56. Ambushed by Ghosts

Ambushed by Ghosts

The tip of the ghostly blade struck my back with a screech like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard, tearing through the night.

It passed straight through my Super Suit as if the suit did not exist, then stopped hard against the Proximal Manipulation field holding me in the air.

Cold spread outward from the impact point, then seeped into every living thing nearby.

For me, it caused less harm than a shallow scratch. But every blade of grass within twenty meters died instantly, blackening at once.

I punched at the ghostly figure, but my arm met about as much resistance as it would have if I had tried to strike fog. The hostile spirit did not even move.

Six more hot—no, cold—spots became enemies. The chill they radiated increased the pressure around us, like an invisible fist trying to strangle all life.

The range of dead grass expanded. Yellow-green leaves turned dry and brittle in an instant, then blackened like they had been burned, then crumbled into ash.

The few pets that had survived this apocalypse so far began barking, hissing, and whining, trying to get away from the life-draining enemy closing in.

Nearly a dozen shadows surrounded me. Lines, sheets, and shapes of force from me dispersed them temporarily, but caused no lasting damage.

Ghostly daggers, spikes, and twisted hands tipped with wicked claws passed through my bodysuit the way stench passed through a grate.

They scraped across my skin. Cold seeped deeper into my limbs, making muscle and ligament stiffen slightly and adding an invisible weight that had no physical substance at all.

Across the lot, an old man screamed.

It was a howl of pain and despair, the kind that belonged to someone disemboweled and dying.

A shadow hovered over him. It did not touch him. It only glared down with eerily glowing eyes while the old man’s face grew paler and paler.

Then the shadow suddenly burst into flame when a region of Force Adjustment amplified the impact of air molecules around it.

The shadow screamed and recoiled, releasing the old man as its scorched body slowly repaired itself.

“Everybody get moving!” I shouted to any civilian willing to listen, then focused on the shadows attacking me.

I had no attention left to spare for anyone else.

The shadow that had frightened the old man into screaming and crawling away reformed in front of me, fixing its hollow, dead gaze on my eyes.

It did not seem to do anything.

Then a pressure like nails being driven into my mind made my head split with supernatural pain.

A small bolt of lightning from one of the trailer-park survivors struck the shadow in the throat, briefly setting it on fire before it fully dispersed.

Unfortunately, many cold spots remained.

Each manifested as the image of an ancient soldier from Earth’s distant past, with ghostly arms and armor.

Most of the newly appearing ghosts looked toward the survivors with malicious, hungry red eyes. But all of them changed direction and converged on me.

A dozen ghosts glared at me with what was now their signature stare, their presence driving more nails into my mind.

Unlike the fleeing civilians, I did not stagger. I did not scream in pain. I did not flee in terror.

The weight and solidity of my mind, my identity, and my will brought the enemies’ invisible assault to a halt.

My limbs felt leaden. Each step was like crossing a ghostly swamp that wanted to swallow me whole.

And more shadows kept pouring in.

Which meant this had become a target-rich environment.

Both my ears and my supernatural senses told me that, most of the time, the trailer park was silent.

This was not one of those times.

A blurred, human-shaped cold spot flew toward me. Clumps of grass, fallen leaves, even a stubborn little patch of brambles blackened and rotted under its approaching shadow.

Another humanoid cold spot drew close, two sickly green lights gleaming inside the vague outline of a head made of cold mist and unnaturally stretched shadow.

Yet another of these new enemies came nearer, almost within arm’s reach, and extended a twisted, translucent limb.

The limb seemed to be nothing at all until the world flickered at precisely the right moment, and for one impossibly brief instant, the image of a decayed, rotting hand flashed into view.

A cold wind I could not hear or feel made the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand upright.

It moved not a speck of dust.

Yet it was real.

More figures gathered at the edges of my vision. When I turned to look, they vanished. As long as I watched them, they stayed still. But every time I looked away and back again, they had moved a few meters closer.

The air dried completely.

At the same time, something like an imitation of morning fog crept in. Figures danced through the vapor, first human-shaped, then bone with scraps of rotting meat clinging to it.

The nearest figure’s arm seemed to twist.

One of its fingers stretched longer and longer, until it was no longer a finger jointed by dry ligaments, but a slender blade somewhere between dagger and claw.

It swung lazily, almost casually.

The blade ignored my suit completely and stabbed beneath my ribs.

After that thrust, more images flickered: more screams and rattling chains, a splash of blood against the nearest trailer, a half-charred corpse staring with empty, eyeless sockets and grinning with a lipless, twisted smile.

“Why do villains always have to do these tacky embodiments of evil?” I asked conversationally, breaking the frightening silence with flat disappointment.

“I don’t know where you came from, but here on Earth, we’ve watched movies, read books, heard stories, and used our own imaginations. These little tricks aren’t going to scare me.”

I reached out with one arm, caught the shadow that had stabbed me, wrapped it in a forcefield with the lightest touch…

Then squeezed.

“I just think your cheap special effects are ridiculous.”

The shadowy thing had almost no substance, and could not exert enough force to resist my Proximal Manipulation field.

It was crushed smaller and smaller, compressed until it became a black bead the size of a pea.

Then I set it on fire.

As its illusory wailing was replaced by the very real scream of a burning enemy, its companions attacked together.

They had no weight, yet tried to push me back. They had no weapons except their shadows, yet seemed able to hurt me. They had no mouths, yet they screamed.

Then they discovered what everyone who spread horror as entertainment had always known: familiar, tangible things were far more frightening than the supernatural and the alien.

Or maybe the shadow creatures were simply weak, and their attempts to influence me failed completely.

Either way, more shadows were quickly compressed and burned. As they died one by one, their influence over the surrounding area gradually weakened.

The shadows noticed too.

As a group, they collectively took a symbolic step back, whispered among themselves for a few seconds, then scattered throughout the trailer park.

“Hm. Not that hard,” I mused, shaking off the last residue of the shadows’ supernatural presence.

The final shadow disappeared around a corner.

Then a scream those bargain-bin Ringwraiths could not possibly have made came from the same direction.

I cursed, pushed my speed to the limit, and rushed toward the sound in an instant.

I found Grandma Zhao lying on the ground, pale-faced and wide-eyed, twitching strangely with her mouth hanging open and a little drool at one corner.

I approached the old woman and scanned her body to make sure she was not hurt.

Aside from scrapes, bruises, and the lingering consequences of several decades of excessive smoking, she seemed all right.

“Are you okay?” I asked one of the few neighbors from my childhood I had felt anything close to fondness for.

“I’m just fine, sweetie,” the old woman cackled.

Then she shot me in the face.