Riding the Wire

It's Just Like Riding a Bicycle-At Half the Speed of Sound

  When he heard several tonnes worth of riot gear come tromping down his hall at stupid-o-clock in the morning Jackson knew it was going to be a long night. They were already calling the lightning strike a freak accident, and the police were mostly there to reassure the hundreds of people living in the block of flats that everything was fine. The fact that less than an hour before their arrival over a dozen ghosts had burst from the telephone wires to wreak havoc on the building and possess anyone holding a phone was irrelevant, apparently. Even now, on the topmost floors, he knew a team of trained exorcists were driving the floaters from the building, and rounding up the possessed. They would be exorcised, left to recover in the comfort of their own bed, and the whole incident would be smoothed over by the media. 

  However, that would be several hours from now, and until the building was declared safe, just like it had been before the attack, he had to wait outside with all the rest of them. He'd managed to find a dressing gown at least before he was propelled from his flat, and one kind soul had donated a pair of rubber soled trainers to keep his bare feet away from the freezing concrete. The lad was a neighbour, or at least lived on the same floor, and Jackson grinned as he guessed the reason for the charitable act. It had taken twenty minutes for the quick response team to arrive at the building, and during those twenty minutes, Jackson had been riding the wire, defending everyone he could from the spirits that wanted to possess them. He had felt magnificent, one untrained unequipped exorcist against a whole building worth of trouble, throwing wards for defence, tuning into the wire to give everyone advance warning of danger, and even using one elderly resident's graphite bomb, a retirement gift, to disable one of the possessed.

  The whole experience had felt exhilarating, but when his feet had found the concrete outside, and he had turned back towards the building, his courage had departed. Fighting for survival was all well and good, but running back into danger was another thing entirely. The police had arrived shortly afterwards and his heroism remained intact as it gave way to practicality. He had received a clap on the back from one of the police officers, a mug of hot chocolate, and was sent on his merry way to wait with the rest of the normal people. It had stung his pride a bit, and if the man who'd given him the instruction-order-hadn't been roughly the size of a brick-house then he might have argued and offered his help. But the man was huge, and even now Jackson could see him barking orders into a headset, annoyed that his men weren't instantly jumping to obey. 

  "Well ain't he a ruddy fool" 

  Jackson turned to find his neighbour, Betty Rosen, the one who'd given him the graphite bomb, staring at the police captain with a mixture of disgust and disappointment. Jackson knew the old lady had been an exorcist back in her day, back when nobody was sure how exactly you went about being an exorcist, and her attitude made him pay closer attention to the captain. He didn't get it at first until a fresh wave of shouting into the headset took the man even closer to the building, and then he wanted to slap himself for not spotting it. It wasn't unheard of for headsets to be used as channels for possession, and standing that close to an active exorcism wearing one was just plain stupid. Even the teenagers in the crowd had been wise enough to leave their mobiles in the building out of reach.

  "Think we should warn him"

  She made a sound that suggested the jumped-up fool could damn well wait until he was possessed to learn the lesson, and hobbled back to a seat in one of the police vehicles. Jackson followed, for lack of anything better to do, and listened to a few minutes of grumbling about the state of things these days. The words were harsh but he had to agree. Taking twenty minutes to arrive at an active antenna, a nickname for a flat block undergoing possession  was sloppy. The buildings were a dangerous combination of lumps of concrete, which stored memories and emotions that fuel ghosts, and a whole load of electrical and telephone wires, the necessary medium for ghosts to manifest.