The Temple of the Dead Read online

  Harlan stopped mid-step, growling. “I need to go back up. I can stop that.”

  Cam looked at him with good-natured ignorance. “Not sure how you’d do it, but they don’t come down here no ways. They’re too interested in the Oracle to even realize anybody’s around.” He headed off down the hall and held the far door open. “Come on in. After being outside for a spell, you’re going to think you’re in Heaven.”

  His hard-earned paranoia difficult to ignore, ingrained marrow-deep by the harshness of survival, Harlan stayed rooted in place. “I don’t think you understand the danger my being here puts you in.”

  Cam laughed. “You’re probably right, but Walter told me something about how the dead can sniff you out. He said that won’t be a problem for you here, though.” He pointed toward the ceiling. “There ain’t no bigger draw than home.”

  Harlan glanced at The Professor, who hadn’t spoken a word since he’d entered Delphi. He saw the shadows of the spirit’s eyes staring sightless through the roof. He sighed and looked back to Cam. “You’re probably right.”

  Almost in direct conflict with the laws of nature, Cam’s smile grew wider, his face barely able to contain it. “Let’s get that food. Walter’s waiting inside.”

  Cam shuffled through the swinging door and held it open. Before Harlan even entered the room, he felt the temperature drop again, too cold to be natural. His hand instinctively went to the pommel of his sword as he surveyed the room.

  What had clearly been a cafeteria, the room sprawled out for half a football field. An empty, chrome buffet line filled the back wall. Dusty signs hung overtop, advertising various meals, the food illustrated in savory perfection. Despite himself, Harlan felt his chest tighten.

  Never much of a cook himself, his wife had prided herself on her culinary skills. She had made it her goal to spoil him until he was fat and happy. Far from either in his desolate condition, he hadn’t eaten a decent meal since the night she died.

  His eyes moistened against his wishes and he tore them from the images. He went back to examining the room.

  Rows of folded tables and hundreds of metal chairs were stacked behind the buffet in haphazard piles save for one table, which was set up in the center of the room. At it sat a decayed corpse whose empty sockets met Harlan’s stare with morbid confidence.

  “I had feared you would not make it,” the corpse told him. Though his voice was lower in pitch than it had been the last time they’d talked, the words punctuated with moist phlegm, Harlan recognized Walter’s inflection immediately; his intellectual lilt rolled flawless off the dead man’s blackened tongue.

  The Professor drifted to his side as Walter stood, his bones creaking. Dressed in the tattered remnants of a security guard uniform, it was clear the body’s original owner hadn’t survived the uprising. His sternum had been broken in half as though there’d been an autopsy done. Like jagged teeth, his ribs protruded from the maw of his chest. The deep cavity behind was conspicuously empty except for the desiccated lump of its heart, hung in the gallows of the body’s center.

  Harlan shivered, telling himself it was just the cold. “I was a little worried there myself.”

  Cam excused himself and left through a door near the back of the cafeteria. Harlan watched him go as The Professor and Walter chatted a moment. He took a seat across from the undead pair and groaned at the simple comfort. Everything hurt.

  After a moment of ethereal whispers, Walter turned to Harlan.

  “What I had hoped was a simple solution has become infinitely more difficult, my friend.”

  Too exhausted to be surprised, Harlan motioned for him to continue.

  “Though I had never visited the Temple as a living person, killed as I was before the move, I was able to travel there in spirit, thanks to you separating me from my previous host.” He paused, leaning forward onto the table. “Having seen it now, I’m afraid things are much worse than we could have conceived.”

  Harlan sunk into his seat, not daring his imagination to prove the spirit wrong. “How so?”

  “Dr. James Hobart, the scientist in charge of the Pythia Project, was a vile and cruel man, capable of murder, obviously, and obsessed with contacting the spirit of his dead wife. Certainly after he killed me for threatening to expose his machinations, I had no illusions as to the depths to which he would plunge to achieve his goal. What I hadn’t expected, was that he would enlist a necromancer to aid him.”

  Harlan bolted upright, ignoring the pain that catapulted through his side. “A necro—” A guillotine of realization slammed home. “That bitch. Alejandra.”

  Walter nodded. “We originally believed we could simply sever the power to the machines holding the breach open and it would close of its own accord. However, she has taken that option away from us.”

  “What has she done?” Harlan felt his face flush as he pictured the possibilities. There were far too many, none of which boded well.

  “After a time, Hobart became unsatisfied with just speaking to his wife; he wanted to resurrect her. But no matter how many times he drew her spirit into our world, she would always be pulled back after just a short while. Unable to sever her connection to the realm of the dead, which tethered her soul, Hobart moved the experiment from Delphi to the Temple, where the spiritual nature of the site was stronger. But even there, he met with failure after failure.

  “That was, until Alejandra became involved.” The corpse settled back with a gurgled sigh. “She provided the key, the mystical element that freed Hobart’s wife and allowed her to remain in the receiving body. However, as you well know, something went wrong.”

  Harlan shook his head, unable to comprehend why she’d help someone bring back the dead at the risk of damning all of humanity. Then it hit him.

  There wasn’t a night that went by he didn’t think about what he’d be willing to do in order to bring his family back. His hypocrisy not sacrosanct, he knew then why she had done what she had.

  “She’s lost someone.”

  “Who has?” Cam asked, returning with a metal tray piled high with warm food. He set the plate before Harlan and dropped some silverware onto the table and a handful of napkins beside it.

  “Alejandra,” Harlan answered, his voice monotone, the entirety of his attention on the food. “Where did you get all of this?”

  Sautéed beef glistened on the tray, tendrils of steam fluttering from it. The bright yellow of the corn was mesmerizing, set alongside the vibrant green of the spinach piled high and dripping with melted butter.

  Though he’d been one of the lucky ones, able to free animals from their possessive host and feed on fresh meat, he hadn’t had the luxury of sitting down to anything resembling a real meal.

  “Food ain’t a worry ‘round here. Got a whole couple rooms full of it. This place used to feed a few hundred people a day. Though the fresh stuff all rotted away, I figure there’ll still be plenty of packaged foods left after I’m dead and gone.” He gestured toward the back of the cafeteria.

  Harlan whistled and dug in, having to remind himself to use the utensils. He groaned in delight at the first, massive bite. Forgetting his manners, he asked through a mouthful, “How do you preserve it all?”

  Cam took a second before answering. “Ah, that’s why it’s so cold in here. Well, Walter helps a little.” He chuckled, smiling at the corpse as though he weren’t sitting there with his chest cracked open and heart exposed.

  Harlan forced himself to swallow and slow down. “You still have electricity, but how?”

  “The entire complex is powered by generators that are designed to run for decades and that are independent from any external factors,” Walter answered, a quiet laugh slipping out. “Of course, an invasion of the living dead was never factored into the building plans.”

  “The generators won’t really run forever though
, because they need maintenance I can’t perform, but they’ll stick around for another five or six years, easy,” Cam added. “Probably longer since I’ve turned off all the non-essentials so they don’t wear down as fast. But to answer your question, I’ve shunted the air conditioners away from upstairs so they cool down here more than the rest of the complex. Since most of the food is packaged with preservatives or canned, as long as I can keep the bugs and heat from them, they’ll stay edible.”

  Harlan sighed as he took another bite, marveling at the wonders of technology he’d long since discarded as a thing of the past.

  “The Temple is powered much the same as Delphi,” Walter stated. “Like the generators here that power the Oracle eye, those at the Temple continue to maintain the breach, with the necromancer’s assistance.”

  “What did she do?”

  “While I don’t claim to understand it all, a man of science who only recently came to terms with the supernatural—” he smiled morbidly, “I can only tell you what I managed to piece together from the dead who inhabit the area.”

  “Oh, sorry, Walter, excuse me.” Cam smiled sheepishly as he interrupted the corpse. “I almost forgot.” He pulled a silver flask from his back pocket and passed it to Harlan.

  Harlan sank deeper into his seat, a grateful smile on his lips as he cracked the flask open. He gestured for Walter to continue as he took a sip. The smooth warmth rushed down his throat as if it were a reprieve for a condemned man. He struggled to pay attention.

  “Despite the generators at the Temple being able to produce much more power than those here, it wasn’t enough to sever the spiritual tethers upon his wife. Your necromancer, Alejandra, seemed to solve the problem by tying the system into the energy of the ghosts somehow.

  “With each spirit that was summoned into the resurrection chamber, a tiny piece of their life force was stolen away and transferred to the system in order to provide more power. When that spirit’s time was up, it would snap back into its own realm and Hobart would summon another and begin the process all over.”

  “So the machine that holds the breach open is powered by the spirits that are coming through it.”

  Walter nodded, the gentle creak of rigor punctuating the movement. “As the experiment progressed, Hobart was able to keep his wife here in our realm longer and longer, but eventually, she would be drawn back each time.”

  Harlan swallowed another mouthful of the fine whiskey, understanding at last what had caused the breach. “So, impatient for results, Hobart sped up the system to draw more power.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Quite so. He siphoned more and more energy from the spirits until he tore a rift in the dimensional wall. In so doing, he opened a portal between our world and that of the dead, which was beyond his control. With the resurrection room not designed to hold the dead of countless generations past, the spirits stormed from the breach and flooded into our world.”

  “Where they were driven insane by the sudden rush of human emotion,” Harlan finished, chasing his words with one last sip before sealing the flask. “It’d make a hell of a movie.”

  “‘Cept there ain’t nobody left to make it.”

  Harlan nodded at Cam. “How’d you end up here if they moved the operation?”

  “Hobart was in a rush, so he dragged everyone over to the Temple to get to work, but he needed someone here to keep the Oracle open, otherwise he couldn’t see to pluck his spirit wife from the other realm. I got drafted to be his eyes here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You see, while Delphi and the Temple are a couple hundred miles from each other, the Oracle and the breach are just a few dozen feet apart inside Deadworld.”

  “The concept of space is radically different in the realm of the dead than in our own. The sites are so close in the other realm you can see the breach through the Oracle eye as though peering from your window into your yard,” Walter added. “That was how Hobart was reliably able to reclaim his wife. He would lure her to the eye, where the dimensional wall is thin enough for his presence to waft through to the other side. That drew her to him.”

  “After a while, he figured out he could substitute some of his blood to draw her out while he remained at the Temple to claim her,” Cam said. “I’ve still got a few bags of it stashed in the cooler.” Cam laughed.

  Harlan abandoned his plate and stood. “I’d like to see the Oracle.”

  Quiet whispers stung his heart. He turned to where The Professor hovered, his temple throbbing.

  “I believe Cornelius may well be right,” Walter agreed. Harlan spun on him and the corpse raised his cadaverous arms in a gesture of peace. “If they still remain within the realm of the dead, it will not be just you that suffers.”

  “But I can’t just—”

  The Professor laid a shimmering hand on Harlan’s shoulder, his shadowed face wrung with sorrow.

  Walter stood and met Harlan’s eyes. “Never freed from the shackles of emotion, if you draw them to you through the eye, it will be as though they died once again…for all of you.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell you what to do, that’s on your shoulders, but you got time to think about what’s best.” Cam tapped the glowing face of his digital watch. “The suns already down, so unless you’re looking to wrassle a couple hundred ghosts, I don’t suggest you go up there right now.”

  Harlan’s glare shifted to Cam, then slid away, the rigidness in his stance easing. He drew out the flask and dropped back into his seat. He eased the lid open and downed what was left inside before passing the flask to Cam.

  “If I have to be good, I’m going to need a refill.”

  Cam smiled and took the flask. “You got it. I’ll get you a blanket and some extra clothes.”

  He headed off toward the back room while Walter wandered off the other way.

  “I’ll leave you to sleep, my friend. We’ll talk in the morning.” He ambled away, stopping as he neared the door. “I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder, then left the room.

  Harlan’s gaze shifted to The Professor. “You knew I might be able to see them through the eye?”

  The spirit hovered still for a moment, then at last offered a gentle nod. Whispers filled Harlan’s head.

  “Don’t you think that should be my choice?” He did his best to rein in the anger that was desperate to seep into his voice.

  There were more whispers and Harlan sank lower into his chair, his stomach a hard knot. It sickened him to think his guardian may well be right.

  Despite his rapport with the dead, he had been denied the opportunity to see his wife and daughter since their deaths. In his heart he knew they were suffering, trapped amongst the insane spirits who raged on in their unnatural afterlife. It was this image that drove him on, the need to lead their souls to peace so he could lay down the sword and join them. If he could just see them, he could let them know he was coming for them, that everything would be all right. He would bring them hope.

  But what if that wasn’t the case? What if they had moved on, forgotten him? Would his using the eye reawaken their sorrow, their pain?

  He rubbed at his temples, tears welling in his eyes before running unchecked down his heated cheeks. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to stare them in the face, then walk away to do what must be done. Having already failed them once, could he bear to see the look of betrayal in their eyes and continue on?

  He cast his gaze to The Professor, who looked back at him, his shadowed face awash with sadness. “Damn you for being right.” The spirit lowered his eyes and faded from sight.

  Cam appeared at his side and Harlan wiped at his tears when he saw him.

  “Thought you might need a little extra, to sleep, you know.” He handed Harlan the flask as well as a dusty bottle, which was nearly full, the golden liquid sloshing inside.
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  Harlan managed a weak smile as he claimed the whiskey, his hands shaking. Cam laid a couple of blankets out on the floor and tossed a pillow on top. He set a small pile of clothes beside the makeshift bed.

  “Sorry I can’t offer you something more comfortable.”

  Harlan shook his head. “This is great.” He gestured to the blankets and waggled the bottle. “It’s perfect. Thanks.”

  Cam smiled and met Harlan’s weary eyes. “I’ll be in the room right over there.” He pointed. “Holler if you need anything.”

  Harlan thanked him again and Cam lowered the lights and retired, leaving Harlan alone. Once he was gone, Harlan crawled beneath the blankets and cradled the whiskey as though it were a child. He thought about taking another drink, but couldn’t bring himself to open the bottle. He knew what awaited him above was only sorrow and death, but despite that, he wanted more than anything to find the Oracle; to see his family. He also knew it was the worst possible thing he could do.

  The bottle sealed, his willpower was just enough to keep him there, snuggled warm in the blankets. He rolled the whiskey out of reach and closed his eyes.

  At last, sleep came to him, but there was no peace hidden in its shadows. His dreams were haunted. He thrashed and moaned as the dead came for him, his wife and daughter spurring them on.

  * * * *

  Harlan woke with a start and leapt from under the blankets. His side admonished him with sharp spikes of pain. He stared at the unfamiliar surroundings, his hand on his sword, until at last his mind engaged. Remembering where he was, he drew in a deep breath and relaxed.

  A little light-headed, he dropped into the chair and waited it out. His side thumped in rhythm to his heart as he peeled away the shirt he’d been using to bind his ribs. The misshapen lump beneath was like a fleshy rainbow. Shades of purple, blue, yellow, and red were interspersed across it. Striations of black were just starting to spread.