The Ghosting of Gods (25 page)

56
believers in exodus

Leesel’s cold, detached belief in the hourglass’s power to predict death unnerves me. It makes it hard for me to doubt. So I pull out my own hourglass, which I’ve kept for no good reason. Sand continues to flow in one direction only, no matter how I shake the hourglass.

What’s weird is how a clump of sand in the middle has slowed the falling of sand. It’s almost entirely clogged.

I pocket the hourglass.

Just outside the north gate, we gaze up a steep road that eventually leads to a misshapen mansion. Isolated from other structures, it overlooks the town. My first thought is how Poe would love the looks of it.

Where is my best friend?

Leesel chatters about science and numbers, but I can’t pay attention. I try to think like Poe. What would he do? Would he have knocked on a door in the City and asked for help? What would they have done with him?

Danny suddenly leaps out of the trees. Squealing in delight at his appearance, Leesel runs to him. He bows to her, and she gives him a hug.

He points at the road where he’s scratched another message for us.

the mansion of clocks

William’s place.

It can’t be a coincidence.

“Have you seen Poe?” I ask Danny.

He shakes his head. Motions for us to follow him. I stand still,
wanting to go back to the City.

“We’ll find him as soon as we can,” Ava tells me. She takes my hand. “But first we have to do this. Okay? Then we’ll find Poe.”

“Maybe Poe made it to the Mansion?” I ask. I’m crying and I don’t bother hiding it.

“Sure, Jesse. Maybe he did. Let’s go see.”

I jerk my hand away. Ava takes it again, and I let her keep it.

Danny leads the way. Leaves and dead grasses rustle in the early evening breeze. Exhausted from our journey, it’s a challenging hike up the vertical road. At last we stand before the Mansion. Vast, it stretches high into fog that blurs its severely pitched roof. The structure of the house is utterly bizarre and complicated. I can’t tell how many floors there are because nothing lines up and windows are one on top of the other. Undersized balconies protrude like malignant tumors, some against a solid wall. It’s old, dark, and rotted where stone meets wood. The whole thing doesn’t even stand up straight, but impossibly leans in three opposing directions. As if it might split apart.

If Poe were here, he would burst into spontaneous poetry.

Girdled by a wrought iron balcony, a window perfectly reflects the sinking sun.

My attention is drawn to barren tree limbs scratching at the Mansion. A tunneler wearing wool scooches along a branch like a caterpillar. Having gone out as far as possible without breaking the branch from the trunk of the tree, the skeleton reaches out a fist to rap on a window.

“Someone’s coming up the road,” Ava whispers. “No, not Poe,” she adds, yanking me backward. We hide behind a bush, while Danny crawls directly into it, never minding the thorns. The ground here is too rocky for writing. Danny arranges pebbles to spell three words.

believers in exodus

Sheep with tunneler hands, knees, and feet crawl past us. Noticing one of their brethren in the tree, they wave him down. He obliges, and together they vanish around the back of the Mansion.

Danny picks tiny red berries from around thorns and gnashes them between what teeth he still has. This results in bloody stains around his mouth, giving him an alarming appearance. He cranes his neck to look down the road leading to town, then turns his attention back to the Mansion, casually tossing more of the berries into his mouth, reminding me of people eating popcorn at a sports event. Berry skins stick to his ribs. Now he has measles; he looks more repulsive than ever. Peace and calm emanate from him.

No more tunnelers disguised as sheep come up the road. It’s time to get this done. So I can find Poe. “Let’s go,” I say.

“Danny,” Ava says, “Will you stay here with Leesel? We’ll be out as soon as we can.”

Leesel stomps her foot. But Ava gets a look on her face that shuts Leesel’s mouth.

“We’ll hurry,” I assure Leesel. “Stay hidden. Do you promise?”

Danny nudges her, and she nods her head.

By the front door is a notice with small print, advising patrons that the Mansion of Clocks is going out of business. There’s a sale. As we step up to the door, Ava squeezes my hand. The door swings open by itself.

57
the voice box

It’s dark inside. Smells of incense. Feeling the floor with my feet and grasping at empty air, I shuffle forward with Ava close beside me. I don’t like her touching me.

Tick-tocking.

Dots of light appear and grow brighter as the volume of ticking increases. “Oh,” Ava says as candles materialize beneath what I realize are flames. She tries to grasp a candle, but her hand passes through it. No matter. The room brightens until only the deepest corners are in shadow.

Blowing into my hands, I step over a piece of luggage.

It’s amazing. Clocks cover walls like cells of a cancer. There are literally hundreds of them. Pendulums swing. As we inch our way around the deep reception room, different clocks bong at different times. Their timing is all off.

All the hands of the clocks move counter-clockwise, making time go backwards. “Classic haunted house phenomena,” I say, thinking of Poe and how he would love this.

I shout his name. Taking hold of my arm, steadying me, Ava calls out for Poe too.

Ticktockticktockticktock.

No answer.

I don’t know where Poe is
. He’s lost to me.

I know where Elspeth is. In the ground.

They’re in danger, and it’s my fault. I betrayed them both.

“Welcome to the Mansion of Clocks,” comes a brisk voice from behind. “We’ll get acquainted in my office. You’re lucky to catch me. Come, getting to know the Mansion patrons enables me to find that special something you’re looking for today.”

It’s a tunneler dressed in an unusual robe—it opens in the
front and has an enormous hood, which hangs half-way down his back. As the tunneler chokes his neck in proper greeting and walks, I hear clicking. Wing-tip shoes peek out from beneath his robe.

“Do you have Poe here?” I ask him. “My friend, he has white hair, green eyes—has he come here?”

“No one here but me and the ghosts. Sorry.”

Without waiting for us to respond, he turns on his heel, steps over a small coffin, and leads the way down a slanted hallway lit by dripping candles nailed right to the walls. Ava pushes to keep me going. We follow the skeleton into a back office. Flickering candles balance on piles of junk. The place is a wreck with loose papers scattered over the floor. Stacked crates leak a dark fluid that Ava slips in.

The tunneler kicks aside a couple of busted up clocks on the floor—obviously George’s, with their little hourglasses to pin the hands of the clock—and sits at his desk. Ava and I take the chairs facing him.

“I’m sorry for the chill,” he says, rubbing his gloved hands together. “I’m afraid the Mansion is haunted to the rafters. It was all I could get. No realtor would show a decent property to me. There’s excessive limestone in the construction. It crumbles terribly.” He shifts uncomfortably. “You look unwell,” he tells me. “I’ve given you a bit of a shock by speaking, haven’t I?” He strokes his neck where a ball of pale, shiny flesh is attached to the bone with strands of tendons. Just like the one we saw on the giant skeleton in the tunnels. Only this voice box makes perfectly clear speech.

“No shock at all,” Ava says, her voice cracking.

He leans back in his desk chair. “The voice box is unsightly, of course. But I refuse to pay for a more extensive flesh treatment. Saint Frankenstein’s rates are exorbitant, to say the least. I bartered a subtle scalpel to get just the voice box. An unsatisfactory voice box, as it gives me pain. I believe Saint Frankenstein
now appreciates my dissatisfaction. If you seek repair for your chin, young lady, I cannot recommend the Saint. But I digress, and time is short. How can I be of service?”

Poe must be in the City. I need to find him.

“We’re here to find a man named William,” Ava answers. She’s pulls her hair forward to cover her withered face. “We’ve been referred by his brother, George.”

The tunneler stiffens. Clocks tick erratically against his silence. Sliding a small black box across the desk, he settles it onto his lap. “I go by Willy now. So how is George?” he asks in a tired voice.

I’m confused. “Your brother is…?”

Ava elbows me. Plasters a smile on her face. “George is engaged to be married, actually,” she says. “You’re invited to the wedding. Of course, you’re to be the best man. Bethany especially wants you there. At the wedding.”

Willy snorts. “Still just engaged? To Bethany, that incompetent and narcissistic wench with the fondness for the bulging personal history book?
The Story of Me
, indeed! George proposed four years ago. She was only a child. I suppose he’s putting off the marriage until his fortune is made. No doubt he’s sent you to deliver a message to me. Wonders where all his money is. Wonders why I dug up his garden.” He thumps the desk with his gloved hand, hard. “Am I right?”

I shake my head. “I’m sure he…”

“George doesn’t give a thought to the fact that I’m the one who took the risks, that I’m the one this happened to!”

“Your brother was worried what may have happened to you,” Ava says quickly. “Your messenger hasn’t shown up for a long time.”

The grotesque voice box creates a shrill laugh. Willy scrapes his chair back, stands with his black box, comes round the desk at us.

We press back in our chairs.

He thumps a fist to his chest, like where his heart used to be. “I’m the messenger. He’s such a fool. I disguised myself in a robe with a deep cowl and wore a mask. It was the only way for me to see my own brother and not have him squeal in disgust at my pollution.” Swinging an arm, his voluminous robe sleeve catches a stack of papers so that they flutter wildly about him. “But travel became too dangerous, even with me already dead. Memento Mori is no place for skeletons, it seems.” He laughs bitterly.

Suddenly, I’m angry that Ava is telling lies. It has nothing to do with anything, it’s irrational, but I’m angry. I stand up. “You should know what’s happened, Willy. The truth is that your brother passed on. He beheaded himself to preserve his honor. Bethany told us. She told us he’s an iron ghost now. She told us before
she
died.”

Willy becomes very still. Eventually he speaks in a calm, but clear, voice. “The twit. George is no iron ghost. It’s a lie that beheading oneself results in becoming such. Iron ghosts hail from across the sea. Where the lucrative channeling takes place. They have no business here!” He leans forward. Twitches. “You haven’t seen one in the City, have you?”

“Iron ghosts? No, no we haven’t seen any in the City.”

He twitches again. “So you spoke with George. Tell me, did he mention possessing a special clock?”

I shake my head.

Willy bangs his desk. “How
selfish
of him. And Bethany dead too, you say?” He opens his office door. “I need a drink. Badly. No doubt the two of you could use one as well. Come along. Then I may offer information that will surprise you.” His shoes click sharply as he strides down the dim hallway, carrying the black box beneath his arm.

We chase after him back to the reception area and through a doorway into a dining hall. Several decanters of liquor fill a side table. Willy tosses his box on the dining table, picks up the largest decanter, uncorks it, hangs his jaw, pours.

Chandeliers of candles cast flickering light over a table layered in ragged linens. Thirty or forty ghosts are seated, while others serve. Spoiled food fills platters. The ghosts are unlike any others I’ve seen with their sunken features and bluish tinge over their skin and hair. Their clothing hangs in strips. I smell smoke. Black circles polka dot their forms, as if they’ve been repeatedly burned by a giant cigarette.

What did he mean about having surprise information for us? “Do you know something about Poe?” I demand.

“I know nothing of Poe.”

I get the idea he doesn’t trust us. I’ve got to hold things together. One of the ghosts brushes past me, and I motion in its direction as I attempt to make friends with Willy. “I never knew before Memento Mori how solid ghosts can be. Or how they have threads matted on their eyes. But…what happened to these?”

Willy takes another drink and wets his robe to his waist. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never seen spooks before?”

A young girl with long dark hair and eyes of balled thread smiles at me as she serves soup. She has no teeth. She struggles through the dining table to get to me. As she passes through the heavy oak her body fades, then gains back its solidity once she stands beside me, smelling acrid. “Stay with us,” she invites in a high-pitched voice. “Stay with us here forever.”

I had enough of that sort of talk at the Asylum, District Eleven. “No thanks,” I snap. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

The smile wipes off her face, much to my relief, and she flounces away.

An older male spook with a handlebar moustache wraps his arm around her. “Don’t give that young man a thought, Carinna,” he growls. “He’s one of those grave-to-cradle types. You can smell it on him.” He points at me. “Think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you? Hmmph. You’re not fit for me daughter to lay eyes on.”

A stout female spook rushes over and stands between me and
Carinna. “Be gone,” she says to me. “I’ll not have me daughter crying out her heart over the likes of you.”

“Uh, Willy,” Ava says. “Should we talk back in your office? About how to join the exodus?”

A tiny grandmother-type floats forward, her feet a mere inch off the floor. She wrinkles her nose. “What do you think of his box of cartilage? Gives me the
willies
, it does.”

Willy slams the decanter down. Liquor splashes over the side table and rug. “Spooks! Get lost. Go find your bones. Can’t you see I’m busy with the work of the Holy Ghost?” He burps.

An old man pitches a moldy loaf of bread at his skull. “That’s not a bit funny telling us to find our bones, Willy! You know good and well we spooks have cracked bones, blackened and brittle and buried. Not that we’d be wanting to find ourselves in the state you’re in. No offense. We love you, we do.”

Carinna cries. “You’re leaving, aren’t you, Willy? To evangelize with the threads?”

“Spooks get their blue coloring from being electrocuted, hence their reference to cooked, brittle bones,” Willy says to us, ignoring Carinna. He shifts his skull, looking Ava over, slowly. “By the way, you’re a lovely young lady. I could use a new assistant. Must be experienced in travel between worlds, so you’re qualified, if only reluctantly. I could use the company…”

“No…” Ava says, confusion on her face.

“But why not? Apprehensive over another chapel ride? Though it’s not my intention to shame anyone, I confess that I heard screaming while hitching a ride on the roof.” He lifts his arms, sways his body from side to side. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to go home? Of course, it’s evolved a bit since we were last there, no doubt. More suitable for my kind. But then, you’ll be in my condition sooner than you think. Believe me.” He throws back another drink and turns his empty eye sockets on us. “Whatever is the matter with the two of you? Did I say something to offend?”