Ghosts were rarely dangerous to the living. They were, at most, a source of inconvenience. But as long as Samhain was in his backyard, Kerchack wasn't so sure the rules were the same anymore. He was reluctant to turn his back.
All three ghosts stared at the tool in Kerchack's hand.
"What'cha plan on doing with that shovel, boy?" asked Gramps.
"I'm going to use it to send Samhain back to wherever he came from."
"Now why would you want to do something like that for?"
"Gramps, you're not yourself. You'll feel better when he's gone."
Gramps's eyes narrowed. "And what makes you think you know how we feel? You call yourself alive, but all you are is flesh and bone. You're smothered in it, rotting away from the inside without even realizing it. What's the virtue in being alive when all it does is corrupt your thoughts and fill you with distraction? All you do is piss and shit and eat and screw. The only difference between you and us, you little bastard, is that we've shed our worthless skins."
Joyce said, "You think you're better than us, but life is just temporary. It always ends. Death is inevitable. Death is forever. This world was never yours, and now it returns to us."
The Attic Spook howled, "Foooooooood!"
Then quiet fell on the kitchen again. The ghosts stared at Kerchack, and he stared back. No one made a move. Kerchack was painfully aware of his rapidly beating heart.
The ghosts took a step forward.
"Stay back," Kerchack said. "I'm not afraid to use this."
The ghosts laughed. "You can't bury us. Not anymore."
Gramps lunged at Kerchack, who reflexively lashed out with the shovel.
The rusty blade sliced through Gramps's ectoplasmic wrist. His ghostly hand fell to the floor and twitched. He clutched the stump of his forearm. Clouds of steaming ectoplasm billowed from the wound.
"You little — "
Kerchack smacked Gramps between the eyes with the flat of the shovel. The blow crushed the ghost's face and knocked him on the tile. Tederick fluttered around Kerchack's head until a lucky strike from the shovel cut the cockatoo in half. The bisected bird hit the floor. It squawked while its wings fluttered madly. Gramps, dazed and moaning, floated a few inches off the floor.
Joyce stayed back. Her eyes were full of rage and hate. And fear.
"Back off, Joyce."
He thrust the shovel at her, and she moved aside.
"Good luck, kid," said The Guy.
"Huuuuungryyyyyy," wailed the Spook.
Joyce didn't follow him into the backyard. Samhain's red eyes burned into Kerchack. "Come to release me, have you, young master?"
Kerchack clutched the shovel tighter. "I'm not afraid of you."
"Oh, really?"
The King of the Immaterial Dead spread his twisted wings. All behind him, the ghosts of Rockwood stood on the edge of the property line. They chanted Samhain's name in a whispering chorus.
"You're trying to scare me, but you're the scared one." Kerchack held up his weapon. "Because I've got this."
It was difficult to read Samhain's face, but his sneer faded. "No earthly power can defeat me. I am the embodiment of oblivion, the unstoppable lord of the hungry graves."
The smoke billowing around Samhain bubbled and hissed.
"You have courage, young master. But it is the courage of the living, as fragile and fleeting as the breath in your lungs and as easily drained as the blood in your veins." Samhain lowered his wings and bared his glittering teeth in a wide smile. "If you think the trifling magics in that shovel can do any more than irritate me, then by all means, try it."
"You're bluffing."
"Am I?"
Kerchack hesitated at the edge of Samhain's circle. Up close, he could see that scarlet color of the spirit's throbbing veins.
"Go to hell."
Kerchack raised the shovel and swung the blade down into Samhain's pumpkin head. It passed through the spirit like a smoky illusion.
Chuckling, Samhain snatched the shovel from Kerchack and backhanded him. Kerchack fell, tasting blood. The thorns in Samhain's hands had sliced open Kerchack's cheek.
"I'm no earthbound specter, young master. Your mortal magics mean nothing to me. And now that the shovel has violated this barrier, I am free to claim what was always destined to be mine."
Frost spilled across the backyard, spreading from the spirit's feet like an unliving thing. Skeletal phantoms and shadowy wraiths rose from its curling depths. Samhain threw aside the shovel and advanced on Kerchack.
Kerchack jumped to his feet, dashed into the house, and slammed the door shut.
"Oh crap."
The Guy didn't raise his head from his paper. "So how did it go?" he asked, as if the thick ice forming on the wall and the rejoicing howls of a thousand ghosts didn't make things rather obvious.
"Huuuuungryyyyyy." The Spook pounded cracks in the ceiling. "Huuuuuuungryyyyyy."
Kerchack glanced out the window. Samhain, a sinister smile across his face, moved toward the house. The gates to the underworld had been thrown wide, and specters poured from the spreading fog.
Cold fingers seized Kerchack by the shoulder and dragged him across the kitchen. Joyce wasn't the only one who could touch him now. Gramps, now recovered, had hold of him too. They threw him against the sink and held him there.
Samhain entered the house. Though his body appeared solid and Kerchack had the sore, bloody jaw to prove it, the King of the Dead passed through the wall like a phantom. He leisurely approached Kerchack, but hesitated and turned toward The Guy, who had set down his paper for probably the first time in fifty years.
"Pardon me?" asked Samhain, "but do I know you?"
"Don't think so." The Guy shrugged.
Samhain tapped a long finger against his rounded chin. "Oh, but you look quite familiar."
The Guy pulled his newspaper up again. "Oh, I get that a lot. Just have one of those faces."
Samhain said, "Well, I just know we've met somewhere. Oh well. Guess it's really not important."
"Guess not," agreed The Guy.
The Attic Spook bayed loudly enough to crack the ice on the walls. Samhain seemed genuinely startled by the sound, but he quickly recovered.
Madness gleamed in Joyce's eyes as she dragged Kerchack before her king. "Let me kill him, master."
Gramps punched Kerchack in the gut. He slumped to the floor, curled into a ball, and gasped for breath. They kicked him a few times.
"Bet'cha wish you'd bought me that big screen now, you stupid little shit."
The Spook's thumping became violent enough to knock chunks of ice and drywall from the ceiling. Samhain's brow furrowed.
The fog filled the kitchen, crawling up the walls. Sprawled on the floor, Kerchack shivered in its icy touch. It wasn't just cold. It was numbing, draining. There were things in it, ghosts and things that weren't quite ghosts that he couldn't describe. They were all around him, caressing his flesh, and he couldn't really feel it. He just knew. From his vantage point, he noticed that while the fog covered the walls and spread across the ceiling, it seemed not to like the spot where the Spook had pounded cracks in the ceiling directly above Samhain's head.
"Shall I kill him now?" asked Joyce.
Samhain brushed her aside. "No, this mortal has given me my kingdom. The least I can do is usher him into its loving embrace myself."
His right arm uncoiled and seized Kerchack by the shoulder. The powerful grip and thorny hand made Kerchack grateful for his numbness. He was pretty sure without it, he would've been screaming his head off.
Samhain flashed his glittering grin. "Now, young master, it is time to go the way of all moldering flesh."
Kerchack hadn't meant to end the world, but somebody was bound to do it eventually. In his final moments, he tried to find comfort in that.
The ceiling exploded, and a shimmering ectoplasmic something (kind of like a huge clawed hand, but not really very much like it at all) reached into the kitchen. It swiped at Samhain, who moved back just in time to avoid being grabbed.
Samhain's eyes, so full of malevolence moments ago, were now wide with some new emotion.
Terror.
Apparently, some fathomless horrors were more fathomless than others.
The Spook tore away more of the ceiling. Several wispy tentacles snaked toward Samhain, who wasted no time dropping Kerchack and fleeing through the wall. The Spook retreated into the attic, and Kerchack thought it might've given up the chase. But it roared, and he heard a terrible crash as the thing smashed through the attic wall in pursuit of its meal.
Kerchack, Gramps, and Joyce, all went to the window to see what was happening in the backyard. By the time they got there though, it was already nearly over.
The Spook was a hulking thing of bubbling liquid ectoplasm. It was big. So big that Kerchack had a hard time imagining it could fit in the attic. But he supposed it was usually immaterial, so that wasn't a problem. But Samhain's presence must've done something to it, awaken long dormant appetites. It held him in one massive hand as Samhain struggled to free himself. The Spook didn't really have a throat as far as Kerchack could tell so it just shoved Samhain into itself.
It was transparent, and the entire digestive process was visible. It didn't take long, just a few seconds to dissolve Samhain into nothing.
The Spook turned around, though it was difficult to tell its front from its back. It had a lot of eyes scattered all over the lumpish thing that was its head. Each was a window to another world, another place that was beyond such pale things as mortal flesh and spectral ectoplasm. Kerchack felt his mind starting to fall into them, but he couldn't look away. Fortunately, the Spook slipped like a shadow into the air and back into the attic a second before madness swallowed Kerchack whole.
The lingering fog dwindled, and the numbness in him faded, reminding him of the bloody gashes on his face and shoulder. He was never so glad to feel pain in his life.
"Oh, Kerchack." Joyce hugged him. "Oh my goodness, I nearly killed you."
"Ouch."
She released him. She was herself again. There were still a few splotches on her ectoplasm, but these were fading fast.
"You alright, boy?" asked Gramps.
Kerchack shrugged, and it hurt like a son of a bitch. "I'm okay." He wasn't really sure though. He might've been bleeding to death, but he didn't feel like peeling his shirt away to check right now. There was one more thing to do.
He went into the backyard and picked up the shovel. Then he went to the assembly of ghosts at the edge of the property line. Shock and confusion covered their faces, but they didn't seem nearly as dangerous now.
"Okay, folks, nothing to see!" shouted Kerchack. "Go onto your homes or graves or whatever! Sorry for the inconvenience."
The phantom army began to disperse. Most just faded away, back to the other side where they belonged. The others headed toward their old familiar haunts.
Kerchack studied the hole in his house and knew he would never get it fixed. Maybe he'd just throw some plywood up there to let the Spook have some privacy. He went into the house and had a seat at the table. Gramps was already back in his chair, watching television. Joyce had gotten some antiseptic and bandages and started tending Kerchack's shoulder. Tederick, whistling and occasionally reciting a line from one of the dirty limericks Gramps had taught the bird, sat atop the refrigerator.
The fog had faded, taking the chill and the ice with it. Except for his wounds and the hole in the ceiling, everything was back to normal.
The Attic Spook moaned, but there was a contented quality to the sound for once.
"You got lucky," said The Guy.
"It's better to be lucky than good," replied Kerchack, although he wasn't sure he believed that. But the world wasn't destroyed, so he wasn't complaining.
Joyce had just finished bandaging Kerchack's shoulder and putting band-aids on the cuts on his cheek when there was a knock on the door. It was Sheriff Kopp. He glanced at the shovel that Kerchack held (though he hadn't realized he was still carrying it).
"I think we got some things to talk over, son."
Kerchack tried to play things cool, but Denise couldn't help but notice his wounded face when she climbed into the car. "Jeezus, honey, what happened to you?"
He smiled despite himself. It hurt because of the gashes on his cheek, but he was just so happy to hear her call him 'honey'.
