by Leo Hunt
She’s closer now, still a dim shape, but I can make her out more clearly. She’s small, almost child-size. What I thought was a dress is actually a hospital gown, pale green, stopping just above her knees. Her hair is long and unruly, spilling down over her shoulders. It looks like it hasn’t been washed in a long time. She’s gazing up at the stars now, her body turned away from me. We stop about a room’s length from her, enough distance to give me time to react if she’s not so friendly. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Elza used to have a wyrdstone, a stone with a hole through it that warded off spirits, but it broke when she used it against my dad’s demon, and we haven’t found another one yet.
“Hello?” I say, projecting my voice through the cold air toward her. “Can I help you?”
The girl turns to look at me with curious eyes, and my heart nearly stops.
The ghost has Ash’s face. She has the same nose, same eyes, same pursed lips. She has Ash’s figure, too, I realize: they’re exactly the same height. Only her hair is different, darker and longer and tangled around her face like a lion’s mane. As she turns to face us fully, I see that her left arm is missing. The hospital gown hangs limp from her left shoulder, sleeve empty.
“Ash?” I whisper. “Ashley Smith?”
The ghost smiles and says something I can’t understand. She’s speaking another language, singsong, jaunty. It’s not French or Spanish or any of the languages they teach at school. She holds her hand out to me. Ham growls.
“I can’t understand you. . . . Do you speak English?”
More nonsense. The one-armed girl smiles again, points up at the stars.
“Are you . . . Ash? Do you know Ash?”
She says something else, more animated. I look up to where she’s pointing. There’s nothing in particular there. Just blackness, and some small points of light.
“Yes . . .” I say uncertainly. “The stars are nice tonight.” I don’t understand what’s happening. Is this Ash, somehow? Why is she talking like this? What language is that?
She walks toward me, single hand outstretched. I’m not so sure I want to touch her. She doesn’t seem exactly threatening, and most ghosts are perfectly harmless, as I said. But last year I met a few that weren’t.
I take another step backward, Ham scrambling to keep my body between him and the one-armed girl. She steps forward, almost skipping, holding her hand out like she wants to dance with us. I’m smiling, keeping my body language friendly and open, trying to move back and sideways so we can get ourselves past her and into the protective influence of the hazel charms. I don’t exactly know what I’m afraid of, what I think she’ll do. I was safe from my own Host, for the most part — their binding prevented them from harming me directly — but there’s no protection here.
She’s asking me a question, coming at us a little faster. We’re weaving around in the moonlit grass, neither of us quite running, and I feel for a moment like I’m playing tag back in lower school, that thrill of dodging and diving —
Ham suddenly yowls and bucks and tears his leash free of my grasp. I’m turning to see what happened, and then it feels like a supersonic train made of ice hits me in the back, and I’m flung to the ground. It’s a hard blow, and I want to stay lying down in case something’s broken, but years of rugby have gotten me used to getting up after a hit. Whatever got me came up behind us while I was keeping my eye on the one-armed ghost.
Ham’s already running; I can hear him yelping, heading for the house. Surprise, surprise. I heave myself up, whirling around, my ribs squealing with pain inside my chest. I’m gasping, trying to get a breath, raising my fists up as if that’ll help me.
A second ghost is standing between me and the one-armed girl, her body held erect, radiating authority. This spirit is a woman, dark-skinned, with a sheer flow of black hair and a long white robe. Her feet are bare, and her big toes are decorated with golden rings. She’s tall and proud, with a face like an obsidian statue, and her eyes are black as tar pits, like bottomless holes bored in her face. I’ve only seen one other spirit with eyes like that, and he was my father’s Shepherd, a ghost who was very old and very powerful. To complete this intimidating picture, the ghost has a spear stuck through her chest, with dark blood clotted around the wound. The point juts several feet out of her back. No prizes for guessing how she died.
I’m unsteady on my feet. My breath is coming shallow, and it burns like I’m taking little gasps of magma rather than air. I’ve got nothing: no spells, no Host, no sigil. My dad’s things, my only source of magic power, the only way I could defend myself, are buried in a box half a field away. The one-armed girl stands behind the tall ghost, looking upset. She’s saying something in her nonsense language to the dark-skinned woman, who doesn’t take her black eyes from me. The woman shakes her head in dismissal.
I hear the owl crying again in the far trees.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say to them. “I have . . . I have a great Host. I am a powerful necromancer. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You cannot harm us,” the woman says. Her voice is smooth and low, implacable, with the strong tinge of an accent I can’t place.
“I am Luke Manchett,” I say, edging away from her. “I am the son of Horatio Manchett. I am a powerful necromancer. I demand to know your business in my town.”
“Remove yourself, sorcerer,” the woman says. “Return to your abode.”
She stands completely still, but I can tell we’re moments away from her doing something unpleasant to me. Knocking me to the ground was just a way to get my attention. My attempt to intimidate her has utterly failed. The spear jutting from her chest seems almost accusatory, mocking me, as if to say, You think anything you could do to me would be as bad as this?
The one-armed ghost is saying something again, plaintive, gesturing up at the sky. With an unmistakable look of irritation, the black-eyed woman turns her head and responds in the same singsong language.
I take the opportunity to run, adrenaline taking over, crossing half the field in what seems like no time at all. I vault over the garden wall and collapse onto the grass, gasping, holding my chest as my muscles burn and burn. Ham is lurking in the shadows by the kitchen window, his leash dangling from his collar. He doesn’t even come over to see if I’m all right.
Forget about the William Goodman Foundation. If I needed any more proof that Ashley Smith from Marin County is up to something, I just got it. As for the woman with the spear in her chest . . . if she wasn’t a bound spirit, part of someone’s Host, I don’t know what she was. Being bound to a living person makes spirits more powerful. Normal ghosts don’t punch you hard enough to lift you off your feet. Normal ghosts can barely rattle a window frame. I feel like I got hit by a car.
I get to my feet and look over the garden wall. Far away, at the opposite side of the field, I can see the woman, her white robe easily picked out in the moonlight. The smaller figure, the girl, follows her closely. I think they’re holding hands. I lean there on the wall, watching for any sign they might know about the Book or be looking for it, but they walk right through the hedge without a glance at the spot where I buried it. I stand out in the garden for a long time, a bruise flowering on my chest. When I’m sure the spirits aren’t coming back, I get a spade from the garden shed and head back out into the field again.
Elza exhales a lungful of smoke, frowns up at the trees around us. It’s early morning, before homeroom. I asked her to meet me here, our spot, in the graveyard of Saint Jude’s. We’re sitting at the side of an old mausoleum, surrounded by trees. We’ve been coming down here over lunch for months, and no one’s ever mowed the grass or plucked any weeds in all that time. I doubt anyone else ever comes to this part of the graveyard. Elza finishes off her cigarette and drops it into the dirt, grinding it out with her boot. I look at the angel statue that looms over the graves, its face hidden by foamy yellow lichen. I remember looking at it the first time Elza ever brought me here.
“So
what did you do after that?” she asks me.
I pause. “Put Ham inside. Tried to sleep,” I say.
“So do you think they knew it was your house? Were they coming after you?”
“I don’t think so. If they’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead. They caught me away from the hazel charms. I had nothing. This ghost, the woman with the spear through her . . . she was ferocious. Someone’s bound spirit, I’m certain. Part of a Host. I couldn’t understand what the girl was saying. She wanted something, but they didn’t want to kill me.”
“This girl, with one arm? You’re sure it was this American girl? Ash?”
“It wasn’t exactly Ash. The hair was different, but the same face, same build, same everything. Do ghosts ever look different from their bodies?”
“I don’t know. When your Host forced you out of your body, you looked exactly the same . . . but maybe if they’d controlled your body for years, it would’ve started to look different? Hair grown out, something like that? I presume ghost hair doesn’t grow?”
“Yeah,” I say, “maybe. Maybe this girl, Ash, she had the same problem as me. Maybe she inherited a Host, and they forced her out of her own body?”
“So whatever’s driving her body around, it isn’t Ashley Smith. It’s something else,” Elza says.
“OK,” I say. “But the Ash ghost, she seemed . . . I don’t know . . . happy? Like she was trying to say something about the sky? It’s hard to explain. I mean, I was scared of her at the time, but looking back . . . I think she was just excited.”
“And this other ghost, the woman, she only appeared later?”
“She knocked me down and stood between me and the one-armed girl.”
“Like a bodyguard,” Elza says.
“That kind of vibe, yeah. I felt like I got between a mother bear and her cub.”
“Maybe this has nothing to do with you,” Elza says slowly. “Maybe Ashley Smith is just part of something else that we don’t understand? The world doesn’t revolve around us. I don’t expect the supernatural world does either.”
“She came into my class and called me by name. She — it — wants something from me.”
“Yes.” Elza sighs. “I expect she does. It seems a bit too much to hope that she’s flown halfway around the world to visit Dunbarrow by some weird coincidence.”
She looks down at the ground.
“Hey, are you all right?” I ask.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I just . . . I really thought this was over, you know? You nearly died. I nearly died as well. I thought that was it. Haven’t we been through enough? The last five months have been so great, I just thought . . .”
I kiss her on the forehead. “They have been great. Whatever’s happening, we’ll get through that as well. I promise. Ash can’t be worse than my dad’s Host.”
“Yeah, we hope,” she says, muffled by my shoulder. We sit there for a while, with my arm around her.
“So what do you think we should do? Should we, like, talk to Ash?”
“What?” Elza laughs. “No, I don’t think so. What are you going to do, just walk up to her and start talking about ghosts? She, it, whatever, will pretend she doesn’t know what we mean. Our one advantage is she thinks we don’t know.”
“The ghosts could’ve told her I saw them. She knows I know. Like, we know that she knows that we know.”
“A perilous wedding cake of deceit,” Elza says. “You’re probably right. But we have to be careful. We don’t know what she wants or what she’s capable of. This girl might not even be remotely human. She might even be something to do with Mr. Berkley. We don’t have a wyrdstone. I’m almost wishing you hadn’t gotten rid of your dad’s stuff. . . .”
I don’t say anything. I dug up the toolbox last night. The Book is in the bottom drawer of my wardrobe right now. Still in the toolbox I buried it in. I didn’t want to risk Ash, or whoever’s behind these ghosts, getting their hands on it. I’m wondering if this might be a good moment to reveal this to Elza, and then I decide against it. This isn’t the time to start an argument about that.
I’ve actually got my dad’s sigil — the black ring that was the focus of his power — in the inside pocket of my jacket. Problem is, without a Host to back me up I’m not sure how powerful it is. I feel like it might be the magical equivalent of an unloaded gun.
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Elza’s saying, “it doesn’t seem as exciting now, but I did some research of my own. Your old mate Mark Ellsmith? Who according to Ash is in California on exchange? His social media’s been dead quiet since a couple days ago. No updates.”
“You think . . . ?”
“I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think he’d go to California for a month and not post a single photograph. Imagine all the opportunities for shirtless pictures. Shirtless at passport control, shirtless by the pool, shirtless crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Plus we’re only a few months from exams. Plus what kind of exchange program takes one student? The timing she chose for all of this just makes no sense at all.”
“So where’s Mark?”
I didn’t always get along with Mark, even when we were mates — I played rugby with him, had to keep on his good side — but the idea that something bad happened to him because of me and Elza, without him even understanding what he was caught up in, makes me feel like I’ve stepped on a splinter of glass.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Elza takes out another cigarette. She examines it, turning it over in her hand, then puts it back in the pack. “Has Ash ever seen us together?” she asks.
“I don’t think so. But I mean, she seems to be staying with Holiday. She’ll tell Ash who you are if Ash asks about you.”
“It’s not a great plan, but how about I try to stick close to them in school today? Just observe and report. I’ll see if I overhear anything useful.”
“All right,” I say. “Let’s just try and play this cool.”
Ash isn’t difficult to find. She’s become an overnight sensation at Dunbarrow High. At morning break you can see her, dressed in white, sitting at one of the outdoor picnic tables with Holiday and the other popular girls. I’m at the other end of the lot, over near the cars, keeping an eye on her, just wondering. She knows I can see her, but never even glances at me. All I want is for her to slip up, show me something abnormal, prove to me that she’s more than a cheerful Californian schoolgirl. In the light of day, watching her across the yard, all our evidence seems less substantial. For all I know, Ash can’t see ghosts, has no idea there’s a spirit with her face roaming the fields of Dunbarrow at night. Those ghosts might be hunting her, not me. Maybe there’s a necromancer after her, and we’re the only ones who can help her. All we’ve got are little pieces of the puzzle, and Ash just looks so blissfully confident and happy, sitting with Holiday Simmon and Alice Waltham, throwing her head back to laugh at something they’re telling her. I know appearances can deceive, but her surface is still throwing me off.
Elza is struggling in her surveillance mission. She has many admirable qualities, my girlfriend, but blending into crowds isn’t one of them. Her thunderhead of black hair foils any attempt to stay anonymous. She’s lurking under a tree near the picnic benches, leaning against the trunk, pretending to read a paperback, but she’s been on the same page for five minutes already.
After a while the bell rings for the second morning period, and Ash strolls into the main building with a flock of girls around her, Elza hurrying after them like a sheepdog in combat boots.
Lunchtime is the same story. Ash is at the center of a crowd, no doubt regaling them with stories about California. Her popularity actually functions as a defense: it’s difficult for Elza to get near her without being instantly noticeable. I can see Alice Waltham and a couple of the other girls getting snippy when Elza tries to sit at the table nearest them in the dining hall, and eventually she gets into a full-blown argument with them and leaves. Ash watches her go.
I’m barely able to focus on m
y classes. My ribs hurt, and my sleepless night has left me feeling like my head’s full of wool. I’m too tired and weirded out to pay attention to anything that’s happening, even when Kirk does an impression of my fit during history and gets sent out. I basically stare at the floor, going over and over the previous night in my mind: the one-armed girl, the black-eyed woman, the way she sent me flying through the air with a single blow. I don’t remember my Host being able to hurl people around like that. Just how powerful is that spirit? Should I tell Elza I’ve still got my dad’s things? She’s going to want to know why I kept that quiet since November. Would it even help us? I know the sigil can control my own Host, but I’ve got no idea what it’d do to someone else’s. The Book of Eight would tell me, but the idea of ever looking inside that thing again makes me shudder. Last time I read the Book, it sucked my mind into its pages for three days. We still don’t know why, or how I came out of it when I did.
At the end of the day, Elza’s waiting for me on the road by the school gates, cigarette held loosely in her left hand. I pull her in for a kiss.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to kiss me when I was smoking,” she says when we break apart.
“Rules are made to be broken,” I say.
“I know I should stop,” she says, giving the cigarette a guilty glance.
“I’m not going to make you. You know that.”
“Well, I’m sorry. Today was stressful.”
“Did you overhear anything?”
“Mostly no. Let’s just wait here a moment.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say, pulling her in for another kiss.
“Seriously,” she says, laughing, “give it a break. We have to watch.”
I lean against the tree trunk beside her, casting my gaze over the kids leaving through the front gate, heading downhill, packs of girls with bags flapping by their hips, boys shouting and kicking balls around in the road. I actually resent them, I realize, these people who don’t seem to have a care in the world. I know really they’re all worried about acne or girls or boys or exams or their families, but it’s hard to feel any sympathy when you’re trapped inside a whole different set of problems.