The Ghosting of Gods (21 page)

46
something wants to happen

I press my hand to the glass. I hear him. I hear Danny. He’s talking inside my mind.

They killed me for loving my wife who died. I couldn’t give her up
,
couldn’t stuff her in a closet. We hate the tunnels. We want to go home
.
First we need services of Saint Frankenstein. Prayed to Holy Ghost for guidance. So lost! She heard and came. Whispered in my mind. She promised me things. So I followed you. Watched you. Made sure you came to Memento Mori, made sure you escaped from the tunnels. I found her in a body! I told her you were coming, but she already knew
.

“Who is she?” I demand, raising my voice for Danny to hear through the glass.

Unhinging his jaw, he fogs much of the window and carefully writes in large letters.

holy ghost incarnate

Poe pulls on my arm. “Jesse, what’s this all about? What did you mean,
who is she?
And why did he write that?”

“I can hear him in my head. He’s telling me things.” The Holy Ghost Incarnate? What the hell? Both Chastity and Elspeth brought me to the coven camp. Maybe he’s talking about Chastity. Chastity whispers. She made me sleep. But Elspeth said she whispered things to Bethany while possessing her. A weird feeling comes over me.

I realize Poe is shaking my arm. “Since when are you psychic?” he’s asking.

Danny has seen the Holy Ghost Incarnate. The one who is
supposed to be able to get us home. Is it possible this is a woman? A woman I’ve already met?

“Danny! Give…me…her…name.”

He doesn’t respond. None of this makes sense. Is he delusional?

Poe is going to take my arm off. “Jesse? Since when are you psychic?”

I swallow. He’s not going to like this. “Since anytime I do an exorcism. The spirits are always anxious to tell me who they are. It’s important to them. They’re proud of their identity. Sometimes they want to tell me their whole life story. Then their voices dissolve, and I know the exorcism has happened.”

He thinks this over while I listen to Danny. The tunneler is telling me about his childhood.

Poe hugs himself. “This scares me, Jesse.”

“I thought it would. It used to scare me too. I know the penalty for hearing any spirit other than the Holy Spirit. But I’m an exorcist, Poe. Remember when Jesus performed an exorcism? Mark 5:9. Jesus asked the spirit’s name, and it answered that its name was Legion.”

He looks dubious. “So the priests said it was okay?”

“I haven’t told them.”

“So since you can hear Danny, does that mean you’re supposed to exorcise a bad spirit out of him?”

Of course. Yes. That’s it. I don’t know about Danny’s claims that the Holy Ghost sent him to me, but I do know what needs to happen when a voice tells me a life story. An exorcism. Danny must be possessed. He must need my help.

I am an exorcist.

Poe digs in his pocket and finds the bottle of holy water he brought to the haunted chapel back on our world. I don’t take it from him. “But how else will you do the exorcism, you know, on this tunneler?” he asks, pushing the bottle at me.

“It will just happen.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you feel it, Poe?”

“Feel what?”

I struggle to put it into words. “Something wants to happen.”

Shivering, Poe backs away from the window and into shadows, holding his crucifix tight. The bed squeaks as he slowly sits back on it. Like the priests, he doubts me. Casting his face down, he rolls his crucifix between his palms, moves his lips in prayer, rocks forward and back like a rabbi.
“Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.”
His words disturb the tell-tale heart beneath the floor. It skips beats.

Danny raps the window. He’s noticed that I’m not paying attention to his story.

It’s coming over me. A Presence.

I’m a liar.

I’m not really an exorcist. Exorcisms simply take place in my presence.

Wind rushes against the Asylum, District Eleven so that it shifts and creaks. Snowflakes arrive, swirling around Danny and sticking to his bones. I forget about Poe praying for me, forget about whether I’m special or bad, forget about how to get home. Instead I watch the snow, here and now. With all the horror of Memento Mori, the sky still has the grace to snow. Danny resumes his story, but his voice fades to a whisper in my mind. The quieter his voice becomes, the calmer I feel, the more beautiful the snow-covered landscape becomes.

Danny awkwardly strangles his neck with one hand. A beware greeting? Now?

No. He’s feeling for the chain around his neck. It’s not there.

I become aware that my palm is pressed against the frozen window. Outside, on the ledge, Danny’s crystal ball rolls, dragging a broken chain.

The rag wrapping pulls loose so that the crystal is revealed.
It’s clear. Empty. A gust of wind blows away the identity tag. The tunneler watches it go.

What did I do? I didn’t send away some evil, possessing spirit.
Danny’s ghost is gone
. I sent it away. But I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to empty his crystal. Where is his ghost? It has to come back…

Nausea hits. I didn’t send away Danny’s ghost.
I destroyed it
.

Staggering, I fall into the window, press my face into the cold glass. The skeleton bows its head to me and drops from the asylum. I watch it scamper away. The skin of my forehead sticks to the glass. Poe’s tugging on my arm, saying my name, but I can’t answer him.

What have I done? Doubt assails me.

I’m not special. I tried to destroy Emmy’s ghost, and now I’ve done it to Danny’s. Chastity was right about me.

* * *

My sleep is restless. Emmy comes to me. “Die,” she tells me.

My eyes open. Holding my hand to heart, I will the rabid beating to slow.

She said something else. She wanted me to do something. “Before you die…” she began. But I woke up.

47
hourglasses in the night

Pain radiates from my ear to my chin. I roll over in my bed and see Poe, asleep on his back and snoring. Something pokes out of his mouth.

My hand goes to my own mouth. My jaw is clenched—hence the pain—and I feel a tube of glass stuck between my teeth. With a groan, I pry it loose. I massage my jaw as I gawk at the object in my hand.

It’s a tiny hourglass containing silver sand. I study it, upend it, and notice something strange. No matter what end is up, the sand flows in the same direction. I thump the hourglass with my thumb. The stream is so slim, so ethereal, I can barely detect it.

Poe rolls over and his hourglass falls out of his mouth onto the floor. Rubbing his eyes, he sits up and looks at the floor between his feet. “What’s that?” he asks as he picks up the hourglass.

“It was in your mouth, stuck between your teeth. I received one too.”

Poe stares so hard at his hourglass that I think he’s trying to count each individual grain of sand.

I get dressed, pull on my boots. “Come on, Poe, get dressed. Remember that Elspeth knows where we are. Let’s wake up the girls and get out of here.”

We meet Ava and Leesel on the stairs. They have hourglasses too. “It’s a message,” Leesel says. “The hourglass is like a warning. We’re traveling, so our expected lifetime is shortened.” She runs down the stairs, singing La-la-la. We catch up to her in the dining hall, where she’s stuffing a muffin into her mouth.

Poe compares our hourglasses to his and insists his contains less sand.

The asylumists sip coffee as they listen to us.

Vincent orders Servant Sarah to summon Bethany, who apparently is sleeping late. The Captain and his wife are eating great stacks of pancakes.

I lean close to Vincent. “Explain to me what a skeleton is without a ghost in its crystal.”

He giggles. “Nothing at all. It has no identity.”

“But it’s still alive. How can it not have…a spirit?”

His coffee spills. “Revolting subject for breakfast. If you must know, the ghost may roam and find its host once more. Usually, however, it possesses the first body upon which it happens. All the more reason you can appreciate living within the safety of this asylum. Coffee?”

“But if it’s ghost has been…destroyed?”

“No, no. They either possess or roam or haunt. Ghosts are everlasting.”

Relief brings a small smile to my face.

“In Memento Mori, at least,” Vincent continues. “We have no exorcists here. Now do join us for coffee.”

“What’s wrong?” Ava asks me.

“Time for us to go,” Leesel announces to the room.

“Nonsense,” Vincent replies. “It’s much too treacherous for you to leave the asylum. Oh, I see you received hourglasses in the night. You shall stay and we shall dispose of them. Small, but heavy, aren’t they? I believe I fancy a flavored coffee next.” He wriggles with excitement. “Bethany will be down soon. I wonder what delights Servant Sarah has in the cupboard? No doubt Bethany enjoys refreshment with a pleasurable afternoon of knitting.”

I hear coughing on the stairs. Bethany. She stomps back upstairs.

We leave.

It’s that easy.

None of the asylum residents do a thing to stop us. I’m just as
surprised as Poe, who was convinced the asylum would imprison us. He’s hunched over, looking in all directions, checking the hourglass in his hand. Dread darkens his lime green eyes.

The lawn is chunky snow, full of prints of all the things that crept outside the windows from the night before. Bits of shroud and wool are scattered everywhere.

Before we enter forest again, I take one last look at the Asylum, District Eleven. Its inhabitants are standing at the library windows, motionless. Watching us. I count the bodies there. Two are missing.

Bethany erupts from the front door. Vincent chases after her.

“No way,” Poe says, when he turns to see what has stopped me. “Is that…is that the painting she liked?”

Bethany bolts across the lawn, heading in a different direction from us, holding the melting clock painting over her head.

“Please,” Vincent shouts. “Oh, my Bethany, I shall never again mention knitting needles! Forgive me, come back!” He clutches his heart, falls on his knees into the snow, but Bethany never looks back. Vincent holds out his arms, wails his love. However, he’s unwilling to go into the woods after her.

Red rose petals materialize mid-air and flutter to the ground around Vincent, turning the snow bloody. Vincent shrieks in terror. Streaking back across the lawn to the asylum, he slaps away the petals.

“Phantoms,” Poe says, watching the spectacle. “They understand his unrequited love.”

We hide, watch. Bethany doesn’t reappear.

“Ghosts took her, I bet,” Poe says. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “She kinda deserves it.”

We leave the asylum and its insane occupants behind.

With every step, I’m waiting for Bethany to reappear. Without shoes.

I think of Elspeth’s dark hair, ropes of it, draping her slim
shoulders. And her eyes. Her mouth. Her passion. I think there’s spiritual brilliance mixed in with her insanity.

She’s close by, I know it. She’s going to get us.

48
the dali lost

I’m lonely. I think of Elspeth and Chastity.

We sleep hard and trek hard for the next two days, heading west across the frozen mountain slopes. On the third morning after our stay at the Asylum, District Eleven, I stand on a rock ledge. Across from me is a mountain composed of giant slabs of rock layered one on top of another, a plague of coffins. Farther below, the boulders give way to sliced cliffs and heaving slopes that wash down to the forested valley.

The sound of crumbling rock makes me turn, look up. There’s no movement, but my eyes rake the ledges above us, and I see a board lodged between two large rocks. I point it out to Poe. “What does that sign say? Do you see it?”

Poe insists on scaling one more rock to get a better look. He hurries right back down.

“What did it say?” Ava asks.

“Undisputed territory of werewolf descendants, population 174.”
He fidgets, checks his hourglass. Asks to see mine. We all kept the hourglasses we were given. Leesel insisted they made great souvenirs.

“A man that screamed under the moon visited the coven village,” Leesel says casually, as if the thought popped into her head unprovoked. She tilts her head to the side. “He looked like an angel.”

Poe sputters. “An angel? That’s ridiculous. How can a werewolf look like an angel?”

Leesel stares into space, tugs on her hair. I’m about to ask her the same question myself, when a voice calls hello, somewhere down below us.

Bethany waves at us.

“She’s wearing boots,” I point out, before Ava can panic.

Leesel stares intently in Bethany’s direction. “It’s not Elspeth, Mommy,” she says with certainty.

“It’s dangerous to be close to her,” Ava says.

“No, Elspeth can possess any of us,” Leesel points out. “If she finds us, she finds us.”

Watching Leesel closely, I almost wonder if she
wants
Elspeth to find us again.

Poe is squinting his eyes. “What’s that she’s hauling behind her? Does she still have that ridiculous painting? Who did you say did it, Ava? The Dalai Lama?”

We wait and watch as Bethany climbs up to us. Panting hard, she nevertheless blows kisses in our direction until she arrives in our company. Her appearance is the same as ever, blonde and pink and clean, except for a wicked scratch along her neck.

“It hurts,” she says, seeing me stare at it. “I haven’t a bandage, have you one?”

“Did the werewolves do that?” Poe asks.

Bethany slaps her hands on her hips. “Am I to be accused of becoming a werewolf now? First a vampire…” She steps over the painting she lays on the ground and marches up to Poe, getting right in his face. “Would you like to check my bosom for fur?”

Poe shakes his head violently. “No, no, I don’t want to do that.”

She snickers. I remember her and George laughing at Poe’s ideas about werewolves back by the river when we first met them.

Ava picks up the Salvador Dali painting of melting timepieces and leans it against a rock. “I can’t believe you’re dragging this up the mountain. It’s not heavy, but it’s big. What do you want it for?”

Bethany kicks, dislodging hunks of snow from her slim, lacey boots. “I like this painting. It amuses me. Besides, wordlessly presenting William with this painting would be the most delicate
manner in which to convey the news of his brother’s death. Do you not think so?” She holds up the painting to admire the smeared, disfigured clocks melting to the ground. “So gentle of me, so
subtle
, so thoughtful of William’s shock and grief over George’s demise. Not a word will I utter! I shall simply hand over the painting, like so.”

She demonstrates. Bowing her head as she gracefully curtsies, her nose practically in the snow, she suddenly thrusts the painting up and forward. Poe startles.

“That’s the best part. How I say nothing.” She stands, props the painting back against the rock where Ava put it. “So dramatic. So demonstrative of how I abhor deftly breaking William’s heart. Yet, the deed must be done! The painting is appropriate. Each time William sees it, it will be a poignant reminder of the brother he has lost and, more important, how he came to behold me on his doorstep. I intend to marry William, provided he not mention the word
knit
in my presence. I have no such fears, however. William is daring. Unconventional! He is perfect for me.”

Poe coughs. Looks away.

Bethany pinches her cheeks, prattles on. “For a silly moment I considered Vincent. It took only one day to discern his potential as a husband, whatever the condition of his teeth.” She scrunches her nose. “He could never understand me. This new life, it’s so
extreme.”
She wiggles with excitement.

“So Vincent lacked the finances to entice you to stay at the asylum?” Ava asks.

“Sadly, yes. Besides, they were a dull, closeted bunch, weren’t they? A girl requires a bit of society to mingle in, doesn’t she? In fact, a girl needs a world to mingle in! I’ve found myself to be quite adept at travel.” She giggles. “What would Mother say? I confess, I am
naughty.”

We sit in the snow, mesmerized by the pieces of Bethany’s tale we didn’t get back at the Asylum, District Eleven. Unbelievably,
she’d survived by forging a note by Saint Thomas, introducing her as his personal assistant and most trusted advisor, on a mission to discover the location of His Presence, the Holy Ghost. She accepted petitions from people and promised to deliver them to the City of Sacristies. In exchange, she received food and shelter.

Having gotten bored mid-way through Bethany’s story, Leesel is making angels in the snow. Poe notices. Leesel notices him noticing, I know it, because she tilts back her head and howls. His jaw clenches.

“Leesel,” I say sharply.

“What?” the werewolf angel asks, all innocence.

We get moving. Bethany is an asset. She hikes like a woodsman—the dainty stuff around George must have been an act—and teaches us the signs of the more dangerous ghosts by pointing out ash mixed in the snow. Occasionally she drops a bit of the stuff on her tongue in order to identify the type of ghost it came from, but she’s always careful to spit it back out.

Poe is intrigued, bursting with rapture.

After a break to eat food stolen from the Asylum, District Eleven, Bethany has Ava laughing with an absolutely
filthy
joke while Leesel is thankfully gone into the trees for a potty break. Poe isn’t so lucky as to be absent for the joke. His face is a beacon of red, and I guess mine, too, because the two girls laugh at us.

“I like her,” Ava says, incredulous, as we get hiking again.

Even Poe softens on our new traveling companion. Coddling him every time the howling gets bad, Bethany rubs his back and tells him, “I know just what to do with a flagellant werewolf!”

I hope she does. Flagellants shriek prayers throughout the night. We emerge from our cave the next morning with caution. I feel conspicuous in my black robe on the white snow. Leesel navigates, saying we’re nearing the City of Sacristies, but we have one ridge to get over before heading down the mountain.

Late afternoon. Dark clouds sweep in, gale-force winds swirl
heavy snow around us. Bethany produces a rope she happens to carry in her bag. We tie ourselves together so we don’t lose anyone. Except for Bethany. She refuses to tie on.

“It would rumple my robe,” she explains. Ava can’t get her to wear it. Bethany promises to be careful.

Ice crystals freeze into my eyelashes, blinding me. My face is numb. The whole world around us transforms into a churning white storm. “We’ve got to stop,” I shout over the howling of the wind.

“Nonsense,” shouts back Bethany. She climbs with one arm; the other is busy with the Dali painting. I remember George, climbing like a goat up the cliff by the river of their town. Memento Mori breeds strong stock.

Ava agrees with her unlikely new best friend. “There’s no shelter here, Jesse. We’ve got to keep moving!”

It seems to go on forever—the wind, the snow, the slipping. It’s whiteout conditions; we could be going in circles. Suddenly, I hear a cry of surprise from Bethany, right behind me. I look back just in time to see her form, dark in the blowing snow, lift from the ground. She hangs from her painting with both hands, her legs pedaling the air as if she were riding a bicycle.

Knocking into me, Poe scrambles in the direction Bethany has sailed. “Bethany! Let go of the painting!
Let go the painting!”

Ava stands, dumbstruck, her hand instinctively reaching for Bethany. But only for a moment. Shaking her head, Ava pulls her hand back. She sweeps up Leesel in her arms, and strides as far away as the rope allows, leaving me and Poe to help Bethany.

The Dali canvas is a tarp catching the wind, carrying Bethany dangerously close to where I’m afraid the side of the mountain is. She manages to bend her elbows, and by pulling the painting down to her head, she sinks close to the ground. “No need for concern!” she cries out.

Poe nearly grabs her, but a wicked updraft catches the canvas once more, whooshing Bethany out of reach. She looks backward
over her shoulder at us, a look of alarm finally dawning on her red-cheeked face. A vicious gust of wind lifts her…drops her.

I tackle Poe, who nearly gets himself killed when he lunges for Bethany. We’re at the edge of the mountain. Bethany hangs in space, lacey boots pedaling furiously, just out of reach.

Rushing to Ava and Leesel, I untie them from the rope, then go back to Poe. “I’m stronger,” I yell at him. “Anchor me.”

He plants his feet on ice and grips the rope, his face fierce. I start to climb out to Bethany. At first on my feet, then on my knees, until finally I’m on my stomach, sliding my way across the rock that’s jagged and icy. Ava’s frantic and yelling. I go faster, propelling myself by my boots and using jutting sections of stone to hold on to against the wind. My eyes sting, but I force them to stay open. Bethany cycles in a circle mostly level to me, but she drops altitude slightly with every circle completed, as if caught in a snowy whirlpool. I’m close to her now. The heel of her boot is just over my head…my gloved fingers can’t grip…

Whispers.

Barely audible, hissing, the whisperings are Despair. Harsh syllables, not at all like the ghostly voices I normally hear. Fear trickles in my fingertips.

“Poe?” I yell into the gale.

“Hurry,” he calls back.

“Do you hear the voices?” I scream. I can’t tell if they’re in my head or not. Something about these voices isn’t right.

“What voices? Jesse, hurry!” Poe screams at me as I bite off my glove and stretch my bare fingers, desperately reaching for Bethany’s ankle.

Black feathers brush the exposed flesh of my wrist.

The angel beats its wings, battling the gusts of wind to make another pass at Bethany. Its robe flutters, seemingly hung on a wire it’s so flat. The head with its hood, in contrast, is cavernous. Its black form swoops in the swirling snow.

I know the moment Bethany sees it. Raw fright pops her
snow-crusted eyes. Her mouth gapes, but there’s no scream. Letting go of the Dali with one hand, she reaches for me.

The painting tilts vertical. Bethany free-falls.

I stare down, clinging to the icy rock. The angel’s black form swoops in the swirling snow, becomes lost in it before reappearing atop the receding form of Bethany. Its enormous wings unfurl as it catches her at the waist.

Bethany snaps violently. Her ghost separates. Draped in bulky chains, the spirit plummets like a boulder.

The angel races away, dangling Bethany’s limp body. I watch, dazed, until the flapping black wings climb high into the sky and melt into the steel shadows of the blizzard.

The Dali twirls away, lost to the storm.

“Forget her,” Ava shouts. “Come back!”

My knee finds Bethany’s diary. I recognize
The Story of Me
written on the cover. It must have fallen from a pocket of her robe as she cycled. Picking it up, I marvel at how heavy it is. As heavy as Bethany’s ghost with all its chains.

Poe’s talking to me, using the rope to reel me in.

“Did you hear the voices?” I repeat again and again, needing him to answer me.

He grabs me, looks at me with concern. “No. I don’t hear the voices, Jesse. I’m not an exorcist.” He squints into the storm, where Bethany used to fly her bike. “Oh, God, Jesse. Did she need an exorcism? Did you get it done before…before…”

My secret is crushing me. I can’t do this alone. Something bad is happening to me. And I think I know why.

“Help me, Poe,” I plead, my face pressed to his. “I’ve sinned. Poe, I didn’t tell you why I hear the voices. It’s because…because they
possess
me. The ghosts I exorcise. It’s always been this way. I allow it, Poe.”

Horror stretches his face into a mask. He clutches his crucifix. “Why, Jesse? Why would you do that?”

He’s appalled. Revolted. “Why?” he mouths at me, his eyes
full of betrayal, as if I’m not who I pretend to be.

There are no words to explain. “Elspeth,” is all I say, and of course he doesn’t understand. Suddenly, I want her. I want Elspeth. She understands; she told the coven she possesses out of loneliness. I’m the reverse. I
get possessed
out of loneliness, out of some unholy desire to touch the other side.

Not a desire. A need.

I pray, ask God to take me to Elspeth.

There’s a flash of black feathers, and I hear the whispers again. I realize the hissing belongs to the angel. It streaks past in the gloom.

“Lean on me,” Poe says, and drags me away from the edge.