to the museum lasted quite a while,” Teag said, arching an eyebrow. “And I’m betting you and Lucinda weren’t just chit-chatting. So, spill. What happened?”
“I promise to fill you in over dinner, but I’m starving. And if we’re going to kick Nephilim butt tonight, I need to fuel up.”
I caught Teag up on everything that happened as we ate, and then he dropped me off at my house so I could take care of Baxter and get a quick nap before it was time to go to the Old Jail. I slept on the couch, but my dreams were dark and I woke up to find Bax licking my nose, looking at me worriedly.
“Just bad dreams,” I reassured him – and me. I held him for a few minutes, stroking his silky white fur. Since the trouble with the Nephilim, we had stopped taking our nightly walks around the block, which meant Baxter only had our small backyard garden to explore. We played a lot of Frisbee. I figured that counted a bit for weapons practice, since I now had the chakram, but I missed the freedom of a good walk and the conversations with neighbors, and I’m pretty sure Baxter did, too.
“Not too much longer, I hope,” I told him as we came back in from the garden. “Once we save the world, you and I can go back to taking nice, long walks.” I hoped it would be that simple.
Midnight came faster than I would have liked, and Teag pulled up in front of my house with Sorren riding shotgun. I slid into the back seat, with a sack that held all my gear. I guessed that Teag had his weapons in the trunk. We didn’t have too many more ‘special’ bullets for Josiah’s guns, but both pistols were reloaded, and I had a few spare rounds in my pocket. Along with the new weapons Teag and I had gained at the Briggs Society, I should have felt more confident, but I’d had my fill of Nephilim, and I knew the war hadn’t even really begun yet.
We parked several blocks away from the Old Jail and walked. Charleston is a pretty safe city, if you don’t count the ghosts. Our path took us past one of the old cemeteries, and a shower of pebbles reminded us that the ghosts remained terrified of the Reaper threat. The living would be afraid and angry too, if they knew how much danger they were in.
The Old Jail is a big, imposing structure in daytime, and more so at night. It’s been a cursed site for a long time, since the land beneath the Jail was used as a hospital and a pauper’s cemetery before the Jail was built back in 1802. The front section is a boxy stone castle, with an octagonal tower in the back. Until it was finally closed in 1939, the Jail held about three times as many prisoners as it was designed to house. Evil, grief, and misery are steeped into the stone. It’s no wonder the Old Jail is considered one of the most haunted sites in a very haunted city.
I had toured the Jail in daylight, and even though I’m not a medium like Alicia, I was sure we were being watched by unseen eyes. The pictures I took were full of orbs, even though it was a clear afternoon without rain or fog. The Jail once housed Charleston’s most notorious prisoner, serial killer Lavinia Fisher, who was hanged in the back courtyard. Many people thought Lavinia’s spirit never left, and her ghost is one of the most frequently seen. Confederate and Federal prisoners of war were held at the Old Jail, along with pirates, leaders of slave uprisings, and common criminals. Conditions were brutal, and some inmates didn’t survive long enough to meet their date with the hangman.
Dark place. Bad ghosts. Chains from the ceiling. No one could argue about the Old Jail being a dark place. Even now, a lingering sense of doom pervaded its shadowed passageways. Plenty of the people whose spirits might have remained here certainly qualified as ‘bad’. But I knew right away where Harry’s ghost meant when he talked about chains.
There’s a room near the entrance that was once an interrogation chamber. Historians debate exactly how things were done, but many folks believe prisoners were suspended from chains and either left to hang painfully in their bonds or beaten to coerce confessions. It’s one of the most haunted rooms