Arc II, Chapter 54: The Séance Part Four

“Tell us the truth,” Antoine said. “It is weird that every Geist was surgically removed from this town except for you.”

Jedediah began to get angry, but perhaps not at us. He relented.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Even with the certainty I had that I was right, the years took their toll on my resolve. I would have left this place and rejoined the world below. I would have, except when I had a small health scare in the early eighties, my brothers sent the supposed family doctor to tend to me. I had seen him before. It was Dr. Howard Halle. The same man I had seen with Silas Dyrkon. He hadn’t aged a day, as far as I could tell. It was possible that I was even older than him.”

The flashback showed Halle knocking at Jed’s door. Jed’s look was first surprise, then resignation. Somehow, he remembered the man from all those years ago.

“The hope that I had been wrong was ripped from me. It was no victory. The man tended to me as a friend and doctor for years. Of course, he, too, would get the cold, knowing stare sometimes. He would try to lure me to his trap in the Carousel Hills, but I was too old to give a rise over it.”

After that, Jedediah began to weep. Ghostly tears ran down his face.

“The night the manor burned, you could see the fire glowing in the clouds over Carousel, you know. I turned on the radio, looking for some explanation. Somehow, in my heart, I knew what was happening. I could feel it. I had known something was going to happen for some time. I had received an invitation to a party at the estate. A plot was brewing. I had just lost my brother Carlyle. The party was in his honor. Something was going to happen. When I heard the manor was ablaze with my whole family inside, I could stay here no longer.”

I lost track of what Jedediah was saying as I watched the flashback of him running around the side of the hill and screaming, “I’m going, I’m going,” to an NPC sitting in the hotel’s shuttle van. Jed held out his hand. The NPC handed him the keys as his script likely instructed him to.

Jedediah didn’t go directly to the manor; that road was closed off by emergency services and news crews. Instead, he went to the Geist Cemetery, to a large stone mausoleum in the paupers graveyard. He pressed on a hidden stone trigger inside the building, and a passage opened for him.

A faint puff of black smoke came out when he opened it.

He rushed in, flicking on a light that was strung along the path as he ran underground.

The smoke was getting thicker but still not too thick to breathe.

After what must have been a few hundred yards, Jedediah started to see bodies. The dead were numerous, fallen as they had tried to escape the blaze through the secret tunnel.

Jed tried to stir each body to life as he passed. He called out their names if he knew them.

People had tried to get through the passage with such force that their bodies had become pinned together in the tight hallway. He tried in vain to find one that had lived.

That’s when he heard a cough from somewhere underneath two dead bodies in tuxes. He bent down and saw the body of a woman in a beautiful gown. Her face was burned and blackened, as was much of the rest of her. She struggled to breathe as her mouth was pressed into a puddle of water that had formed from the firefighter’s attempts to put out the blaze.

Jed picked up the bodies with all his might and pulled the broken body of the woman into his embrace.

“Lillian,” he said brokenheartedly. He turned toward the door that led to the main manor and screamed, “In here!”

He was about to scream it a second time, but then he heard the muffled voice of an NPC on the other side of the door, a firefighter perhaps. I could see the wheels turning in his mind. He didn’t trust NPCs. NPCs led you into traps.

He lifted Lillian and did his best to pull her back through the tunnel and to the shuttle van waiting in the cemetery parking lot. He managed to get her inside without anyone seeing them.

He got in the driver’s seat and started to drive.

“I didn’t know where to go,” Jedediah said. “The hospital was rife with traps. I couldn’t be sure that she would be safe there. The Geists were being targeted. I couldn’t trust anyone. I did the only thing I could think of.”

He drove back to his home. There was a path to his house; it was just overgrown. Still, he powered through and rushed Lillian inside, where he immediately picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Howard,” Jed said. “I need you to come to my house immediately and bring emergency supplies for burns.”

“You burned yourself?” Dr. Halle replied on the other side.

“Get here fast… And tell Silas Dyrkon I need to see him.”

Halle sounded surprised to hear that. It took him a few seconds to respond. “Excuse me,” he said. “Who?”

“Tell him I need to see him now,” Jedediah said.

A few more seconds of silence later.

“Okay,” Halle said. Then he hung up.

Jedediah shook as he put the phone down. A tear rolled down his cheek. His breaths were quick and shallow.

He turned his attention to Lillian, who lay unconscious on the couch. She was in bad shape, and her breathing was heavily labored.

“It will be okay,” he said softly to her. “It will all be okay.”

Jedediah’s account of the story continued.

“It was morning hours when Halle arrived. Silas had not ridden with him but still appeared at the door right after Halle entered.”

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Jedediah didn’t look surprised or afraid to see Silas. He looked resigned to his fate.

“So this is all it took to get you to act,” Dyrkon said as he entered. Though he joked, his expression was serious, almost concerned. “What can I do for you, Jedediah?”

“Save her,” Jed said. “Heal her or… I need you to save her somehow.”

Silas looked at Lillian on the couch. Halle was fast at work attempting to treat her.

I saw something in Silas’ eyes that didn’t make sense. Sadness?

“I can’t do something like that,” Silas said. “I’m a simple banker… or however the legend goes.”

Jedediah shook his head. “You aren’t at all what you pretend. I know that. I saw you. I saw you when I was young.”

Silas smiled with restraint. “Yes,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to be there. You were such a curious child it was hard for us to keep up. That was a wonderful accident, actually. Life finds a way. Or so I believed.”

Jedediah stared at Silas. He was building his courage. “You made a deal with my father.”

“That was a private meeting you observed,” Silas said.

“Still,” Jed said, “You can make deals. Like in the stories.”

“Everyone can make deals,” Silas said. “I just have more to offer than most, along with a great penchant for keeping my word.”

Jedediah looked at Lillian. “I don’t want her mixed up in anything. I just want her better.”

Silas laughed. “You’ve come to bargain?”

“I’ll do anything. Anything,” Jedediah said.

Silas shook his head. “Now you want to go all-in when you are out of chips.”

“I’ll give you my soul,” Jedediah said. “That’s what people like you want, right?”

Silas smiled. “You really are a Geist, after all,” he said. “But it’s a little late to sell your soul, wouldn’t you say, Howard?”

Halle looked up from his work on Lillian and said, “Quite.” He laughed, but I got the sense it was only to humor Dyrkon.

Jedediah dropped to his knees. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. “Anything,” he said.

Silas knelt down and said softly, “I do have some services that you might be well-suited to provide.”

Jedediah looked him in the eye and said, “What? What do you need?”