by C H Chelser
The one that had addressed him looked, if he had to describe it, like an overweight cat. It clung to the back of a living person, teeth and claws sunk deep into the man’s physical and astral body. Gorged beyond capacity, it hung on in mindless stupor and continued to suck energy from its host. A repugnant sight.
In two distance-defying strides he closed in on the creature, grabbed it by what seemed to be the scruff of its neck and yanked it loose without a word. The creature shrieked and thrashed in his grip until it realised the futility. Then it slowed and stopped.
‘You are too full already,’ he scolded. ‘More will do you no good.’
‘But I’m hungry,’ the creature whined.
‘No. What you are is dependent on that host. You are his now, not he yours.’
‘But I’m hungry!’
He scoffed. That was the pitfall of their kind. He resisted the urge to lecture on feeding to exist versus existing to feed the perpetual emptiness that could never be filled. His words would be wasted on this hapless thing.
He dropped the creature with an air of finality. When it scurried towards the nearest host that passed them, he knocked it back with a well-aimed swing of his cane.
‘Even the likes of us have dignity.’
He sensed that the creature heeded the warning. It stared at him for a moment and then disappeared into the grey mist, like a lizard slipping under a bush. The lesson would not last, he knew. It never did. In this the living and the dead were depressingly similar.
He was no better, either.
He raised a hand to straighten his hat out of habit and, as always, missed. His mind insisted that it was there, but he couldn’t remember wearing a hat any more than he could remember not wearing one. Confusing. He had attempted to manifest some form of headgear instead, but that had failed. Annoying, but in truth nothing more. His bare head was a nuisance of little consequence, given his present state of being. He had no use for a hat here.
Even so... He would have liked to have had it.
Ha! A meaningless desire, if ever there was one. Things being what they were, he resumed his hunt without it.
***
The bedroom was dark but for a sliver of moonlight. Through the crack in the thick curtains around the four-poster bed, Mercedes watched the faint light drawing shadows on the wall. They appeared to be moving.
She curled up tighter under the blankets. Beside her, Eric snored. The grating sound was an odd comfort. He had come to bed well past midnight, wrapped in lingering indignation that hung about him like a cloud of dust. Still she was grateful for his warm body next to hers. It made her feel a little less lonely in this house brimming with unseen entities.
Her jaw ached from constant yawning. She hadn’t slept a wink, even if staying awake had become ever more difficult. She blinked. Once. Twice… Her eyelids grew heavy again and slipped shut. Half-finished images drifted across her memory. Shadows took on shapes, and out of nowhere an enormous claw launched itself at her and grabbed her throat.
“Ah!” Not a cry, only a strangled gasp, but her heart hammered so hard it made her ribs hurt. She rolled over and groaned into her sheets. All she wanted was to lose herself in oblivion, to sleep without dreaming, but today’s events kept coming back time after time.
At first, she attempted to convince herself that her imagination had run wild; that the black figure in the alley had been a man of flesh and blood. But lying to herself had never worked. She knew what she had seen. Dreams and wistful thoughts appeared bright but shallow in the mind, like a bad print; they vanished when ignored or wished away. Memories didn’t. Neither did ghosts. Both of those were as real as a brick wall.
Mercedes turned onto her back and stared at the bed’s canopy. Gazing at the dark fabric, the difference between keeping her eyes open or closing them seemed negligible. If she managed to banish all harrowing thoughts while she stared into this darkness, perhaps her mind would stay clear when she fell asleep at last.
But no darkness is complete. Soon she made out the shadows cast by larger folds in the canopy. Long, graceful folds, like those of a billowing greatcoat, or an extended arm, or—!
She started, wide awake again, momentarily captivated by the leering shadows overhead. With a frantic sweep, she pulled the nearest bed curtain aside.
Drab light and cool air filtered into the dank space of the bed. Eric snorted once, raised an arm over his head and continued to breathe in a long, drawn out rhythm. A touch of reality on which to anchor her nerves. She contemplated waking him, but after last night’s row he was likely to be a greater comfort to her while he slept. What could she say if she did wake him? That she was afraid a dark man with a club would come for her? Eric would laugh in her face.
Yet she envisioned the dark figure without effort. Even with her eyes open, she recalled its shape and stature, the hand with fingers like talons, moving too fast and too fluidly to be alive. And those eyes... Dark, bottomless pits that contradicted every trace of humanity.
The heavy stone in her stomach churned until breathing stung. She forced the image to leave her mind, but it didn’t. It only reasserted itself to proof its validity, cold and hard like a black marble statue.
She choked and scrambled out from under the covers to escape the confines of both her bed and her mind.
The room was a pool of light compared to the dark recesses of the curtained bed. Mercedes stumbled over to the chair by her dressing table and fell into it. From this angle, the shadows seemed less menacing. Apart from the dark corner on her side of the bed, which was big enough to hide a man. Her imagination insisted that man was there, ignoring the fact that she had seen nothing and no one when she passed through it just now. Yet the image persisted. Shallow and jaded, like a bad print, but no less menacing for it. She wrapped her arms around her chest and shuddered.
Tears came silently. A handful of them pressed past her lashes and ran down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away, but bit on a knuckle to keep from sobbing lest the noise woke Eric. He mustn’t see her like this. He would only ask questions she couldn’t answer anyway.
More tears welled up, unbidden.
All her life, she had seen things others did not. Some were beautiful, like Danielle. Others were gruesome, like the ghosts who appeared to her still bearing the wounds of their violent deaths. Yet the loneliness weighed heavier than the horrors she had beheld. The one time she, in her youthful innocence, had tried to share this secret, she had paid dearly for it. Since then she had known this was her burden, her cross to bear alone. Over the years she had grown accustomed to it, and to the visions it thrust upon her.
Or so she had thought.
Whatever had killed those men in the alley still made her stomach clench with fear. Monstrous in every way, the black apparition was unlike anything she had encountered before. Oh, she had read plenty, books and papers about hauntings of every kind. Printed text was more forgiving than people on that subject, she had found. So she knew that some ghosts could physically hurt people. Now haphazard recollections of legends, distant memories, and stories of unexplained terror in the newspapers ran riot in her head. Yet this figure, this ghost… Her innards churned and her head threatened to implode at the mere thought of it. She chewed at her lips to stifle a whimper. More than anything she wanted to wake Eric and beg him to hold her, to keep her safe. Angry or not, she was confident he would.
Only she couldn’t. He would never understand what spooked her so, and she couldn’t make him understand. He’d think she had gone mad.
Maman?
Her head snapped up. Before her, almost visible against the darkness, stood little Danielle.
“Ma petite...”
Are you scared, too? the child asked.
Danielle, frightened? Mercedes meant to ask of what, but the moment she did, the presence of hundreds of restless spirits crashed into her consciousness like an anvil through a window. The ghosts honoured her standing order to keep out of the bedroom, but barely. Every o
ther room in the building was packed. Now she was aware of them, she also noticed how the air thickened with their fear.
On instinct, she put up the same barrier she used to protect herself from Eric’s frustration. Raw anxiety poured through the walls and pounded against her protective shield. By day most ghosts lacked the strength to invade the world of the living, but at night the world played by different rules. Rules she had no riposte to: her shield began to crack under the strain. In a motion as desperate as it was futile, Mercedes pressed her hands to her ears.
“I do not want this. Please, leave me be!”
The onslaught didn’t relent. She wrestled to enforce the shield, but in vain. Her mind went blank, her concentration shattered by the overwhelming emotions assaulting her both inside and out. The shield eroded faster and faster, and from its ruins rose a tall, dark figure brandishing a long club.
Maman, I’m scared!
Her whispered sobs made no sound. The black figure soon faded like smoke in the wind, but still Mercedes crawled deeper into her chair, arms over her head to hide from the maelstrom of nightmares that surrounded her. Why couldn’t she have been as blind as those men? Why did she have to see the monster that had killed them? She wouldn’t have been any less terrified, but perhaps she would have found bliss in the ignorance.
Because ghosts didn’t kill. Some fed off people, but those leeches were too small and too weak to do actual damage. They were never as tall as a human, and they certainly never resembled one!
She huddled deeper, but cowering didn’t ward off the memory of the alley, of the tall ghost too big to be a leech. Too human…
She froze. Frayed thoughts strung together and unravelled of their own accord. She made to halt them, but the correlations amassed like a snowball rolling down a hill: for ghosts, for any astral being, size implied strength. Small leeches drained whereas big leeches wore a person down. Which meant that man-sized leeches—
“Please, no.”
The snowball exploded, raining memories and recollections and the words of the newspaper article Eric had shown her.
‘People dropping dead without discernible cause or reason’.
“Oh God.”
Maman? Maman, hide me, please?
Danielle’s plea stopped the newly forming train of thought in its tracks. Mercedes abandoned it and reached for her daughter, but her hands strayed in mid-air. What remained of her shield faltered under her compounding fears and disappeared. In the same instance, the weight of the ghosts’ anxieties overpowered her. Breathless, Mercedes raked her useless hands through her hair. So scared. They were all so scared. Scared to death!
Her mind echoed that last thought, incapable of moving on. Ghosts, scared to death. But ghosts are already dead. Dead and scared to death…
Absolute terror paralyses absolutely, but under pressure all becomes liquid.
The tremor in her limbs ceased and her mind realigned itself to purpose. Pure, calming rationale locked away the rampant emotions inside her and at her will, the fallen barrier rose again. She found Danielle hunched up by her side and extended the shield around the child, too. Soothing thoughts petted the frightened girl that soft hands couldn’t touch.
“Run,” Mercedes whispered. “What I can do for you may not be enough. Find a place where you will be safe.”
Danielle’s reply was a single image of bright, golden light, and a question: Should I go?
The ground vanished beneath Mercedes’ feet and another fear gripped her heart. Reason countered that there could only be one answer, but from deep down, dread replied that dark claws mauling her body could never hurt as much as losing Danielle all over again.
Reason crushed that argument. Danielle was still her daughter, and her daughter had to come first. Sick to her stomach and with the taste of blood on her lips, Mercedes forced herself to concede.
“Yes, my love. You must go now. Flee and be safe.”
Without warning, Danielle’s presence disappeared at once.
Mercedes’ breath hitched at the sudden emptiness. She hadn’t meant to part without a proper goodbye. Not again. Perhaps it was better, reason supplied. Danielle’s wellbeing came before her mother’s comfort. Still…
Torn to the soul, Mercedes forced herself to resign to reality. Life didn’t change because she wished it to, no matter how hard she tried. It never had before.
Her bloody lips quivered only lightly as she got to her feet and straightened her shoulders. Problems did not solve themselves. The flat was still crowded with nervous ghosts who threatened to overrun her senses. In her work, she dealt with clutter by cleaning up. Knowing Danielle was out of harm’s way now, she should do herself the same courtesy.
And there were other, more practical matters to attend to, as well. Mercedes retrieved Anne’s bag of tea from its hiding place in her dresser. She would have put it in its proper place sooner if not for Carmen, but it couldn’t stay here. Eric was far too nosy to risk that.
Bag in hand, she quietly opened the bedroom door and ventured out. The invasion of despondencies, even stronger outside the bedroom, knocked her barrier off balance, but this time she found the determination to protect herself at all costs. Along with her focus she also regained the barrier’s shelter. Foreign feelings deflected and flowed away from her until only her own remained. Without the excess burden, she found herself again.
“Go,” she said in a quiet but firm voice.
She sensed how the ghosts’ collective attention shifted from something outside the flat to her.
“Go,” she repeated. “This is no place for you. Do what you must, but you cannot stay here.”
That caused a stir. Some fled at once, while others were less prompt at responding. She paid their straggling no heed. This was her house, and her rules applied. As gently as possible she asserted her assurance that if they didn’t leave by choice, she wouldn’t hesitate to evict them. Her shield was now strong enough to accomplish that.
To retain her focus and keep the smouldering panic at bay, she concentrated on the solidity of her surroundings. Her bare feet padded on the wooden floor and with each step she studied the cracks between floorboards and every unevenness in the wood. When she opened the kitchen door, she embraced the cold of the brass handle in her palm. When she opened the top cabinet, her eyes saw only the shelves and the crockery and the empty tin she meant to fill. She heard only the rustle of the tea leaves as she settled the linen bag inside the tin while a few stray sounds of the city’s nightlife filtered through the walls.
By the time she left the kitchen, she noticed calm returning to the house. The air was light again and a pleasure to breathe. Curious, she made a quick tour past the lesser used rooms. Eric’s study, her crafts room and the guestroom at the far end of the flat were prime spots for ghosts, because they were so rarely used. Here, too, the last entities scurried out as she glanced in from the threshold.
Strolling back to the bedroom, she cherished the peaceful rest around her. It was unkind to turn out dozens of scared entities in need, but she could not help them and to be honest, she felt better now they were gone. Maybe without all this tension about, Eric’s general mood would improve, too.
A welcome advantage, but not sufficient to make up for losing her daughter a second time.
Her hands began to shake. Now the ghosts were gone and the need to repress her feelings was no longer essential, her emotions rattled the door of the prison that rationality had cast them in. Maybe letting Danielle go had been right for the girl, but what of her? Hadn’t she suffered enough loss already? Wasn’t she entitled to a modicum of happiness herself, however flimsy that was?
She rubbed the sleeve of her nightgown hard over her face, pushing back the onset of new tears. What was the point in crying now? What is done, is done. And her broken heart remained broken.
Exhaustion gripped Mercedes mentally and physically. She should sleep, nightmares or no. Perhaps she could cry herself to sleep, she mused wryly. In the past, that
had been her lullaby on countless wretched nights.
She put her hand on the handle of the bedroom door, but as she pushed it down, a strong chill ran down her spine. Her skin hurt, her hairs stood on end, and a fine film of moisture formed on her brow, hands and forearms. For a moment, she believed it to be lingering tears, then perspiration. But how could she be perspiring when her breath came from her lips in puffy white clouds, like on a winter morning?
She clung to her shield to battle the panic rising once more as the fine film became a sheen of droplets that seeped into her nightgown. Like the rain that had drenched her dress in the alley. Mortified, she stared at the dark patches slowly spreading over the fabric.
“Go away,” she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut. “Now! Leave!”
In spite of her will and her words, an oppressive force manifested at her side. Registering its presence alone brought a flood of images cascading before her eyes. She deliberately scattered her focus to prevent her mind from constructing a coherent image. She knew what it was. The last thing she wanted was to see it, too.
“Be gone!”
Long, horrifically long moments passed. Drops of water dripped from her face and fingers. A shard of unseen ice stung her jaw. She shivered.
“Go! Just... go away.” Her voice cracked, and her hands balled to bone-white fists. “Please...?”
The pressure on her mind pushed harder, ever harder, and for a moment Mercedes thought it would snuff out her consciousness.
Suddenly, the presence was gone. The cold in the air receded and the water on her skin and gown dried up. She opened her eyes in alarm, but neither physical nor second sight found a trace of the dark entity.
Gradually her breath came back to her. Between clearing the flat and Danielle taking off, she had nearly forgotten about what had prompted those events in the first place. A more extensive mental sweep of the building revealed the students and her servants sleeping on the floors above her, while the shops below were empty, and she and Eric were the only people in the flat. A third sweep came up clear, too.