"Valenti!" Michael yelled.

"Here!" Valenti yelled back. "Door's stuck. I can't get it open."

"Step back from the door," Michael ordered, then focused his energy on the door. When the force he generated smashed into the door, the basement door blew open.

Valenti lay inside, covering his head with one arm and holding the flashlight he'd taken from Kelli. He glanced up at Michael.

Without hesitation but with an acquired knowledge of what one of the creatures was capable of, Michael crossed the room, watching as the elongated and emaciated form of the poorly robed man turned toward him.

"Do you see it?" Valenti asked.

"Yeah," Michael replied, watching the creature floating through the air. The wraps that covered the ghost flapped in the wind. The dead face remained emotionless, the mouth and eyes all open in perfect black circles. "Don't you?"

"No," Valenti answered.

Even as Michael wondered about that, and wondered what he was going to do, the thing changed shape, mor-phing into a young woman with a broken face.

Valenti cursed and backed away from the creature.

"Do you see it now?" Michael asked.

"Yeah," Valenti answered hoarsely. "That's the first woman I ever saw murdered after I became a deputy."

Feeling braver and more certain of himself, Michael shook his head. Sand and grit still whirled in the room, stinging his eyes and scratching at his face and arms. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the wind. "That's not a ghost. That's something else. Something that can change forms. That isn't what it was a moment ago. I never heard of a ghost that could do that."

"Jim Valenti," the ghostly woman said. She stood straight and still despite the winds cycling within the darkened basement. "You could have saved me. You could have prevented my death. I died because you didn't take me out of that house and away from my husband."

Valenti stared at the ghost. Panic darted through his eyes, but he stood his ground.

"It's not real," Michael said, sensing that the ghost was somehow touching Valenti's fear, making it stronger. "It's not a ghost; it's something else."

"It looks pretty real to me," Valenti said. His eyes never left the ghost walking toward him. "I tried to save her. I got her to leave her husband once, but she went back. And when she did, he killed her."

The ghost continued walking toward Valenti. It flickered like an image on an old black-and-white movie. A hand lifted, pointing, then a huge spark of electricity flashed from the fingertips.

The electricity caught Valenti in the chest and knocked him back against the wall. A cry of pain tore from his lips.

A silver shine tracked across the basement floor, drawing Michael's eye. He missed whatever caused the shine, and thought maybe it was an ore sample that might have been in the basement, but he noticed the crowbar that Valenti had dropped.

"You killed me," the ghost-thing told Valenti, closing in on him. Electricity sparked at her fingertips as she moved toward him relentlessly.

A desperate idea formed in Michael's head as he stared at the crowbar. He picked the curved piece of metal from the basement floor and turned to the ghost. Grabbing the crowbar like a baseball bat, he swung at the ghost's back. The crowbar passed through the ghost's body.

Okay, Michael thought, the Neanderthal approach is definitely out. He fell to his knees and stabbed the straightest end of the crowbar into the basement's stone floor.

"You are responsible for my death, Jim Valenti," the ghost said, reaching for him. "And you harbor the Outsiders. They don't belong here. They've already brought death to this community. More will follow. They are not like your people. The Outsiders will never care about your people."

Valenti stood his ground and tried to shove against the ghost. His hands passed through the thing, then a massive surge of electricity dropped him to the floor.

On his knees, both fists around the crowbar, Michael poured his energy into the metal length. The crowbar started glowing red. He pictured the energy pulling at the ghost, and willed the power to suck the thing into the ground, whatever it was.

Abruptly the ghost jerked back from Valenti, feet skidding against the stone floor.

"Nooooo!" the ghost howled as it continued sliding toward the crowbar. The creature whirled around.

Michael kept pouring his energy into the crowbar.

The ghost levered an accusing arm toward him. "You will die, Outsider! You will die! You can't remain here!"

Michael didn't bother to reply. The ghost was scared of him. That had to be a good thing.

The ghost came closer, sparks playing between its fingers. The eyes changed, becoming dark, bottomless pits. "You're going to die, Outsider! This is not your place! You can't stay here!"

Michael poured more power into the crowbar, trying to draw the creature into the bar and ground it. Whatever else the creature might be, it consisted of electrical fields.

A huge static energy charge exploded in front of Michael's face, blinding him for an instant and covering his face in a sudden wash of heat. Then he watched as the ghost stretched and became disproportional, like a strip of taffy being pulled. In the next instant, the ghost was sucked into the crowbar, yanked along the lines of electromagnetic force Michael had channeled the creature into.

The ghost disappeared, and the wind disturbance died away. An eerie silence descended over the basement area.

Valenti pushed himself to his feet cautiously. "Is it gone?"

Michael held the crowbar fast in both hands. The power he contained still throbbed within the length of metal. "I don't know. I've got it contained for now."

"What is it?"

Michael shook his head, trying to keep concentrating on holding the force within the crowbar. He imagined the energy striking the stone floor and burning itself out of existence.

A silver surface glinted to Michael's right, drawing his attention to a pile of rags and bones lying against the wall to the right. The thing, whatever it was, moved arthritically, rocking back and forth. It was about the size of a quarter, barely seen in the beam of the flashlight Valenti held.

An explosion of light filled the basement again. Through slitted lids, Michael saw lightning shoot from the crowbar and strike the bobbing silver object trundling through the pile of rags and bones. The crowbar was suddenly dead weight in his hands.

Sparks smoldered in the pile of old clothing, like coals in a campfire.

Valenti joined Michael, walking a little unsteadily. He aimed the beam at the pile of clothes. "You saw it, didn't you?" Valenti asked.

"Yeah," Michael croaked.

The pile of rags turned out to be the remnants of clothing that had rotted away. Inside the rags was a skeleton. The eye patch had fallen as the flesh had melted away over the years, but still hung around the dead man's neck. A leather pouch on a rawhide thong around his neck had a hole torn through the side. The whole left side of the skull was crushed; bone fragments barely clung to the damaged area and the empty cavity where the brain had been.

"Terrell Swanson?" Michael asked, struggling a little to keep from backing away from the skeleton. Standing up to a ghost that he didn't believe was a ghost was one thing, but this was definitely a dead guy.

"Probably take the forensics people a little while to agree to that," Valenti said in a tired voice, "but I'm betting they do."

"Wilkins killed him," Michael said.

"That would be my guess too. When that old man gets out of the hospital, he's going to be up on murder charges." Valenti shifted the light to the gaping hole in the back wall of the basement.

The edges of the hole were jagged concrete. A pick and a sledgehammer lay on the floor nearby.