On June 7, 1970, four Mereville Group operatives died while investigating the former North Water fish processing plant. This was in a time before computers, and since there were no other records in the Group’s archives about the plant, it was generally believed the property had remained empty and unexplored in the nine years since the Group had acquired it.
According to Charles, the report wasn’t very detailed—mostly because there were no survivors. The investigators arrived in the early hours of June 7 to begin their preliminary assessment of the property. The team was composed of four members—two field operatives and two psychics.
“What kind of psychics?” Sally asked.
Charles scanned the file with his finger. “They were twin brothers, David and Radovan Petrović. Born in 1947 to Serbian parents who had immigrated to Canada the year before. Popped up on the Group’s radar in ’64 when they were eighteen. Immediately entered into the Group’s psi-training academy and working in the field by March of ’65.”
“Get them while they’re young, huh?” Toby said.
Sally and Charles glared at him.
“What kind of psi-abilities did they have?” Sally asked.
Charles kept reading. “David was a mental dominant. Radovan was a telepath and a sensitive.” He raised his eyes from the report and looked at Sally. “Just like you.”
“What happened to them?”
“I’m guessing they got turned into Hamburger Helper,” Toby said.
“No one knows exactly what happened to them,” Charles said. “But yes, they were slaughtered, like the fish plant workers in ’57.” He closed the file. “Only this one didn’t make it into the history books. The Group covered it up—even in 1970 they were good at that. The building was sealed, the first in a series of fences was erected, and security guards were posted to keep people out. Things have been quiet ever since.”
“Until this morning,” Sally said.
“Until this morning,” Charles agreed. “Which brings us to the case of poor, unfortunate Mr. Budden.”
He reached back into his briefcase and brought out another file, this one a buff-coloured folder that wasn’t nearly as flashy as the top-secret Mereville Group file.
“Forensic science has come a long way in the past sixty years. And so has technology. This is the preliminary report on the autopsy of Mr. Budden performed by the Mereville Group’s resident pathologist just a few hours ago. Toxicology and DNA testing aren’t available yet, but the report states Mr. Budden died as a result of massive tissue loss. Wounds on the body are described as bite marks with wide teeth on the upper jaw and smaller, pointier teeth on the lower jaw. The predator with the closest match to these characteristics is a shark—specifically, a bull shark.”
“A bull shark,” Toby said.
“Yes,” Charles said. “A big one, apparently.”
“I think that autopsy report is a bunch of bull shark.” Toby turned to Sally. “Are you buying this crap?”
Sally frowned. “Wasn’t the body found inside the warehouse? On land?”
“Yes,” Charles said, “but…”
“I hate to state the obvious,” Toby said, cutting him off, “but even if this guy was attacked by something in the water and somehow managed to crawl back onto land, Lake Ontario is a freshwater lake. There have never been any sharks in there.”
“No,” Charles agreed. “Not recently.”
Sally and Toby took a moment to let that sink in. Then Toby said, “What are you saying, he was killed by the ghost of a shark?”
“A ghost shark?” Sally said. “Like that terrible movie?”
Toby glanced over at her. “I kinda liked it.”
“I’m not talking about a stupid movie,” Charles said. “And I’m not talking about the ghost of a prehistoric shark. I’m talking about a creature that existed long before there even were sharks. Millions of years ago this whole area was underwater, and it was home to all manner of creatures, some of them so strange and horrifying they would’ve made H. P. Lovecraft shit his pants.”
“I know about that stuff,” Toby said. “Continental divide, glacial drift, all that jazz. I read the dinosaur books. I watched those BBC documentaries.”
Charles said, “We can at least agree that whatever killed Mr. Budden, and the many victims before him, it was very big and very vicious.”
“Okay,” Toby said. “So the ghost of some prehistoric predator is munching on anyone who goes into this crappy warehouse. I get it. But why now? This place has been locked up tight for almost fifty years. If this thing has been here the whole time, then how come no one has seen it? And why hasn’t it killed anyone since 1970? I mean, before it gobbled up the security guard this morning.”
“I believe the entity has been manifesting over the years,” Charles said. “Maybe not often, but it’s been here. I also believe the entity’s ability to manifest is directly connected to the ‘meals’ it ingests—not so much the people themselves but their lifeforce energy, which is almost certainly the thing from which it takes actual nourishment.
“I don’t think it was Mr. Budden’s fault he went into the warehouse. Not entirely. I believe he was merely one factor in a confluence of events that led to his untimely death. Maybe the lock on that particular door finally failed after doing its job for so many years. Or maybe the wood in the doorframe had rotted to the point that the lock became superfluous, and a random gust of wind blew the door open. The point is, we will probably never know the circumstances that led Frank Budden to enter the warehouse. Maybe he’d been inside before. Maybe he went in there some nights to get out of the cold, or to take a break from his loquacious partner, Mr. Voorman. It doesn’t really matter. What it boils down to is Mr. Budden was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He entered the warehouse in the early hours of this morning when the entity happened to manifest on this plane of existence … and things happened accordingly.”
“Okay,” Toby said. “But what are we supposed to do about it? The man is dead and we can’t change that. Why don’t we lock the place up again and leave it alone? The legend of the Eight lives on and so do we. What do you say?” He looked back and forth between Charles and Sally.
“We can’t just leave,” Sally said. “Whatever started here this morning, it’s not over yet. The energy the entity absorbed from the guard wasn’t enough to sate its appetite. It’ll come back, hungrier and more powerful than before.”
“How do you know that?” Toby demanded. He turned to Charles. “How does she know that?”
“I just do,” Sally said. “And so do you.” She paused. “Because we’re psychic.”
Toby frowned at her, then looked over at Charles, who was smiling at him.
“I am not psychic,” Charles said, “but I knew she was going to say that.”
“It’s the pattern of the deaths,” Sally said. “The two incidents in 1957 were separated by a few months. Like a small meal followed by a big meal.”
Toby said, “You call twenty-five people a small meal?”
“A smaller meal, then,” Sally said. “An appetizer followed by a main course. Then the entity was dormant for a while. For years. As though it was recharging between meals.”
“Or digesting,” Toby said.
“Exactly.”
“But there was no pattern in the 1970 deaths. It was only those four Mereville Group guys. How come there weren’t more deaths after that?”
“Think about it, Toby. Two of those investigators were psychics. An entity like this will feed on the lifeforce of any living being, but a psychic is probably like foie gras to this thing.”
“So you’re saying those two brothers ended up super-sizing the monster’s meal?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Okay, fine.” Toby turned to Charles. “So how do we exorcise the ghost of a fish?”
“The psychokinetic energy the entity absorbed from the security guard won’t be enough to satisfy its appetite. Like Sally said, it will be back. We could lock up the warehouse again and hope for the best, or we could do something about it ourselves, right now.”
“Do what?” Toby said, although he already had a pretty good idea.
“The energy allowing the entity to manifest in our realm must be dissipated. In order to do that we have to draw it out. And in order to do that we need to lure the entity with bait—psychic bait.”
Toby looked over at the warehouse. “So one of us has to go in there.”
Sally turned to Charles. “Couldn’t I stay out here and project my mind inside?”
“That won’t work,” Charles said. “You were right about psychic energy being the kind of food this entity likes best. But it also wants meat. This thing may be a ghost, but it still remembers what it was like to be alive. It remembers hunger.”
Sally shook her head. “I can’t do it, Charles. I can’t go in there alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” Charles said. “We’re all going in.”