Free Ghost College by Scott Nicholson, J.R. Rain Page A

pulling back his cracked lips to reveal his filthy row of sharp teeth. Blood filled his mouth, which he promptly spat out. The blood evaporated into steam before it hit the basement’s dirt floor.
    It’s all illusion , came my wife’s words. He’s not really bleeding.
    Maybe not, but I sensed I had hurt him. Or, at least, surprised the hell of him. Like Ellen had said, he was new at this.
    We circled again. He rotated the dagger casually in his hand. Whether or not the blade was illusion, I didn’t know. But I did know that I had to protect the silver cord at my navel. Or all was lost.
    I would be very dead, perhaps cut off from my wife forever.
    And stuck with this sick son-of-a-bitch.
    He came at me again, lowering the dagger and then bringing it up hard, a movement that was meant to either disembowel me or sever the silver cord. My vote was for the latter. My hand snaked down, reaching for his bony forearm...but it promptly swept through him.
    Sigmund was gone.
    My wife’s voice burst into my thoughts: Behind you!
    I spun and watched in horror as Sigmund, who had manifested behind me, took hold of my silver cord and slashed down with the dagger.
     
     
    Chapter Eighteen
     
     
    I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen next—death and pain and perhaps an eternity of being Sigmund’s bitch—but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting to be staring up into the welcome sight of my wife’s beautiful, although alarmed, hazel eyes.
    “Are you okay, babe?”
    I jumped up, spinning, scanning, certain the bastard was behind me somewhere, wielding the dagger from hell. But my wife and I were alone in the abandoned office with the candles still going, but burned halfway down.
    Jesus, had this all been a dream?
    “ What happened?” I gasped.
    “ Let’s just say my reflexes were a little better than yours.”
    “ I don’t understand.”
    “ There’s not much to understand. I pulled you back.”
    “ The cord....”
    “ Of course. I gave it a tug and you did the rest.”
    “ But how?”
    “ Do you really want to get into that now, when we have one hell of a pissed-off and highly evolved Dark Master heading our way?”
    And just as she said that, a plastic chair from the far side of the room lifted and hurled itself through the air. I ducked and pulled my wife down with me. The chair whistled over our heads and slammed into the far wall, knocking a framed motivational poster off the wall.
    “Holy shit!”
    “ Are you a believer now?” asked my wife.
    I grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the door. And just as I yanked it open, I had a brief—and horrific—image of the kidney-shaped table rising a few inches off the floor. And then we were out the door. I had just slammed it hard behind us when the entire wall shuddered.
    “Somebody’s mad,” I said.
    Only then did I notice that one of the table’s legs had punctured through the wall just inches above my head. Drywall dust rained down over my shoulder.
    “C’mon,” I said to my wife.
    “ Where are we going?”
    “ My cord. Sigmund has to have one, too, right?”
    She thought a moment and nodded. “And?”
    But there was no time to explain. The rumble built beneath us, and as the floor began to shake, I pulled my wife down the dark hallway, praying like hell I was going in the right direction.
    As I hung a left at a T-intersection, fairly certain I was heading in the right direction, the rumbling and shaking stopped almost immediately. Now the sound of our own pounding footsteps filled the empty hallway, and I wondered what the hell we had done.
    Talk about waking the beast.
    Sweet Jesus.
    And speaking of Jesus, where the hell was he? I wasn’t one for add-water religion, but the Good versus Evil thing was looking a little lopsided at the moment.
    Ellen and I had long ago quit holding hands, and we were now covering the tiled floor quickly. Ellen, I wasn’t too surprised to see, was pulling away from me.
    Damn chocolate pancakes.
    We came to a long glass