by Dan Swanson
The Ghast, the Ghostly Avenger cut a path through the underworld like a snowplow through an inch of light snow, a path aimed straight at the top, the boss of bosses.
The drug dealer had recovered enough to warn her contact, and he thought he’d been adequately prepared, surrounded by a half-dozen of his most dangerous associates with a big reward promised to whoever brought down this upstart invader. He was wrong. The short stranger had walked calmly into his apartment as if the locks, alarms, magical wards, and outside guards had been no more of an impediment than walking through a light fog.
“I’ve got a few questions for Mickey Rawls. If I like the answers, he might live. The rest of you clear out.” The man’s voice was so low the room seemed to shake, the sound almost feeling like a physical impact.
“Take him out!” Rawls commanded. He didn’t care who this guy was or what he wanted; the way he’d got past all his expensive defenses was scary enough.
In the space of a half-second, over a dozen bullets from heavy-caliber handguns slammed into the body of this invader. Not a shot missed. The intruder’s body jerked this way and that, and finally fell over backward with a dozen terrible wounds — and the Ghast began screaming in agony. The high pitch of the scream, wavering between barely audible and ultrasonic, struck at the ears of the gunmen like an ice pick, causing pain and nausea. To a man, they fell to the floor, screaming themselves, some with blood coming from their ears and noses.
Near the door, the torn and ragged body of the Ghast twisted and writhed grotesquely. Her wounds quickly closed, twisted limbs straightened, and the dreadful screaming stopped. Within seconds, the Ghast was whole again, and had risen from the floor to confront her enemies. Some were unconscious, while most of the rest were lying on the floor, shuddering and unable to control their bodies with the delicate organs of their inner ears destroyed. Some were struggling up into sitting positions. The Ghast unerringly picked Rawls out of the squirming mass, pushed him up against the wall in a seated position, and asked her questions. She was pleased to know that her sonic attack had worked as she thought it should, although she wasn’t thrilled that she had to endure such pain to activate her terrible power.
Afterwards, Rawls never remembered the questions he was asked or the answers he gave, and he and his men were never able to give anyone more than a vague description of what had happened to them. The sonic scream had clouded their minds as well as destroyed their ears. A few of them never regained their sense of balance, and would spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs.
***
By the next dawn, the entire underworld knew that someone was looking for the boss of bosses — someone terrifying, a primal force as unstoppable and deadly as a tornado. Some of the victims of this elemental force had seen her without her trench coat, and the word was out that the Ghast was female, and only about five feet, five inches tall. So far, though, nobody had been able to stop her; most of those who’d tried were in intensive care. As well as showing astonishing martial arts skills, she had demonstrated other sonic powers, using her voice to paralyze some of her foes, while others ran off with unendurable terror.
The small stature of the Ghast belied her deadly nature. The appearance of the boss of bosses belied her own nature, perhaps equally deadly. She was also a short woman, one with white hair held in a bun by hairpins, wearing old-fashioned spectacles, thin to the point of being gaunt. In a black gingham dress with a green scarf wrapped around her neck, she looked like someone’s old grandmother. A lot of people thought of her as the Old Bag, but nobody dared say that, even when they were sure she couldn’t hear. She regularly shot underlings for a lot less. Nobody knew her real name for sure; she was called Aunt Minerva.
Aunt Minerva knew in advance that the Ghast was on her way. She had her toughest lieutenants arrayed around her mid-town office building. A half-dozen minor super-villains patrolled the skies and the interior of the building. The four most powerful criminal mages in the Western Hemisphere surrounded the place with wards of protection. Then Minerva took one final precaution, and settled down to wait. Her estimate of the Ghostly Revenger’s prowess told her that the Ghast would somehow bypass all her defenses; she made a bet with herself on how long it would take.
It was a bet she lost. About ten minutes before she was expected, the Ghast was standing before Minerva’s giant desk in her midtown penthouse office. To the boss of bosses, who hadn’t seen her coming, it was almost as if she’d materialized out of thin air. Her own pistol materialized in her hand, aimed squarely at the Ghast’s head, with the same uncanny speed and silence.
“Aunt Minerva, I presume?” The bass voice seemed to shake the whole building.
“Just who are you, and what do you want?” the older woman snarled. Her voice sure didn’t sound old.
“My name is the Ghast, and what I want is simple — complete control of your criminal empire.”
“Is that all?” Minerva sounded relieved. “Well, you can have it.” She sounded emphatic, and dropped her aim, setting the pistol down on the desk. “I’d hoped that there would be at least one real man in the criminal ranks of New York, one strong, masterful man worthy of me, but they are all weaklings!” She sighed longingly, looking at half a dozen pictures on her desk. “Now, my husbands — there were some real men! Bah!” She turned back to the invader. “You want it? It’s yours.”
With her last word, suddenly her pistol was back in her hand, having moved so fast that, even with her superior reflexes, even the Ghast didn’t have time to dodge. The bullet caught her in the larynx and smashed out through the back of her neck. If she hadn’t been a supernatural creature, she’d have died almost instantly. As it was, she gurgled in tremendous pain — but, of course, with her vocal cords temporarily missing her sonic powers had been rendered useless. Somewhere in the back of her mind, her analytical voice spoke. I guess I do have a silly weakness!
Aunt Minerva was a dead-eye shooter with the powerful Smith & Wesson 500 she favored, and her next four shots hit shoulder and hip joints. As the Ghast collapsed on the floor, writhing in agony but already beginning to heal, a net made of steel twine dropped on her, and several large, strong men rushed into the room to truss her securely. They were too late — her incredible healing power restored her vocal cords. She screamed, and those several large, strong men fell to the floor, bleeding from their eyes, nose, and ears. She threw off the net and turned to Minerva — and instantly froze, motionless.
The czarina of crime was wearing noise-canceling headphones. Velvet, the first link in the Ghast’s chain to Aunt Minerva, was bound upright in a chair next to Aunt Minerva, and the gun was pressed against her forehead. She had recently been treated very roughly; her clothes were in tatters, her face bruised, and there was blood smeared across parts of her body.
“You spared her last night. If you move a muscle, she’ll die,” Minerva threatened in a harsh voice that sounded very strange coming from someone’s elderly grandmother.
***
On another plane of existence, no more than a happy heartbeat away from our own, two strange figures watched the scene above play out below them.
“Say, Bensonhurst, there’s evil about to happen down there. That girl is destined to become an adult teacher. She’ll teach immigrants how to pass their citizenship tests, and at the same time, help them learn English. She’ll affect the lives of hundreds of people for the better — if she lives through the night. That’s our cue to go into action!” The speaker was a skeleton, a strange skeleton, to be sure. He was wearing spectacles, with round frames and black lenses, a beat-up old Stetson hat, and a red bow tie with black polka dots. And there was a big meerschaum pipe hanging from his mouth. This was Spooks, a ghost with a mission: to help the good and punish the evil.
“Well, there’s a body down there waiting for you,” replied the skeleton’s companion, Bensonhurst. “We’d better hurry! It doesn’t look good for her!” Bensonhurst was an angel, a short, chubby angel in a pale blue nightshirt, with a weird hairdo — the gray hair on the side of his head was pulled back into a point, where a ponytail would be, and the hair on top of his head stood up like a stubby unicorn horn that poked right through his halo. Bensonhurst wasn’t a very senior angel — in fact, he was just a messenger — and he hung out with Spooks in his spare time (which seemed like all the time).
The two raced earthward, running across a line of fluffy clouds. They were invisible to human eyes, and they could see things no human could see. A spirit was emerging from one of the thugs lying on the floor. The spirit noticed them as well.
“Who the hell are you two? Halloween was last week!” the spirit snarled. Bensonhurst shuddered at the mention of the bad place.
“Take it easy, buddy,” the angelic messenger replied. “You don’t know it yet, but you just died. You’re dead! And swearing isn’t going to help you get upstairs, you know!”
The bewildered spirit was looking around and realizing that this was a very strange circumstance, indeed. Still, he responded the only way he knew how, by blustering with threats. He had made a living breaking legs, after all. “Hey, #^@% you, pal! You better straighten dis out, or you’ll be sorry!”
“Dear me, it isn’t I who will be sorry. But don’t worry. My… associate Beball will take care of you.” Bensonhurst shuddered as he pulled a pager from his pocket.
He had to unlock a small red panel that was labeled Emergency Use Only. Underneath was a button marked with a skull and crossbones against red flames. He hesitated, clearly reluctant to use this last-resort measure. By now, the thuggish spirit was advancing menacingly on Spooks, so he shrugged and pressed the button.
There was a flash of light, and the stench of sulfur, and another being superficially similar to Bensonhurst, but with red skin, black hair, a long, barbed tail and twin horns instead of the messenger’s unicorn spike and halo arrangement, now stood before them. He pointed his pitchfork at the bad guy’s ghost.
“That the one?” he asked. His voice roared and crackled like a blast furnace.
“Yeah. Drop him halfway, will you? There’s still a chance for him,” Bensonhurst ordered his counterpart. “He’s definitely not the most evil spirit in this room.”
“Aw, crap!” the minor demon uttered, clearly disappointed. Then he brightened. “Well, I can have some fun with him on the way!” Flames flashed from the end of his pitchfork and splashed over the threatening ghost. As the ghost started screaming, demon and ghost vanished.
“I hope that poor fellow gets the message,” Bensonhurst commented sadly. He shook himself. “Well, I gave him the best chance he’s likely to get.”
Spooks hadn’t paid much attention to the confrontation, too busy studying the scene. For now, the tableau was frozen. Time was suspended for Spooks and Bensonhurst until they decided to rejoin the normal stream of events. Spooks walked over to the recently vacated body and touched it. His skeleton seemed to dissolve into mist, and the mist coalesced on the empty body.
***
“Hey, Boss, you’re an old bag!” Ripper said, sitting up suddenly.
The abrupt movement from someone she’d thought dead startled Aunt Minerva, and her attention wavered for a tenth of a second. The Ghast dived forward instantly, reacting and moving with magically induced speed. She smashed her shoulder into Minerva’s gun hand, knocking her into a twirl. The crime boss’s hand twitched, and she pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the Ghast under the chin and passed through her neck, and she fell to the ground. By this time, Ripper was on his feet and racing toward his former boss.
Spinning, Minerva fired and shot Ripper in the stomach and chest. He was jerked backward a bit, but his body was massive enough that even the heavy .50 caliber bullets didn’t stop him — and bullets couldn’t hurt a dead man.
Minerva put up a good fight, as she was much stronger than she looked, and knew every dirty trick in the book, including the ones she had contributed. But Spooks in Ripper’s body outweighed her by almost two-hundred pounds, didn’t feel pain, and had been a professor of anatomy in his earthly existence, so he knew her pressure points. In three shakes he had her face down on the floor, a knee in the small of her back, and was tying her wrists behind her with her own scarf. Strangely, as soon as Minerva realized she was being overpowered, she stopped fighting.
“I haven’t been treated like this by anyone except Captain Marvel. Why haven’t you shown this side of yourself before, Ripper? We could have been married months ago!”
A handkerchief appeared out of thin air and quickly stuffed itself in Minerva’s mouth. “Thanks, Bensonhurst,” Spooks acknowledged his invisible partner.