Page 39 of Sins of the Fathers
“Did they tell you who buried the pipes? It’s a smart idea, although with a building this big, it must have taken a long time.” Salt and iron dispelled ghosts, so the pipe was a barrier the spirits couldn’t cross.
“I’ve heard a couple of versions. The sanatorium closed back in the 1940s, so several people have gotten credit for the idea. I think it was Grandpa Michael’s father who actually created it. I’m grateful. I’d rather not deal with the ghosts one-on-one.”
Grady knew that eventually salt would eat through the iron. Maybe they’d pushed their luck already and were on borrowed time before the ghosts broke loose.
“Did you ever go inside?” He looked across the weeds toward the shuttered hospital. Despite long disuse, most of the windows were still unbroken, and the old building remained in surprisingly good shape. The porch roof sagged in places, and the paint peeled from the siding. Grady wondered whether the floor was solid enough to hold his weight and what the ghosts did all alone in such a place.
“Once. Colt and I were supposed to check to see if there’d been a break in the pipe—we’d gotten reports of ghost sightings, and this seemed like the logical place to start. We were young, cocky, and fearless. We jumped the pipe and decided to explore.”
Dawson gave a rueful chuckle. “We were stupid. But it certainly was exciting. Nearly got our asses handed to us by the ghosts.”
“Really?”
“There must be hundreds of them—people who died here and didn’t move on. Some of them are sad, others are angry, and some have just faded to nearly nothing,” Dawson went on, turning to look at the hospital. “I don’t know what they would have done if they had caught us. We fought our way clear. I’ve never crossed the pipe since then.”
“I think they heard you.” Grady looked past Dawson toward the building and saw a line of gray figures watching them from the other side of the salt and iron.
The ghosts stood silently, hollow-eyed and sullen, wearing shapeless shifts that might have been dressing gowns. As quickly as they appeared, they blinked in and out, always in different places, hurling themselves against the invisible barrier the salt and iron created.
“They’re looking for a weak spot,” Dawson said as Grady stumbled backward. “When they were alive, they wanted to leave. That might be the only thing they still remember—needing to get out.”
“Can’t someone say a blessing—or an exorcism?” Grady felt torn between pity and fear.
“We send out a priest every year,” Dawson said. “Denny handles that part.”
He pointed toward where the ghosts tested the line most often. “Let’s bury extra salt and iron there—the spirits sense a weakness. These weren’t dangerous people when they were alive, but a century of wandering hasn’t helped them. I don’t trust that they won’t hurt us—even if they might not mean to.”
Grady held the shotgun ready, covering Dawson as he dug into the dirt. The ghosts surged again, just as Dawson’s shovel clanged against something metal.
“Dammit—the pipe’s rusted through—”
The temperature dropped, and half a dozen spirits slipped across the barrier. They hurled Dawson out of the way before he could spread salt to stop them. Grady pulled the trigger, sending a blast of rock salt through the closest ghost and into the narrow breach in the warding.
The next moment, invisible hands shoved him out of the way to land hard on the ground. The gray figure of an angry woman loomed over him, letting out a terrible shriek as her hands reached for his throat.
“Stay down!” Dawson warned, swinging the shovel through the hazy form that had Grady pinned.
The ghost winked out, and Grady rolled to his feet, firing past Dawson’s shoulder as two more spirits closed on them.
“Go!” Grady told Dawson when the revenants vanished in the hail of salt. “Fix the hole. I’ll cover you.”
Dawson tried to get close to the broken pipe and scattered a line of salt to keep out more spirits. But every time he started to dig, spectral hands reached through the gap, trying to grab and claw.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Grady jumped across the pipe into the dead zone, standing in front of the gap with his shotgun raised. “I’ve got this—block the hole.”
He didn’t dare look back, but he could picture Dawson’s thunderous scowl. Dawson sloshed salt around Grady’s feet to give him a safe place to stand and then went back to rapid digging.
More ghosts gathered, watching Grady. Most looked curious, but an aura of malice surrounded some of the spirits.
“Stay back,” he warned them, reminding himself that for him, freedom was a step backward across the pipe barrier.
A rock flew through the air, aimed at Grady’s head. He ducked—and one foot moved outside the sparsely-salted ground. Hands clutched him and pulled him off balance shoving him so that he stumbled. The shotgun was ripped from his hands and tossed aside. He tried to dodge back to where he’d been, only to be pushed again, away from the pipe circle and closer to the old hospital.
“Gray!” Dawson shouted, working frantically to patch the hole in the salt pipe so the rest of the ghosts didn’t escape.
“Dig faster!” Grady shouted as the ghosts buffeted him across the short expanse of overgrown lawn. Another ghost rammed into him, and he nearly fell. They were herding him toward the dilapidated building, and Grady had no desire to see the inside for himself.
The ghosts are shoving me, but they aren’t grabbing and holding.He wracked his brain for why things had changed because he’d been choked and pinned by ghosts more times than he wanted to remember.Maybe the amulet or the mojo bag repel their touch.
