by Tegan Maher
“I took precautions,” she said evasively.
I frowned. “You knew you were going to die?”
“No, but one can never be too careful.”
Because that makes a whole lot of sense. Unfortunately, the music might well go on indefinitely, being magical. I had to find that box.
Gladys floated behind me as I rotated on the spot, trying to figure out the direction the music came from. I then climbed the stairs to the upper floor, but no matter where I walked, the sinister tune played at the same volume.
I pulled out my wand and reached into my shallow repertoire of knowledge about tracking spells to find the source of an unknown noise. Somewhat difficult, since I’d neglected my magic lessons as a teenager because I’d been committed to the Reaper path at the time. I vaguely recalled the spell for tracking a person, but it didn’t work on inanimate objects. Nor ghosts, either.
“What are you doing?” asked Gladys.
“Trying to remember if there’s a charm that’ll help me track down a disembodied noise.”
The only disembodied noises I was an expert in were the type which belonged to ghosts, which was zero help in this situation. I knew where the ghost was, after all.
Then a creaking sound came from the direction of the stairs. Not a ghost or the music box. I headed that way, my skin prickling, and I found myself face to face with Hannah.
“Oh, hey,” I said, half relieved, half apprehensive. I didn’t see her box of cockroaches in sight, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have them hidden up her sleeve or in her pocket. “What are you doing up here?”
“I came here to get my pets,” she said.
The cockroaches. Right. Because that’s really what we needed on top of the creepy disembodied music.
“Do Frankie and the others know you’re in here?” I asked.
“Ah, they won’t mind. I do live here.” She ambled down the landing, while I edged around her towards the stairs. “I forgot where my room was.”
“There.” I pointed out the door with her name on it. “By the way, have you heard this music before? Do you know where it’s coming from?”
“Everywhere,” she said in enigmatic tones.
I hoped for something a bit more specific. While she tottered away into her room, I retreated before she brought out the cockroaches and nearly tripped over Nova’s familiar coming upstairs. I caught my balance against the banister just in time to avoid tumbling head over heels. What was with cats trying to trip me up lately?
“He’s looking for the source of the music,” said his owner, appearing at the foot of the stairs. “It’s driving him out of his mind.”
“Can’t he find the box?” I doubted he could, but witches’ familiars could sometimes get into places humans wouldn’t think to look.
“No, he can’t,” said Nova. “I’ve never seen him unable to find something before.”
The cat walked past, sniffing at the door to Gladys’s room and meowing loudly. I trod behind him, halting in front of the door. “That’s Gladys’s room. We already checked and it’s not in there.”
To demonstrate, I pushed the door open, but nothing in the room had moved an inch since I’d last been there. The cat didn’t go into the room, however, but rolled around outside the door, yowling and swiping at the air as if something invisible was on top of him.
Hmm. Cats were more perceptive than witches when it came to the spirit world, but I’d know if there were any more ghosts present, wouldn’t I? Even Gladys had moved out of the way, perhaps to avoid Hannah and her cockroaches.
“What’s the problem?” said Nova, coming upstairs behind me.
“I have no idea.” I looked at the cat as he continued to bat at the air as though he saw something none of the rest of us could. As a prickle of unease rose up my arms, the music drifted in, minutely louder than before. “Hang on…”
Shadows crept from my feet as my Reaper powers kicked in, and the music grew even louder. Startled, I let the shadows fade, and the music dimmed to its former volume.
Oh, no.
“What is going on?” said Nova.
“The box isn’t here.” Not in the nursing home… and not even in the physical realm. I hadn’t known cats had the potential to see into the spirit realm, but my Reaper senses didn’t lie. It would explain Mart’s odd reticence to get involved … and come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any ghosts in here since I’d arrived, either, with the exception of Gladys herself.
There was a good reason none of us had been able to pinpoint the box’s location… the music came straight from the afterlife.
4
Now I had some idea of where the box was, I had to find and remove it. Starting with figuring out how it’d got into the afterlife to begin with. I walked down the landing to the spot where I’d last seen Gladys and found her hovering near the wall.
“I think the box is hidden somewhere nobody can reach,” I said to her. “Nobody except someone like me. How’d it end up there?”
Shadows spread around my feet with each word I spoke, but I hesitated before the shadows fully formed. If the music box was truly in the afterworld, it couldn’t have been put there by anyone belonging to the land of the living. I definitely hadn’t been responsible, and neither had old Harold the Reaper, who was even more retired than I was.
Which meant a ghost had somehow hidden the box. A ghost shouldn’t be able to touch a physical object… unless they were much stronger than your average spirit.
She turned on the box after her death…
Gladys’s stare hardened. Then she reached out and gave me a shove, right into my own pool of shadows. The music grew even louder, surrounding me on all sides, as the shadows of the afterworld blotted out the light. Darkness folded around me, and the music played loud and clear as Glady’s ghost faded behind a blanket of shadows.
Not a single person, living or dead, was within my sight. Even Mart was nowhere to be seen. He’d sensed something was wrong here at the nursing home, but he wouldn’t have guessed the real location of the music box. I wasn’t entirely sure myself, come to that, but the noise was so much louder here in the shadows of the afterworld.
Okay. Start with finding the box.
Following the louder sound of the eerie music, I walked through the darkness until a blot of red caught my sight. The music box lay ahead of me, nestled in a bed of shadows. The red-painted box would have looked innocuous if it wasn’t for the sinister music pouring from its rim, and the shadows of the afterworld surrounding it on all sides. Few ghosts had the strength to pick up a solid object, but it hadn’t got here by itself.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I turned my head. Sure enough, Gladys was back, a smile on her face.
“What’re you playing at?” I demanded. “Why did you put the box in here? Did you want me to come and get it?”
Nobody else could be the possible target. Even the witches and wizards with the ability to see ghosts couldn’t see the realm which was only visible to the dead… and to people like me. Reapers.
“I need your help with something, Maura,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m not all that keen on the idea of helping you after you tricked me into following you into the afterworld.” I crouched beside the box, which didn’t appear to be booby-trapped on the surface. “What kind of curse is on this thing, then?”
“Oh, it won’t harm you,” she replied. “It’s a spirit box, and it can bind a ghost to the land of the living. Rather like you did to your brother.”
Oh. Oh. That explained how she’d been able to effortlessly move the box out of the realm of the living. What it didn’t explain was what she needed me for.
“Then what do you want me to do?” I said.
“I need a Reaper to harness its magic,” she said.
So that was her game. She wanted me to access the box’s power to bind her to the land of the living, and she was prepared to blackmail me in order to do it.
“You could have ask
ed me nicely, you know,” I said to the ghost. “In fact, if you wanted to stick around after death, you didn’t need to do anything at all. Most people who die in this town go on to become ghosts without the Reapers’ involvement. Why did you decide you needed more?”
“Because my failure of a granddaughter is going to inherit everything I own.” Bitterness dripped from her words. “She can’t even see me. Nobody can except for you, and I won’t stand for existing in this pitiful half-life. I want you to use that box’s magic to enable me to be much more than that. It’s not as though you haven’t bound a spirit before, have you? Your brother is still here.”
No chance. I was not about to break the Reapers’ laws and bind another spirit to the land of the living. Yes, I’d done it once before, but Mart was different. He was family.
The music grew louder, as though invisible hands turned up the volume. The ghost’s smile grew wider. It seemed she had control over the box without even touching it, which meant she’d already slipped into the category of ‘poltergeist’. She didn’t need any more power at her fingertips.
I took a step back, but with a snap of her fingers, the box flew into the air and launched itself into my hand. The lid closed itself under my touch, the music momentarily stopped… and a spasm of electric power shot up my arm.
I instantly released the box, but the spirit let out a triumphant noise. A glow suffused her ghostly form, which already appeared more solid than it had previously. The shadows thickened as her hand snatched the box from the air.
“Thank you, Maura.” She held up the glowing box, far out of my reach.
Oh, boy. The box had activated at my touch, but that didn’t mean it would be any easier to reverse the spell, especially with it now firmly in the ghost’s own hands. Who’d even cursed it to begin with? That kind of spell wasn’t exactly taught at the local witch academy.
Yet if I didn’t get it back, she might well haunt the town indefinitely. The shadows wrapped around her like a cloak, and a chill raced through my blood. I’d thought only Reapers had that level of control over the shadows of the afterworld. A mere trinket like that box couldn’t have achieved the same, cursed or not… unless it’d been made by a Reaper itself.
I gave a lunge and grabbed for the box, but Gladys flew out of reach, shadows trailing her as though she was a Reaper herself.
Does she know who made the box? Unless she’d been acquainted with the Reapers before, I doubted it. She didn’t have a clue what she was holding. Granted, I might not know much more about the box than she did, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be responsible for an unknown Reaper artefact ending up in the hands of a ghost with a grudge.
“That’s it,” I warned her. “If you want to fight dirty, you’ve met your match.”
I called on all my Reaper strength and gave her the hardest shove I could muster. It should have knocked the box out of her grip, but she held on grimly, the shadows shielding her from my power.
“You don’t know what you’re messing with,” I said, but my words went unheard.
Instead, the ghost turned and drifted away. As the box vanished along with her, the music faded.
Panicking, I leapt forward, only to collide with a wall of shadows. Turning in another direction yielded the same result, as the shadows kept me caged in. The distant sound of Gladys’s laughter trickled into my ears, along with the distant tinkling of a piano, and anger flushed my cheeks.
This was ridiculous. I was a Reaper, and the shadows were my domain. I ought to be able to regain enough control to get myself out.
“I’m a Reaper,” I whispered, pushing at the shadows with my palms. “Let me do my job.”
The shadows began to give way. Encouraged, I coaxed them further back until a gap spread beneath my hands, revealing a strip of corridor on the other side. When the gap widened enough for me to leap out, I did so, landing in the upstairs landing of the nursing home once again.
Naturally, Gladys was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I found myself facing a startled-looking Hannah.
“I can’t find my cockroaches,” she informed me. “Two are missing.”
“Really?” I said. “I think there might be a mad poltergeist loose in here.”
“That’s bad news, isn’t it?”
“You might say that.” I’d rather deal with the cockroaches. Especially when it hit me that I could no longer hear the sound of the music box playing, even from the afterworld. Gladys had taken it elsewhere.
As much as I didn’t like the idea of her haunting the nursing home, the notion of her being free to wander around town was a thousand times worse. Especially carrying an artefact which might have belonged to the Reapers themselves.
We have to get it back.
5
Leaving Hannah to her cockroach hunt, I headed for the stairs and managed to dodge Nova’s cat this time around. At the door, I found Frankie and the other staff members trying in vain to stop the others from getting back into the building.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Um… there’s been a hitch,” I said. “The ghost is actually a poltergeist, and that box of hers gave her twice the strength and tethered her to the land of the living. Now she’s loose somewhere else in town, with the box, so you might as well let the others back in.”
If we couldn’t hear the music, then she wasn’t anywhere within reach. Ghosts could move fast, and now the box was loaning her its strength, I doubted a regular banishment charm cast by a witch or wizard could touch her.
On the other hand, the sound of the music box ought to make it easier to track her down, which was a start. I moved out of the path of the residents as they began to re-enter the building and saw the police had finally shown up, though Drew wasn’t with them. He must have got tied up elsewhere. You didn’t need to have the sensitive hearing of a shifter to pick up on the sound of the creepy music drifting through the air, though, and soon enough I pinpointed the faint sound of a disembodied piano.
The volume kicked up as I drew closer, until I halted at the sight of Gladys’s glowing spirit hovering above the main road. When she saw me, she spun around in the air and zoomed away, as though inviting me to give chase.
I picked up the pace, following the sound of her laughter and the creepy piano music. After several turnings, however, I found myself back on the road leading to the nursing home. It seemed she’d decided to toy with me, but what she hadn’t counted on was the presence of the building’s other residents. They could hear the music, too, and they knew exactly who the culprit was.
“Stop that racket!” someone bellowed across the street at her.
“Yeah, some of us are trying to sleep!” put in another elderly wizard.
More voices filled the air as I skidded to a halt in front of the nursing home, and from the way their shouts were directed, they’d pinpointed her exact location.
“Can you all see her?” I said.
Of course. The box had bound her to the land of the living, imbuing her with enough power to make her visible to everyone. Yet nobody appeared to be afraid of her, and the residents were as annoyed at the incessant music and being dragged out of bed as I was. First in line was Tina, shouting louder than the rest of them as she harangued Gladys for her behaviour. Then Nova and her cat came into view, the former running in pursuit of her familiar as he wove among the growing crowd.
Ignoring his owner, Crinkle the cat broke into a run and leapt straight at the ghost. Gladys dodged the cat with ease, but the attack had taken her by surprise, judging by the way she pivoted in mid-air.
“I shouldn’t be disrespected in my own home!” she shouted down at us.
I halted in front of the angry residents, looking up at her. “You don’t live here any longer. Besides, that box brought you back from death. It didn’t make you entitled to everyone’s respect.”
“Too bad,” she responded. “You’re never going to be able to get rid of me, not as long as I hold this box. We’ll see who gives in first.�
��
Then I’d just have to get it back from her hands. Not that even my Reaper skills enabled me to fly, though—and the box gave her almost Reaper-like talents herself. To reach her, I’d need help. I looked around for any signs of the other local spirits, but I had an inkling she’d scared them off.
“What did you do?” I said to Gladys. “Where are the other ghosts?”
“The box drives them away,” she said. “I’m so much stronger than they are, after all.”
More like it’s because it’s a Reaper box. Regardless, it seemed the other ghosts wouldn’t be able to help me with this one. I’d need to ask someone living instead.
I faced the crowd of disgruntled witches and wizards. “I need your help. Can any of you see that box Gladys is holding? I have to get it away from her.”
“Don’t look at us,” said Tina. “We don’t even have wands.”
“Did you say she has a box?” said Hannah.
“Yes, the box is where the music is coming from,” I said to her. “You’ve seen it before, right?”
Hannah’s gaze locked on Gladys’s ghost, and then the smaller woman advanced on her with her hands outstretched. “You took my cockroaches. Give them back.”
My heart sank a little, but Hannah carried on towards the ghost with no fear in her expression. What is she playing at this time?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gladys called back. “This is my box.”
“No!” Hannah yelled. “Put them down!”
I moved defensively in front of her in case Gladys retaliated, but she simply flew to the ground and opened the box to reveal its contents. “See? There aren’t any—”
She broke off as a cockroach crawled out of the box and into her hands. At once, she dropped the box with a shriek. It seemed even a ghost had the same old human instincts when a nasty creature crawled on her hand. She recovered and grabbed for the box, but Nova’s cat got there first. A paw shot out, and the cat began to play with the box with meows of delight.
“Give that back!” yelled Gladys, but the cat dodged her grasping hands and grabbed the box in his mouth before taking off at a sprint back into the nursing home.