Free The Grim Spectre by Ralph L. Angelo Jr.

the throat, when the man ducked and parried the hand; he suddenly punched the Grim Spectre across the neck. Immediately the Spectre stumbled backward. But the Priest was on him instantly. He grabbed the Grim Spectre’s head and slammed it down into his upraised knee.
    “Ha! I knew you’d have to become corporeal again,” the Priest shouted, “Now you’re mine!”
    From beneath the folds of his long coat he produced another Tommy gun and fired madly at The Grim Spectre, spraying the walls of the backroom gambling parlor with hot lead!
    But the Grim Spectre was too fast, instantly he turned immaterial, allowing the Bullets to pass right through him once again.
    “Get back here you coward,” the maddened Priest shouted.
    “Fool! Did you think to kill that which was already dead?” The Grim Spectre taunted.
    He floated quickly through the Priest, passing cleanly though his body. The man turned to face him, bewilderment writ all over his face.
    “T-that’s impossible. H-how did you do that?” the shaken Priest stammered.
    “All things are possible for one who walks twixt the worlds of the living and of the dead, you fool.”
    Before the Priest could bring his gun to bear again the Grim Spectre back handed the man with a crackling hand across the jaw, sending him flying across the room and into a stack of beer crates.
    The Priest stumbled to his feet, not as confident as he was earlier and reached again under his robes to reveal a shining blade. He swung the blade before him in small arcs as he moved closer and closer to the Grim Spectre.
    “Back to the pits of hell with you, Ghoul,” he shouted as he slashed the blade back and forth before the Grim Spectre.
    “I will send you to the pits myself, fallen one,” The Spectre replied, reaching a crackling hand towards his foe.
    But the Priest swung his arm backward quickly; the gleaming blade passed into the Grim Spectre’s ethereal form and immediately the Grim Spectre screamed!
    “Ha!” The Priest laughed, “Do you see this knife, Grim Spectre? This is a blessed blade, dipped long into holy water and prayed over. It was created just to deal with your kind, to send ghosts and other evil spirits back to the pits of hell.”
    The Priest dove at the Grim Spectre once again, knife held high, ready to slash through his immaterial form once again, and deliver a killing blow to a ghost!
    But the Grim Spectre suddenly disappeared, fading from sight.
    “Wh? Where are you, Grim Spectre? Come back here, cowardly fiend!” the Priest roared. He spun on his heels looking around the room for the first sign of The Grim Spectre, but finding none.
    Beneath the bar, in a storage cellar The Grim Spectre hid in the darkness and thought, ‘I don’t know what he did to me, but that blade, it cut me while I was immaterial. I didn’t think that was even possible. Something in that blade was able to cut me. I have to get out of here and regroup. Allow the belt time to heal me. Otherwise I’m a dead man.’
    Invisibly The Grim Spectre stood up and walked through a wall of the cellar, passing through solid rock and concrete.
    Walking for two dozen steps he then floated upward and emerged in the middle of the street outside the bar. Unseen, he floated skyward, putting distance between him and the mad Priest.
    ‘I have to get back to my apartment, to heal. If I don’t, I really will become a ghost,’
    Minutes later the Grim Spectre passed through the walls of his own apartment and collapsed upon his bed, unconscious. His white costume stained with the red of his own blood.

Chapter 14
     
     
    Phylo Zeus sat in his dimly lit parlor listening to his favorite radio show, ‘Fibber McGee and Molly’ when his manservant appeared at his door, “Pardon the intrusion Master Zeus, but you have a visitor.”
    “Who the hell would be visiting me now? It’s after eight O’clock.” He roared annoyedly.
    Oscar exhaled, showing his own brand of annoyance and replied, “It’s that Priest