The Void

Ryan James studied his new house with the expression of a man who had gotten more than his money’s worth.

“You have to admit, the neighborhood is quiet.”

Meg shifted the box containing their remaining kitchen utensils.

“Ryan. Don’t.”

He gestured toward the gravestones surrounding the driveway. “Everybody keeps to themselves.”

Between two monuments, a patch of darkness moved against the afternoon sun. Ryan took it for a shadow until it crossed the path without anything casting it.

“Did you see that?”

“The cemetery? Yes, Ryan. I noticed.”

The darkness was gone.

Their previous home had burned down under circumstances difficult to explain to an insurance adjuster. He’d entertained electrical faults, lightning strikes, even spontaneous combustion. He’d drawn the line at gnomes.

The settlement had bought the abandoned caretaker’s residence. The porch sagged, a shutter hung crooked, and enough leaves covered the roof to support a terrarium of caterpillars, moths, and centipedes.

“Four bedrooms in Bergen County for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Ryan said. “It’s the deal of the century!”

“The real estate agent wouldn’t come inside.”

“Allergies.”

“She handed us the keys through her car window.”

The third porch step groaned beneath him.

“And the place has character.”

The fourth shifted.

“A certain je ne sais quoi.”

Inside, sunlight caught the marble fireplace. Meg ran her hand along the banister.

“Somebody loved this house once.”

“I STILL DO,” the voice bellowed in vibrato.

Ryan dropped his box.

“Listen, pal. We own this house now.”

Something heavy struck the ceiling.

Meg grabbed his arm. “Please don’t antagonize the ghost.”

“I’m establishing boundaries.”

A porcelain teacup sailed down the stairs. They retreated to the porch.

“Well,” Ryan said, “that explains the price.”

***

By evening, knives stood point-first in the kitchen table, a wooden spoon had hit Ryan twice, and his unplugged television displayed GET OUT in fuzzy static.

“You want to live here? Pay rent!”

NO REFUNDS, the television replied.

Upstairs, Edgar Pritchard struck a brass gong that hadn’t existed for seventy years.

“Operation Eviction is proceeding satisfactorily.”

“He’s called somebody,” Evelyn Cross said from the window.

Frankie DeLuca grinned. “Excellent.”

Silas Wren stood beside her. Beyond the fence, the darkness between the graves had widened.

“That isn’t one of ours.”

Nobody heard him over the gong.

Professor Harold Bixby arrived in a van bearing the words SPIRIT SOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL.

We Make the Departed Depart.

“An ice cream truck for crazy people,” Meg said.

Bixby emerged in a safari vest. His assistant, Trevor, followed with a camera and something resembling a leaf blower.

“An ectoplasmic displacement apparatus,” Bixby explained.

“Does it work?”

“We’ve yet to encounter an entity capable of remaining in a room while it’s operating.”

“Neither could I.”

“My technical associate, Trevor. We record every investigation. Our YouTube channel has fourteen thousand subscribers.”

“Thirteen thousand eight hundred and twelve,” Trevor said.

“Approximately fourteen thousand.”

“Are we going to be on television?” Ryan asked.

Meg turned to him. “No.”

“There’s no obligation to authorize public distribution,” Bixby assured her.

“Hear that?” Ryan said. “We retain our privacy.”

“I heard him. I’m talking to you.”

Bixby switched on a detector. It began playing “Yankee Doodle.”

“Trevor, did you modify this?”

“YOUR WARRANTY HAS EXPIRED,” the device said.

Ryan laughed. Meg looked at him.

“What? That was funny.”

Upstairs, Frankie peered through the floor.

“He’s got a ghost vacuum!”

“We are not common household debris,” Edgar said.

Bixby was reaching into the van for another case when the cemetery light went out.

Only it hadn’t gone out. Ryan could still see its glow above a moving band of blackness. A hooded figure moved forward, its form dissipating, then swirling back into itself. Its chest opened into a whirlpool of midnights.

“Professor. Behind you.”

Bixby glanced over his shoulder. The darkness brushed his hand.

He dropped the case.

“Something bit me.”

Meg caught him as he stumbled. His hand had turned gray. Beneath the skin, the bones seemed to be coming apart. The disintegrating ash of his arm sucked into the thickening void.

“Trevor, call an ambulance.”

Bixby tried to answer her. Blood trickled from his nose, then stopped being blood. It unraveled into threads that vanished before reaching his vest. Mopped up by the inky black folds of the creature behind him.

Ryan grabbed his other arm. It gave beneath his fingers.

“Don’t pull,” Meg cried.

They lowered him together. Bixby looked at Trevor.

“Help me.”

Trevor dropped beside him, phone still ringing.

The professor’s mouth moved again. The sound was visible, but it couldn’t reach their ears because it too was pulled into the creature. His face thinned until Ryan could see gravel through it. The dandruff of living flesh peeling off into the air and rushing backward into the shadows.

Then there was only the safari vest.

Trevor kept hold of its sleeve.

“He really came apart at the seams,” Ryan said.

No one laughed.

***

“Inside.”

An old man stood on the porch, frost gathering around his shoes.

“Bring the boy.”

“He was just here,” Trevor said, shaking.

Meg pulled him up. Ryan backed toward the steps, watching the darkness spread across the place where Bixby had been. Then rapidly collapse into itself.

The case disappeared. Then the gravel beneath it.

Inside, the front door slammed without anybody touching it.

Six strangers stood in the hall. Strangers may be a bit of an understatement. Six apparitions. Okay, ghosts. Ryan recognized none of them, although the young man beside the television looked pleased to see him. Trevor just pointed one finger at them. The boy had seemingly lost the ability to speak.

Then the young man noticed Trevor carrying the empty vest. His smile went.

“What did you do?” Ryan demanded.

“Nothing,” Edgar said. “We were here first. For hundreds of years, in fact. And that thing is as much of a concern for us as for you.”

“The knives were you? The television?”

“That was me,” Frankie said. “But outside—”

“You wanted us gone.”

“Ryan.” Meg touched his arm. “Ask them what it is.”

Silas looked toward the window.

“I knew a soldier once. After he died. He told me about three men who vanished on a battlefield. A darkness passed over them. They got sick, weak. Then came apart. Torn into ribbons. Piece by piece. He spent years looking for them on our side once he passed. But neither in the living world, nor in the limbo of ghosts is a soul to be found that was taken by the void.”

Trevor lifted his head.

“He never found them?”

Silas shook his head.

“There are places beyond this one. The soldier said he’d followed the damage through some of them. Like a storm tearing through one country and reaching the next. He called it the Void. And wherever it takes you – no one has ever come back from that place to tell of it.”

“So, send him after it,” Ryan said. “Tell him to send back a message.”

“Hunny, you know you are talking to a ghost, right?”

“It’s not one ghost, babe. There are six. Edgar, Beatrice, Frankie, Mabel, Evelyn and Silas. Don’t interject Meg if you can’t even count. Okay?”

“The problem is that I haven’t seen him in forty years.”

“But you’re dead. It can’t—”

“The soldier saw it take dead men too. Men who’d survived the battle as ghosts. It came back, and they were gone.”

Silas looked at Trevor.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know where else to look.”

Trevor folded the vest over his knees. He kept his eyes on it.

Ryan turned to Meg, “Hunny, it looks like we are SOL on that refund.”

***

The driveway was empty. Whatever had taken Bixby had gone.

Edgar opened the door and stood aside.

“Well. Your vehicle awaits.”

“After you,” Ryan said.

“You’re the one leaving.”

“Nobody said anything about leaving. Somebody ought to check outside, and you’re already dead.”

“Did you listen to a word Silas said?”

“I listened. You’ve had hundreds of years in this house. We haven’t had dinner.”

“You brought an exterminator.”

“You threw knives at us!”

Meg pushed between them. “Stop. Both of you. That man was standing beside all three of us. Why did it take only him?”

Edgar looked down at his hands.

“I was pulling him away.”

Ryan stared. “You weren’t there.”

“You couldn’t see me. I had him under the arms. Then you grabbed him, and when you lowered him, I lost my hold.”

“That thing touched you?” Meg asked.

“Passed straight through me. I thought I could get him clear.”

Trevor looked up from the vest. Edgar turned away.

“It was busy with him,” Silas said slowly. “Perhaps it can only reach into one world at a time.”

“And one person,” Meg said. “Ryan and I were touching him. It never reached for us.”

“So when it’s eating us, you can help,” Ryan said. “And when it’s eating you—”

“We’d appreciate the same consideration,” Edgar said.

Meg took Ryan’s keys. “Then we go out together. Living and dead. Nobody wanders off.”

“A neighborhood watch,” Ryan said.

“With a competent chairman,” Edgar added.

“Fine. You can chair it. No more eviction notices.”

“Until this business is concluded. After that, all bets are off.”

“No. You don’t get to save my life and then throw me out of my own kitchen.”

Edgar looked toward the stairs. Mabel shook her head at him.

“Oh, give it up, Edgar. They’re here. We’re here. I’d like to stay that way.”

Edgar extended his hand. Ryan’s passed through it.

“Give me a moment.”

His fingers became firm around Ryan’s.

“We have an agreement.”

***

Their first patrol made it as far as Bixby’s van.

Beatrice Blight insisted on checking the far side herself. Mabel followed her while Edgar tried to get everyone into pairs.

“I thought I was with you,” Trevor said to Ryan.

“You are.”

“He needs a ghost,” Meg said.

“I’m here,” Evelyn called from somewhere inside the van.

Beatrice screamed.

The hooded figure stood behind her, its chest opening. The hem of her dress streamed backward into it. Then her ankles began to unravel.

Mabel seized her waist. Evelyn came through the van, knocking Trevor backward. Everyone shouted at once.

“A living person!” Silas cried. “Let Ryan through!”

Ryan scrambled over the equipment they’d unloaded. Beatrice reached for him. His hand passed through hers.

“Like Edgar did! Make yourself—”

“I’m trying!”

For an instant, he felt her fingers.

Edgar bellowed. Trevor dropped his camera, and the microphone struck the portable speaker beneath it. A piercing squeal split the night.

The Void’s hood collapsed sideways. Beatrice lurched forward. Ryan caught her wrist.

Then Trevor kicked the speaker away from the microphone.

The squeal stopped.

Beatrice’s wrist thinned inside Ryan’s grip. She was looking at him when her face came apart.

The darkness folded shut.

Ryan remained crouched beside the van, his hand closed around nothing.

“It let go,” Meg said. “For a second. When the speaker squealed.”

Trevor stared at the equipment.

“I stopped it.”

“You didn’t know.” She picked up the microphone. “Now we do.”

Mabel stood where Beatrice had been, still holding her arms out.

Ryan touched her shoulder.

“We need to go inside.”

“I’ve known her since 1936.”

He waited beside her until she was ready to move.

***

Meg and Frankie took over the dining room. Trevor brought in the professor’s cases. Within minutes, cables covered the table and Ryan’s laptop was producing noises that made everyone’s teeth ache.

“Can you make it any more unpleasant?” Edgar asked.

“That’s what we’re working on,” Meg said.

Frankie made the speaker rattle. Meg turned it down.

“Not louder. When it squealed, something changed.”

“The pitch,” Trevor said.

“Can we change that without deafening everybody?”

Frankie’s fingers disappeared into the laptop. A thin note rose from the speaker.

“Like this?”

“Slowly,” Meg said. “And keep track of what you’re doing. We’ll need to do it again.”

Trevor opened a case of small ultrasonic emitters.

“For the professor’s experiments. I built the controls. He said spirits might communicate above human hearing.”

Frankie leaned over the laptop. “We mostly just talk.”

Edgar and Ryan took the next patrol. This time they stayed within arm’s reach. Silas watched from the porch while Mabel and Evelyn kept Trevor between them as he carried equipment inside.

The hood rose behind a headstone.

“Edgar!”

Ryan’s sleeve began to fray. Edgar caught him around the chest and hauled him backward. Darkness passed through Edgar’s shoulder without disturbing it.

They fell against the porch steps. The hood emptied.

Ryan examined his arm. A narrow strip of skin was gone.

“You all right?” Edgar asked.

“You could’ve warned me.”

“I believe you did the warning.”

From the dining room came a steadily rising whine.

Silas descended one step to help them up.

“Stay there,” Meg called through the window. “We’re almost—”

The darkness opened beneath him.

Ryan caught his hand. Silas was solid, freezing cold, and already coming apart below the knees.

Edgar pulled on Ryan’s waist. They gained a few inches before Silas’s fingers began slipping through Ryan’s.

“Meg! Whatever you’ve got!”

The whine climbed. The hood trembled but held.

“Higher,” Meg said. “Frankie, keep going.”

The sound passed beyond Ryan’s hearing.

The Void broke apart. Silas collapsed onto the steps.

“Got him,” Ryan gasped. “We’ve got him.”

But there was almost nothing below Silas’s waist. The edges continued to dissolve.

“There are people,” he whispered.

Meg ran outside.

“Where, Silas?”

“Inside it. Spread so thin. You can see through one into another.” His eyes moved across something none of them could see. “They’re still awake.”

Ryan tightened his grip.

“Stay here. Look at me.”

“There’s nowhere to turn your face.”

His mouth remained open after the words stopped. Then that was gone too.

Meg knelt beside Ryan. Neither spoke until Frankie called from the window.

“I’ve kept the setting. I haven’t touched anything.”

***

Trevor emptied the ectoplasmic displacement apparatus onto the dining table.

A motor, a fan, and a handful of blinking lights rolled out.

“That’s it?” Ryan asked.

Trevor picked up one of the lights and put it down again.

“He was very good with people,” he said.

Nobody answered.

“The housing’s useful.” He turned it over and began fitting the emitters around its rim. “If they point in every direction, we won’t have to aim.”

Meg marked the working frequency on the control. Frankie held it steady while Trevor connected the amplifier.

“The test only covered the porch,” Meg said. “We need it around the whole house.”

“And it has to stay on,” Frankie added. “That thing folded up the moment we reached this setting. Maybe it can’t put itself together while it’s playing.”

Trevor pointed upward. “Roof. With the spare camera batteries if the power goes.”

Ryan looked at Edgar.

“You carry. I climb.”

“I could put it up there myself.”

“And if it comes for you?”

Edgar picked up the apparatus.

They were halfway up the ladder when the porch light dimmed. Ryan looked down. The hood stood beneath Edgar, its folds lifting around his legs.

“Give me your hand!”

Edgar thrust the apparatus upward instead.

“Take this first.”

Ryan hooked its handle over a rung and caught Edgar by the wrist. He climbed backward, pulling Edgar after him. The old man’s shoe dissolved, followed by the end of his foot.

“Turn it on!”

“The lead’s not connected!” Trevor shouted.

Ryan reached for the cable dangling beside the ladder. His fingers brushed the plug. Missed.

“Don’t let go,” Edgar said.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

He hooked the cable with his heel and lifted it within reach. The plug slid into its socket.

Nothing happened.

“Trevor!”

Every stray dog in the cemetery began barking.

The hood flattened against the foot of the ladder, then shredded. At the fence, it tried to gather again. The folds wouldn’t meet.

Edgar’s foot stopped unraveling. He looked down at it, then at Ryan’s hand around his wrist.

“I thought you’d take the machine and leave me,” Edgar said.

“We shook on it.”

“Yes.” Edgar cleared his throat. “You can release me now.”

“I’ll give it a minute.”

Together, they hauled the machine onto the roof. Beneath them, the dogs kept barking.

***

By dawn, the thing had tried every side of the house. Each time, its shape broke apart before it could form. Eventually it withdrew beyond the graves.

Trevor stayed to wire in the batteries. He left the professor’s vest over a dining chair. Nobody moved it.

In the library, Edgar poured cognac into two glasses. He limped slightly as he carried one to Ryan.

“Beatrice used to sit there,” he said.

Ryan moved to the other chair.

Meg paced before the fireplace, holding a handwritten roster.

“Two on watch. One living, one dead. We check the equipment every hour, even when we think it’s working.”

“Agreed,” Edgar said.

“And nobody possesses anybody. We knock before entering bedrooms. That includes coming through the walls.”

Ryan raised his glass. “See? Reasonable boundaries.”

Outside, a dog began another round. Several others joined in.

Meg stopped pacing.

“You said the neighborhood was quiet.”

“It has other advantages,” Ryan said. “The privacy. The grounds. I think the allure of cemetery living is underrated.”

Edgar nodded. “We’ve always felt that way.”

Meg looked from one to the other.

“Wonderful. Now there are two of you.”