Chapter 9 #2
With that, Travis let go of his connection to the ghosts and slumped forward onto his elbows.
Brent pressed a bottle of orange juice into his hand. “Drink. I’ve got something for you to eat after that. When you’re ready, I’ll help you to the couch.”
Travis accepted the juice gratefully and downed it, then tried to eat the muffin slowly so it didn’t come back up. “Did you hear all that?”
“Not everything, but enough,” Brent said in a grim tone. “Sometimes it sucks to be right.”
Travis managed to make it to the couch without having to lean too hard on Brent.
“Well, that explains why the whole section on vampires and necromancers was missing from the Sinistram library the last time I visited.” Travis felt the grueling aftereffects of the ghostly conversation.
“They might have been afraid someone would find something in the books that could work against them.”
“I’m going to make another pot of coffee and settle in to do some research while you sleep that off,” Brent told him. “Give me your phone. I’ll wake you if Cassidy returns your call, but everyone else can wait. Rest, and then we can debrief.”
Travis wanted to argue, but he ended up mumbling something incoherent as he sat on the couch and fell to one side.
“Rest.” Brent pulled Travis’s legs up on the cushion and spread a throw over him. “I’m not going anywhere, and I won’t let anything get to you.”
Travis wanted to point out that Brent couldn’t protect him from ghosts or visions, but he fell asleep before he could.
“What time is it?” Travis came around slowly, unsure whether he was actually waking or in a very realistic vision.
“A better question is, what day?” Brent handed him a hot cup of coffee.
“You slept all night and half of the next morning. From what you were muttering, I gather it wasn’t all peaceful.
Did you have visions? Share with the class when you wake up.
I found some interesting stuff, too. And before you ask, Cassidy said Sorren should return tonight, and he had information for us. ”
“That…can’t be good.” Travis sipped his coffee and tried to reorient himself.
“Maybe we already know the worst about Sinistram,” Brent said. “I’m hoping Cassidy and Sorren can clue us in to how the vampire faction managed that. It’s rather discouraging to know that politics doesn’t end even after you’re dead.”
“True.” Travis willed the hot liquid to send his blood rushing and clear the fuzz from his mind. “I’ll tell you about the visions I had while I was sleeping, but I need to make sense of them myself first. How about you catch me up on what you’ve been doing while I’ve been out.”
“I need more coffee for that.” Brent got up and refilled their cups, then returned to his seat.
“The early warning system is going absolutely bonkers with stories,” Brent said, meaning the tabloids, podcasts, and social media sites dedicated to supernatural conspiracies.
“Plenty of sightings of Ol’ Red Eyes. Either there are dozens of him, or he can teleport, because they’re claiming he’s popping up all over. ”
“More omens,” Travis said.
“No kidding. Everyone and their brother is seeing signs in frogs, owls, spiders, pretty much everything. Then there’s the big story about a sea monster in the Monongahela River.”
“Seriously?” Travis lifted his head and looked at Brent to make sure he wasn’t joking.
“I couldn’t dream this stuff up if I tried.
” Brent crossed his heart. “People say they have seen a huge serpent in the river and that it’s damaged boats and caused problems for river traffic.
Of course, that immediately spawned websites selling amulets and preachers rushing to the waterfront to pray it away. ”
“Some things never change,” Travis agreed.
“Not sure yet whether or not there’s any truth, but even the regular media is running segments on it. If Loch Ness has Nessie, would this be ‘Messie’ in the Mon?” Brent asked with a grin.
“Ugh. There’s got to be a better name.”
“You’d think so,” Brent agreed. “Photos are showing up online that claim to be of the river creature. That stuff is easy to fake—especially with AI—but I’m hearing back-channel chatter from hunters that makes me think there’s some truth to the rumor.”
Travis stood behind Brent as he called up news sites reporting on the sea serpent. A couple of vendors wandered along the riverbank selling charms to the crowd that gathered along the riverside while a minister led a prayer group nearby.
“Nearly capsized my boat,” a man told the reporter. “Like in one of those movies. Couldn’t see all of it, but it was big around and long.”
“There’s a temporary halt on small, non-commercial craft on the river until authorities get to the root of the problem,” the reporter said, looking into the camera with the river behind him.
“Larger boats are heavily cautioned. We’re told that authorities have brought in sonar and other technology to see into the deepest water. The city has promised to keep river traffic running, but we’ll have to wait and see whether they can deliver on that promise.”
Brent clicked away, and Travis sat. “How is that even possible with all the locks and dams on the river?” Travis asked.
Brent shrugged. “If something magicked the creature into the river, that wouldn’t matter. It’s certainly not native. And if it’s supernatural, it might have other ways to get around obstacles.”
“Maybe that’s what the priests meant by old ones,” Travis mused. “And if they really are waking up, how do we put them back to sleep?”
“If the Sinistram witch vampires are working dark magic to rile up the creatures and attack hunters, stopping the magic might make the monsters go back to sleep,” Brent suggested.
“Maybe. I hope so, because I don’t know how to fight a sea serpent.”
“I’ve also got a lead on that vision you had about the fires and the canister being blasted into the air.” Brent turned his laptop so Travis could see old black-and-white newspaper photos showing a blasted stretch of a city street.
“What is this?” Travis asked.
“The Equitable Gas Explosion of 1927,” Brent replied.
“A big natural gas storage facility blew up and took a chunk of houses with it. Best anyone can figure, the company thought the tanks were completely empty before workmen tried to weld leaks shut, but there was enough gas still left to blow everything sky high. People died, city blocks had to be razed, and it broke windows a mile away.”
“Let me guess, it also sent one of those tanks up like a rocket.”
“Yep,” Brent confirmed. “But the area hasn’t been a hotbed of haunting, at least from anything I could find. So why did you see that particular disaster?”
Travis studied his coffee as if it held the secrets of the universe.
“We’ve looked into several mine disasters, which could also fit the ‘old ones’ when there have also been monsters.
Some of those involved fires. Now the natural gas disaster.
Maybe the pattern isn’t just the ghosts, it’s the harrowing by fire. ”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Travis knocked back the rest of his drink.
“Fire cleanses. It’s not just Biblical, it’s part of a lot of ancient lore.
Suppose you’re a group of ancient vampire priests who want to scour minor monsters and enough pesky mortals from the area so no one challenges your power.
First, you summon the old ones, terrify everyone, then wipe them away with cleansing fire, and you’re the hero to the passive saps that are left. ”
“That’s crazy enough, it might just be a theory.” Brent looked vaguely ill at the prospect. He quickly typed into a search engine, and his eyes widened at the response.
“Most of the state’s natural gas production happens in Western PA, near Pittsburgh. Plenty of wells, capped and active, and storage facilities housed in underground formations like salt caverns,” Brent read aloud.
“Great.”
“It gets worse,” Brent said, “since the oil and gas industry has been in this area for so long, there are a lot of orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. Most of them haven’t been capped. For others, the location is no longer known.”
“How many are we talking about?” Travis felt a chill go down his spine.
“Official estimates say 300,000 to 700,000 orphaned and abandoned wells, but no one really knows for sure.” Brent sounded stunned. “Not counting all those coal mines, and no one even has a complete map of where they are.”
“Fuck. That’s like living on top of a time bomb.”
“Yeah. The wells and mines leak methane and other bad chemicals, catch fire, and can explode. And they’re fuckin’ everywhere,” Brent said.
“Any other good news, while I was sleeping?”
Brent looked like he wished he could spike his coffee. At the moment, Travis was also regretting his no-alcohol policy.
“Just that there are at least twelve decommissioned Nike missile sites in and around Pittsburgh. The missiles were supposed to be removed, but…”
“Missiles?” Travis echoed, appalled. “Were they—”
“Some carried explosive payloads. Others had nukes.”
“Oh my God.”
“And there’s an active nuclear power plant twenty-seven miles from Pittsburgh,” Brent said. “I mean, we got through the Cold War and the Russians didn’t blow us up, so maybe it’s not worth worrying about.”
“But they weren’t crazy-religious vampire ninja priests,” Travis replied, a weak attempt at humor in the face of potential annihilation. “You’d think stuff like this would lower property values.”
“Far as I can tell, most people have no idea about the mines, the wells, or the missile sites, and the power plant keeps a low profile.”
Travis rose and started to pace. “Shit, shit, shit.” He stopped and looked at Brent, wishing he would wake up and discover this was all a bad dream. “What the hell do we do? This is so far above our pay grade—”
“If we can stop Sinistram, we don’t have to deal with the explosives.” Brent sounded calm, but Travis could see the twitch in his partner’s jaw that revealed how hard he was clenching his teeth.