Chapter 54
Back in the Face It tent I stared at my lifeless body. It was eerie watching the paramedics attempt to revive me. Little did they know their work was futile; I was already gone.
Chief Porter was standing by, watching the scene unfold while at the same time giving orders to officers passing through the tent, no doubt looking for the person who killed me. I needed to tell him what the cultist, who now possessed the canister, looked like. Unfortunately, the dead can't speak to the living, at least they didn't to me. I don't know why I possessed the ability to see dead people, but unfortunately Chief Porter lacked it. If he could see me I could somehow pantomime the information. But alas, I needed to think of an alternate way to get his attention and direct it towards the canister before it was too late.
The bodachs were swarming now. They took turns slinking around my lifeless body. They even wrapped themselves around the bystanders, drinking in their grief. If they saw the wraithlike me, they weren't interested. Apparently the decaying me was much more interesting.
I needed to do something more than just stand there. Without knowing how I knew, I realized that my psychic magnetism would work as a ghost. It dawned on me that all ghosts probably possessed some form of psychic magnetism, since they seemed to be able to find me easily. Picturing the face of my quarry, I concentrated on where he was.
When I was alive, and constrained by the laws of physics, it would sometimes take me hours or days of wandering to find someone or something for which I was looking. With my body relegated to being worm food, my ghostly spirit was immediately transported to a dark tent, where the lights and sounds of the midway were faint and muted.
In the corner, seated at a table were two men, their workspace illuminated by a small lamp. One of them was the man who shot me and made off with the canister. Before them were various tools and parts, tubing snaking down to an air compressor on the ground, and the stainless steel canister, enclosed within swirled the liquid containing billions of rabies virus particles.
Forgetting my current state of existence, I screamed at the men, "Hey!" They, of course, couldn't hear me and continued with their work.
I walked over to the table and saw that they had made good progress while I bled to death. The canister was again connected to an air compressor, a different, smaller one than the one Lou had rendered useless. The men were working to attach a nozzle to the output end of the canister. From the looks of it, they planned to make this iteration of their death-dispensing machine more portable, a hand-held, rabies-spewing, killing device. I guessed that they intended to walk down the midway, spraying the rabies mist and infecting as many people as possible.
I needed to get Chief Porter here as soon as possible. But where was the Chief? More importantly, where was I? It dawned on me that I didn't know where I was, that I had arrived here supernaturally. I exited the tent to get my bearings. The men were in a tent off the midway, in an area that was clearly not for marks. How could I get Chief Porter here? He and his men were focused on the midway, searching tent by tent for my killer. They wouldn't get here in time if I couldn't think of a plan fast.
Something within me stirred, something I had never felt before. It made sense, I was never a ghost before, but it resembled something familiar. It felt a little like anger, but somehow more intense and focused. Right now it was a small burning deep within. I was angry that these men may succeed with their plans and infect the people that I love. Letting the anger swell within me, I suddenly knew how I could attract Chief Porter to this place. I thought about Chief Porter, Ozzie, Annamaria, Rosemary, Terri, and all the other people back on the midway and I pictured them lying in graves. Lastly, I pictured Bob Robertson, Bern Eckles, Simon Varner, and Kevin Gosset, the men responsible for my Stormy getting shot at Green Moon Mall. The anger within me grew white hot. Back in my mortal days I was never one to succumb to emotions and act irrationally. But, the situation called for it now. I let the hatred and anger overtake me and I exploded in an ecstasy of frustration. I went poltergeist. I thrashed myself, uncontrollably, around and inside the tent. I didn't know what I was doing or if what I was doing would attract the attention of Chief Porter. The roof of the tent exploded upward. The temporary light poles erected around the tent flew into the air, sending sparks like fireworks high into the sky. The walls of the tent, along with the surrounding debris, swirled within my tornado-like fury, encircling and containing the men. I was growing tired, exhausted from the energy spent wreaking havoc on their impromptu workspace. As my fury began to fade, I saw people running towards us in the distance. I couldn't concentrate on them. I lost focus and drifted into what I can only describe as a dead sleep.
I awoke, vaguely aware of my surroundings. I don't know how much time passed, but I saw Chief Porter holding the stainless steel canister while two of his officers were handcuffing the men and putting them in the back of their squad cars. My work here was done.