All the things he had seen in his days, all the things Hugo Blackwood had shown him. Challenging his presumptions at first, shaking his view of the world and beyond. But even still, like any person, he never truly focused his attention on what was at the end. He knew there were other things out there. He had seen them. And most of what he’d seen was dark and malicious. But maybe there was something else. A peaceful place.

He thought back to Blackwood releasing the possessed boy in the graveyard that night so many years ago. Young Vernon Jamus, and how Blackwood stood over him, cleansing his soul. Freeing him. But to what? That was what Solomon wanted to know. This was one mystery Hugo Blackwood could not help him with, one case the occult detective could not solve.

There was no peace for Hugo Blackwood in this world, but maybe, just maybe, there was for Earl Solomon in the next.

Blackwood.

Solomon heard a familiar voice not his own.

Hugo Blackwood.

Solomon closed his eyes to purge the voice from his head. But it wasn’t in his head, it was there in the room with him. Solomon squeezed his eyes tightly shut, wanting it not to be true. He turned his head, rolling it on the pillow until it was blindly facing the hallway door. And then he opened his eyes.

His vision was split, doubled, and took a moment to come together and focus on the boy standing inside his door. Little Vernon Jamus. Solomon was afraid, as the boy came into his sight, that he would be the evil Vernon, possessed by the demon that used him as its instrument of conjuring to raise the spirits of the dead Mississippi Delta slaves.

But it was cleansed Vernon who had come for him. Bare-chested, wearing the same pants he had almost sixty years ago.

Solomon’s memory had summoned the boy. Invoked his spirit. Solomon’s waiting was over.

Vernon had come to take him away.

But if so…

Why was he saying Hugo Blackwood’s name?

As Solomon stared, a heavyset man turned the corner from the hallway into his hospital room. He wore a bright-blue shirt with a medical patch on the sleeve, and a cap with the name of an ambulance service on its crown. Below the brim, a thick trail of dark blood ran from underneath the man’s hat down his cheek to his chin. His eyes were vacant, hollow.

Solomon’s body seized up in terror.

Without another word or change of expression, Vernon Jamus simply disappeared, the ambulance driver stepping into his place.

Chapter

The Phantom arrived at the NewYork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital to a chaotic scene. An ambulance had crashed into a building support pillar just outside the emergency room entrance. The nose of the van was punched in, the front hood buckled, the ambulance tipped to one side on the curb.