.  The thicker bits of wood hadn't scratched very deep, but one or two had actually punctured and wouldn't come out in a hurry.  One was about the width of my little finger.

The cold air stung more than the open wounds themselves.  "It isn't that bad," I said, scowling at my leg so it would heal faster.  "I can still walk, no trouble."  That might have been a lie, I didn't know yet.

"Get up, then.  We haven't got all day."

Moving rather too gingerly, I used one of the pillars to drag myself up to my feet.  Then I made the mistake of looking into the hole.  It was mostly full of mud, but right next to a deep impression of my foot was a dead cat.  I'd seen roadkill before, but this was a new category.

I managed to empty my stomach onto the lawn rather than the porch or my shoes.  There wasn't much to come up anyway.  The grating sound of a thoroughly amused Joseph didn't help.  When my stomach was back under my control, I leaned against the stair railing and closed my eyes.  The memory was too clear for something I had only glanced at, but that sort of thing had a way of branding itself onto one's brain.  It had been tortured, not exactly mutilated, but…  I felt bubbles of sick rising up my throat.

"Really you take everything so hard," Joseph was saying, a modicum of caring hiding just outside detection.  "It's just a cat.  Probably died after there was no one left to feed it."

"Did you even look at it?"  My voice was scratchy and hoarse.  I swallowed, then gagged.

"Not closely.  Should I have?"

I shook my head.  "Never mind it.  Let's go inside."

The enormous hole made it difficult to reach the door, but I refused to step in it voluntarily.  In the end, I hopped over it.

"You make nervous little dogs look like tigers, d'you know that?"

"Good.  People shoot things that look like tigers."

The missing door had made my small leap feasible, but the other presented a sort of conundrum.  I solved it like a hero, allowing more light into what by common terminology should have been called the living room.  Not even mold lived there now.

Joseph made a face, then emitted a rather brighter light than I'd thought he could.  "Upstairs," he said.  For some reason, he seemed almost disappointed, although that wasn't the right word.

He was probably right, though.  There was a vague spiritual presence throughout the building, but it was weaker on the ground level.  The living room was rather more compact than others I'd seen before, and it was also worse off.  The reek of various animal leavings and rot was strong, and everything was in a state of decay.  Remnants of books were scattered all over, and the last remaining bits of furniture had been long ago subdued by gats.  However, the stairs were intact, no obvious holes.

"Stop hesitating."  Joseph was already halfway up the stairs.  "You're a terrible rear guard, and I start feeling all stretchy when you lag too far back."

Not pausing to consider what 'feeling stretchy' actually felt like, I headed for the stairs.  A few steps up, I had to stop.  Someone was crying.  Someone who was under the stairs.

"Hold on a moment."  I hopped over the steps I'd just climbed, then began searching for a door on the side of the staircase.  "There's one down here."

A pile of debris had fallen rather predictably in front of the staircase closet door.  As I cleared it away, I tried not to think of how deliberate it looked.  Beside me, Joseph appeared to be taking his allotted self-pity time.

I stopped to wipe sweat out of my eyes and  shrug out of my coat.  No wonder there was no furniture in the living room, it had all been smashed into the door.  "You could go in there and assess the situation."

He shook his head, much too enthusiastically, I thought.  Then he drifted into the lessening mess so that only his head peeked out.  It was sort of like a child hiding in blankets—only after Jhonen Vasquez had had a go at illustrating the concept, of course.  "I don't want to see any of this without somebody to look cool for."

Something about that was worth a smile.  I settled for a slightly cynical chuckle.  "I'm afraid I left my pompoms in the boot."

"Oh, it'll work out if you can just manage to squeal in adoration every now and again."

That begged a witty retort, but I was too busy dragging a banged-up coffee table out of the way.  It was the last object that was too large to kick aside.  Once I had it well out of my way, I swept away the smaller bric-a-brac and tugged the door open.

It was a tiny, dark space, filled with cardboard boxes and moth-eaten overcoats.  A fading blue light was mostly hidden by a fat green pea coat.

"Hello?"  This was usually a safe thing to say.  Except, of course, when someone has just confessed deep, heartfelt love to you.

A very small hand poked through the pea coat.  It looked like it had belonged to a little girl.  Instinctively, I reached to take it, then pulled back.  "Joseph."

"Yeah, yeah.  You've gotten used to this way too quickly."  He took the child's hand as if he were being force to grab flaming charcoal.

A round, rather sweet-looking face popped through the coat.  It was a little girl, with short hair and wide frightened eyes.  Inwardly, I sighed in relief, then felt a rifle shot of guilt go up my spine.  She didn't look familiar.

"Is it okay to come out now?"

I nodded.  "What happened here?"

"I'm supposed to wait for Daddy to come and say it's all okay."

Diplomacy took a hard hit to the jaw as Joseph patted her hand and said, "Your daddy's not coming.  There's just us."

The little girl's face wrinkled in confusion.  "That's not right.  Daddy has to come get me out.  He had to get the thingy first."

It must have been habit or reflex that made Joseph ask, "He had to get the what?"  It couldn't have had any connection to sense.  He let his hand drop back after she let go.

She drew further forward, a peculiar look in her eyes.  "Don't tell him I'm hiding.  He'll get me!"

I crawled back, desperately in need of personal space.  "It's been too long, Joseph, she can't even connect with us."  Worse off than a clinger.  She was trapped, chained here by something.

"Too big for us, d'you think?"

We were among the best of the regular field agents, definitely more experienced than most…  My chest ached.  "Unfortunately."  Neither of us could claim to be an extractor.  This ghost needed 'specialized care'.  "What about the ones upstairs?"

Perhaps in deference to the little girl, Joseph was not smoking.  It probably didn't matter, she'd gone back into hiding.  He arced out of the closet as though he were lead about by several lines of strings.  "Even if the only two factors to consider are time and Abney, it's a fair bet that they're all in similar states."

I shut the closet door, feeling like I was tossing dirt on Joseph's coffin all over again.  That shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't have been distressing.  "Let's check back in and get some extractors out here."