Runner Ramirez & The Great Ghost War
Chapter 3 (from The Story Genie)
After a long drive and a lot of talking from their new companion Rosemary, Runner and Fairweather arrive in Chicago. They of course end up at a diner, this time directly guided by Runner’s ‘friend’, only to find themselves witness to the end of a police/gang pursuit. Oh, and then they see a ghost.
And now…
Runner Ramirez & The Great Ghost War
Chapter 3
I’ve seen a lot in my life, first in the war then in my time sharing a body with a demon. But in that moment I saw something I had never seen before. You know what appeared right next to Jack the cop?
A ghost.
Not the psychological kind I described earlier but a real, semi-transparent ghost. The being appeared beside Jack and leaned in close. Aside from the transparency, his form was mostly white and he seemed to be flickering, like an old light bulb. He wore a suit much like the gangsters complete with a derby. There was a splotch across his chest that looked like a bloodstain. He’d been shot. Probably how he died.
It took a second for the officers to notice the ghost’s presence. Each of their eyes widened as their faces went an equal shade of white. Then Jack saw it. He jumped and shrieked. And started shooting. Bullets flew from both sides as the officers and gangsters scattered to cover. One bullet hit the diner’s window. We all dropped in response.
The gunfight was only seconds old when Rosemary burst into the diner. She ran over to our position and looked down with a big smile on her face. She was giddy with excitement, practically bouncing up and own amidst the hail of gunfire.
“There’s a ghost out there!” she squealed. She seemed quite oblivious to what was going on around her. “Can you believe it? I mean I’ve heard them speak and have seen partial ghost forms but never one like this! I-ahh!”
I jerked her to the floor beside us. She landed rather hard, felt a little bad about that, but kept talking anyway.
“But that’s not all! I saw the man who must’ve called that ghost, I assumed he must’ve died here, the ghost not the spiritualist or medium if you prefer he’s the guy I saw in the car near ours. Like he was waiting here.”
She kept talking but I ignored her as I rose to look through the window. I tried to see the parking area but could not. I was about to move to the door, its glass faced the right direction, when it burst open. A man stumbled inside. One of the gangsters. He held his chest and moved our way. He collapsed to the floor after a couple of steps. Blood ran from behind his hands. Fairweather, being the near-priest that he was, scooted over to try and help. This finally got Rosemary’s attention. She yelped at the sight of the blood and quickly rose only to hit her head on the underside of the table. She dropped back down, woozy and half conscious. I rubbed my eyes and slid over to Fairweather. He was trying to apply pressure to the gangster’s wound with a bunch of paper towels. Wasn’t really working.
“He gonna live?” I asked.
Before Fairweather could answer an awful scream echoed through the diner. It was one of the patrons and it took about two seconds to see what it was about. A ghost stood just inside the door. The same one who had spooked the cop. He stood, or rather floated there with a sinister smile on his flickering face. My mind raced with what I thought I knew about ghosts. Could they hurt us physically? Or would they just pass right through? The ghost took a step forward, glided really, when another ghost whipped through the door. Well, he actually moved THROUGH the wall and slammed into the other. I guess they couldn’t pass through each other. The two started wrestling around on the floor, or a few inches above it, and flickered in and out of, well, existence. After a few seconds they disappeared through the counter and were out of sight. I blinked several times, not entirely sure what I had just seen.
“He’s gone,” Fairweather said as he sat up. Now HE appeared oblivious to the continuing gunfire. “Damn.”
Fairweather took death rough, part of why he was so good at fighting demons. He let out a breath and scooted to Rosemary. She sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“What, what happened?” she asked.
“Bumped your head a bit,” Fairweather answered as he examined the top of her head. “Got a good bump here.”
“It hurt-ahhh!!”
Rosemary screamed softly as she saw the dead gangster. Tears formed on her face as she leaned against Fairweather. He held her in the most awkward way possible. I would’ve laughed in a different setting.
“Cease fire!” one of the officers outside yelled. The gunshots ended a second later. That same officer continued to talk, ostensibly to Mike Genna but I couldn’t hear any of it. I stared at the dead gangster for a moment then looked to the wall through which the ghosts had passed.
“What the hell is going on here?” I asked.
“Appears Chicago’s gang wars have gone supernatural,” Fairweather replied.
“Oh!!” Rosemary squeaked as she started bouncing up and down in excitement. Seemed like her head wound was no longer bothering her in the slightest. “I know what to do! I know how to find out!!”
“Find out what?”
“What’s going on!” she squeaked again as she pointed to the dead gangster. “This guy has been in these gangs forever I bet! We can see what he’s experienced and maybe that will tell us how these ghosts are involved. Maybe could help us find Houdini too!”
She clapped a couple times then rose to her knees. She scooted to the gangster and waved her hands over him. She muttered something unintelligible.
“I’ve wanted to try this forever! Come here Mr. Ramirez.”
I shot a glance to Fairweather who shrugged in response. I gulped and slid over to Rosemary. She grabbed my hand and placed it on the gangster’s forehead.
“What will this-“
A sudden wave of nausea washed over me. My vision went very blurry as I seemed to rock back and forth. I fell to the side. Everything went black.
Now I’ve told you a lot over the past couple days, most of which I know you don’t fully believe. As you’ve mentioned. Well, you probably won’t believe what happened next either.
Not sure for how long I blacked out but when I opened my eyes again I felt…different. I was also no longer in the diner but stood in the back room of a casino. Not sure how I knew that but I most definitely did. I blinked a couple times and looked around. There were perhaps 7 guys in the room, three of whom sat at a table and counted money. Another one paced next to a phone with the last three standing around like guards. I took a closer look at the men around the table. I recognized one of them from the newspaper, Al Capone. I know you’ve heard of him. The man pacing by the phone was in the paper too, a Dean O’Banion though the caption mentioned that he had died in 1924, two years prior. More nausea appeared as I scanned the wall for a calendar. I found one, the date was November 3, 1924. I gulped. My eyes widened when I noticed my reflection in a mirror that hung beside the calendar. I wasn’t looking at myself but the dead gangster from the diner. I was somehow…inside him. Like that show from the 80’s, Quantum Leap. It was incredibly strange.
“I’m gonna call that cheapskate!” O’Banion declared.
“You need to settle down O’Banion,” Al Capone said. “Come sit down and have a drink.”
The man shot a glare Capone’s way then picked up the phone. He dialed a number and resumed pacing, stretching the phone’s cord to its limit.
“Angelo!” O’Banion exclaimed. “Heard you’ve run up quite the marker! You gonna pay that soon bub?”
“We should just cancel it as a professional courtesy,” Capone stated as he downed a drink. “It ain’t that much O’Banion.”
Another glare flew Capone’s way as O’Banion covered the phone and stepped over. He leaned close.
“Stay out of this Alphonse,” he snarled. He moved back a few feet and put the phone to his ear. “Now you listen here you piece of shit. You have one week to pay up in full or else. Yeah, you heard me.”
He slammed the phone down and stifled a shout. He pointed to a couple of the bodyguards and strode for the door.
“You need to rethink this,” Capone said from the table.
O’Banion stopped by the door and looked back. Something bordering on pure hate filled his eyes. He pointed a hard finger back across the room.
“Like I said, stay out of this,” he growled. “And watch yourself.”
As followed by his bodyguards O’Banion left the room. I looked toward Capone when a new wave of nausea hit. My vision went blurry again and I fell…
Only to snap to as I walked across the street. I stopped and looked around. I could feel I was still in the other body somewhere in Chicago. A few other guys moved ahead of me, toward a flower shop. Schofield’s.
“Joe, come on.”
I guessed the gangster’s name was Joe. My name at the moment. The guy closest to me waved for me to hurry up. I resumed walking and felt something bump against my leg. I looked down to see a Tommy gun under the trench coat I wore. I stifled a goan; the group I was with wasn’t here to buy flowers.
We entered the shop and walked through the sales area to the back room. Dean O’Banion stood at a work bench and clipped a few chrysanthemums. He looked up as the first guy in our group stepped to him. They shook hands. The guy moved away and the next two men opened fire. Bullets slammed into O’Banion’s chest and throat. He collapsed to the floor. One of the guys then knelt and put one in the back of the gangster’s head. I couldn’t believe it. But before I could do anything the nausea came once more. A repeat of the blurry vision followed after which everything went black.
I opened my eyes to now see that I stood in a warehouse somewhere. I stood before a couple guys in very high-end suits. One of them was the arrogant guy from the car chase. Mike Genna. The other looked a lot like him and as I learned later, was his brother Angelo. He stepped right to me.
I felt myself nod and then speak without meaning to. “Got it boss!” It was a very strange feeling. He stepped closer and grabbed my lapels.
“And don’t let them know it Joe. We’re counting on you.”
I nodded again when the room blurred. The nausea I was getting used to returned and the next thing I knew I sat hunkered over in the booth of some diner. I twisted my head to listen to the next booth over. I assumed in the moment that I, or the gangster Joe, was spying on whoever sat there. Angelo Genna had told me, um him, not to be seen and here I, he, was spying from an adjacent booth. Ballsy if not dumb.
“Yeah, that thing I told you before,” one of them said. “Now I think it’ll work.”
“I don’t understand any of your spiritualist bullshit. Just do what you gotta do.”
So I was apparently spying on a northside spiritualist. I wondered if he was the same guy Rosemary had seen. I wanted to lean around and get a look at him but I couldn’t move. I had no control over what was happening, I was basically just along for the ride. Like I said, strange. I kinda wondered if my ‘friend’ felt that way. Probably not as he could take control of me anytime he wanted. The nausea returned but before everything went black I heard the spiritualist say one more thing.
“Then I think it’s time we brought him back.”
I had no idea who he was talking about but fortunately I did not have to wait long to find out. Everything blurred and I next stood in an alley somewhere. A weaselly-looking guy fidgeted before me, his eyes darting all around.
“Calm down, no one will ever know,” I/Joe said.
“Better not cause if they do…I’ll be killed!” the guy stammered.
“I could kill you now.”
That got the guy to stop fidgeting. His wide eyes rotated up to look at me, um, Joe. He was scared to death. He stepped back but bumped into the wall. I/Joe followed and loomed over the shorter man. He gulped as he held up a hand.
“You, you got the money?”
This guy was ballsy too. Not yet sure what I was witnessing but it took guts to ask a person who had just threatened to kill you for some money. I felt my/Joe’s hand withdraw from my/his pocket with a roll of bills. I/Joe handed them over.
“Lead the way.”
The guy pocketed the cash and walked to a door a few feet away. I/Joe followed him inside and through several twists and turns before we stopped in a short hallway. The man pointed to a large vent up on the wall.
“That leads directly over the room,” he said. “If you go slow, it won’t make a noise. It’s two feet down after the first left.”
I/Joe nodded and reached up to remove the vent cover. I/Joe stepped up onto the guy’s knee, without asking, and hoisted my/himself into the ductwork. It was a tight fit but not too bad. I/Joe started crawling down the duct’s length. I assumed this was somehow part of Joe’s attempt to spy on the northsiders. After making a sharp left turn I/Joe came to a vent, another one that faced down. I could hear voices echoing from below. I/Joe lowered my/his head and looked through its slats.
I was above a rec room in what I assumed to be a northside club. In the center of the space a man knelt beside a suit jacket. Several men in hooded cloaks circled him. They chanted something unintelligible. The guy in the middle waved his hands over the jacket then looked toward the ceiling with eyes closed.
“I reach into the beyond and call forth…Dean O’Banion!” I recognized this guy’s voice, it was the northside spiritualist. The men around the periphery ended their chant with a shout after which the air got very cold. A wind rushed past from somewhere. Papers swirled about and the men’s cloaks fluttered. Then suddenly, a ghost appeared. He looked like the ones from the diner; he wore a nice suit and hat, marred only by the wounds on his chest and neck. Those were from the murder I witnessed in the flower shop. It was indeed Dean O’Banion.
The ghost looked around, stretched, testing out his ghostly body. He didn’t look surprised to be ‘alive’ again but almost like he expected it. He stepped to the now standing spiritualist.
“How long?”
“Two years.”
“Damn!” ghost Dean said as he kicked the air. He calmed himself after a moment and let out a breath. (Do ghosts breathe? Looked like it.) “Okay, it’s been a bit. Call the boys together, we got work to do.”
That was all I got to see as the nausea, blurriness, and blackness quickly came upon me. The jumps came quicker now, dropping me into Joe for very brief snippets as I witnessed more ghosts being called forth by the northsiders. After about 3 such jumps I landed in Joe as he stood before Al Capone and the Gennas.
“That’s what they’ve been doing,” I/Joe was saying. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. Now they got about four ghosts working for em.”
Al Capone leaned back and seemed to consider the report. I don’t think he lacked belief, he just looked annoyed.
“Sounds like we need some of our own,” he stated. He turned to some goon opposite the Gennas. “Get me Beauregard.”
~~
Runner’s seen and experienced all sorts of things since the war…and now he’s experiencing another person’s life! He’s learning firsthand the supernatural war in which Chicago’s gangsters are currently involved! But who’s Beauregard? Find out next week in Runner Ramirez & The Great Ghost War – Chapter 4!