by Butcher, Jim
My grave was about six feet deep. I’m considerably over six feet tall. As I stood, my eyes were a few inches above the top of half a foot of snow that covered the ground at that spot. So it wasn’t hard to see the little girl.
She might have been six years old and looked small, even for her age. She wore a nineteenth-century outfit, an almost ridiculously frilly, ornate dress for a child who would probably have it splattered with dirt or food within the hour. Her shoes looked handmade and had little buckles on them. Over one shoulder she was carrying a tiny, lacy parasol that matched her dress. She was pretty—like most children—and had blond hair and bright green eyes.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, with a little Shirley Temple curtsy. “It is a pleasure to meet you, the late Mr. Harry Dresden.”
I decided to be careful. What were the odds she was really a little girl, as she appeared? “How did you know my name?”
She folded the little parasol closed and tapped it against the headstone. It was made of white marble. Letters had been inscribed upon it in gold, or at least something goldlike, and it still gleamed despite about a decade of exposure. It had a pentacle inscribed beneath its simple legend: HERE LIES HARRY DRESDEN. Beneath the pentacle, it continued: HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING.
For a moment, there was a strange, sweet taste in my mouth, and the scent of pine needles and fresh greenery filled my nose. A frisson rippled up and down my spine, and I shivered. Then the taste and scent were both gone.
“Do you know me?” she asked. “I’m famous.”
I squinted at her for a moment. Then I made an effort of will and vanished from the bottom of the grave, reappearing beside the child. I was facing the wrong direction again, and I sighed as I turned to face her and then glanced around me. In Graceland there’s a statue of a small girl, a child known as Inez. It’s been there for going on two centuries, and every few years stories circulate about how the statue will go missing—and how visitors to the graveyard have reported encounters with a little girl in a period dress.
The statue was gone from its case.
“You’re Inez,” I said. “Famous ghost of Graceland.”
The little girl laughed and clapped her hands. “I have been called so.”
“I heard they debunked you a couple of years ago. That the statue was just there as advertising for some sculptor or something.”
She opened the parasol again and put it over a shoulder, spinning it idly. “Goodness. People confused about things that happened hundreds of years before they were born. Who would have imagined.” She looked me up and down and said, “I like your coat.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I like your parasol.”
She beamed. “You’re so courteous. Sometimes I think I shall never again meet anyone who is properly polite.” She looked at me intently and then said, “I think . . . you shall be”—she pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and nodded slowly—“a monster.”
I frowned. “What?”
“All newborn things become something,” said Inez.
“I’m not a newborn.”
“But you are,” she said. She nodded down at my grave. “You have entered a new world. Your old life is no more. You cannot be a part of it any longer. The wide universe stretches before you.” She looked around the cemetery calmly. “I have seen many, many newborns, Mr. Dresden. And I can see what they are going to become. You, young shade, are quite simply a monster.”
“Am not,” I said.
“Not at the moment, perhaps,” she said. “But . . . as time goes by, as those you care about grow old and pass on, as you stand helpless while greater events unfold . . . you will be. Patience.”
“You’re wrong.”
Her dimples deepened. “Why are you so upset, young shade? I really don’t see anything wrong with being a monster.”
“I do,” I said. “The monster part?”
“Oh,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Don’t be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. Do you know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways.” Her eyes became distant. “There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.”
“Monsters hurt people. I don’t.”
Inez burst out in girlish giggles. She turned in a circle, parasol whirling, and in a singsong voice said, “Harry Dresden, hung upon a tree. Afraid to embrace his des-tin-y.” She looked me up and down again, her eyes dancing, and nodded firmly. “Monster. They’ll write books about you.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t know what to say.
“This little world is so small,” she continued. “So dull. So dreary.” She gave me a warm smile. “You aren’t shackled here, Mr. Dresden. Why remain?”
I shivered. A cold feeling swelled up in the pit of my stomach. It began to spread. I said nothing.
“Ahh,” Inez murmured—a sound of satisfaction. Her eyes went to my gravestone and she tilted her head to one side. “Did you?” she asked brightly.
I shook my head. “Did I what?”
“Did you die doing the right thing?”
I thought about it for a moment. And for a moment more. Then I said, quietly, “I . . . No. I didn’t.”
She tilted her head the other way. “Oh?”
“They had . . . a little girl,” I said quietly. It took me a moment to realize that I was speaking the words out loud and not just hearing them in my head. “They were going to hurt her. And I pulled out all the stops. To get her back. I . . .”
I suddenly felt sick again. My mind flashed back to the image of Susan’s death as her body fought to change into a monstrous form, locking her away forever as a prisoner of her own blood thirst. I felt her fever-hot skin beneath my lips where I had kissed her forehead. And I felt her blood spray as I cut her throat, triggering the spell that wiped out every murdering Red Court son of a bitch on the same planet with my little girl.
It had been the only way. I had no choice.
Didn’t I?
Maybe not at that point. But it was the choices I’d made up until that moment that had shaped the event. I could have done things differently. It might have changed everything. It might have saved Susan’s life.
I shuddered as another memory struck me. Complete, lifeless numbness in my legs. Aching pains of the body. The helpless fury I’d felt when I realized that a fall from a ladder had broken my spine—that I was paralyzed and helpless to do anything for my daughter. I remembered realizing that I was going to have to do something I would never have considered before that point.
“I crossed a line,” I said quietly. “Lines, plural. I did things I shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t right. And I knew it. But . . . I wanted to help the little girl. And I . . .”
“Sinned?” she suggested, her large eyes eerily serene. “Chose the left-hand path? Fell from grace? Cast the world into madness?”
“Whatever,” I said.
“And you think you aren’t a monster.” Calmly, she folded the parasol again and trailed its tip in the snow, humming a quiet little song.
That cold, sick feeling swelled and began to spread even more. I found myself shivering. Dear God, she was right. She was exactly right. I hadn’t meant any of it to hurt anyone, but did that really matter? I had made a decision to do something I knew was wrong. I bargained my life away to Queen Mab, promised her my service and loyalty, though I knew that the darkness of the mantle of the Winter Knight would swallow me, that my talents and strengths could be subsumed into wicked service for the Queen of Air and Darkness.
My little girl’s life had been on the line when I made that choice, when I had acquired power beyond the ken of most mortals.
I th
ought of the desperation in the eyes of Fitz and his gang. I thought of the petty malice of Baldy and those like him. Of the violence in the streets.
How many other men’s daughters had died because of my choice?
That thought, that truth, hit me like a landslide, a flash of clarity and insight that erased every other thought, the frantic and blurry activity of my recent efforts.
Like it or not, I had embraced the darkness. The fact that I had died before I could have found myself used for destructive purposes meant nothing. I had picked up a red lightsaber. I had joined the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
I had become what I always fought.
There was no denying it. No chance to correct my mistake. I suddenly wanted, desperately, to simply drop back into the grave and seek out the quiet and peace I had found there. Dammit, but I wanted to rest.
I folded my arms and stared at Inez. My voice came out ragged and harsh. “You aren’t the ghost of a little girl.”
Her little face lit up with another smile. “If I am no ghost, why do you look so haunted?”
And then she was gone. No sound, no flash, no nothing. Just gone.
If I were living, then the headache I felt coming on would be typical of this kind of situation. Cryptic supernatural entities go with the territory in my line of work.
But, man, I hate it when they get in the last word.
“An insufferable entity,” murmured a slow, deep, redolent basso voice behind me. “Her soul is made of crooked lines.”
I stiffened. I hadn’t sensed any kind of presence the way I had with Inez, and I knew exactly what could happen when you let someone sneak up behind you. Even though rule number one for dealing with supernatural beings—never show fear—is simple, it sure as hell isn’t easy. I know the kinds of things that are out there.
I turned, very calmly and slowly, reminding myself that I didn’t have a heart to pound wildly, and that there wasn’t really any sweat on my palms. I didn’t need to shiver from fear any more than I needed to shiver from cold.
My self apparently found its own assurances unreliable. Stupid self.
There was a tall and menacing figure floating in the air behind me, maybe three feet off the ground. It was swathed entirely in a rich cloak of patina, its hood lifted, creating an area of completely black shadow within. You could see the dim suggestion of a face in the blackness. It looked like the old images of the Shadow, who clouded the minds of men. The cloak wavered and billowed slowly in a breeze with the approximate viscosity of a lava lamp.
“Um,” I said. “Hi.”
The figure drifted downward until its feet were resting atop the snow. “Is this preferable?”
“Aren’t we literal?” I said. “Uh, yes. That’s fine.” I peered at it. “You’re . . . Eternal Silence. The statue on Dexter Graves’s monument.”
Eternal Silence just stood there in silence.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “I guess you aren’t really just a local statue. Are you?”
“Your assumption is correct,” Eternal Silence replied.
I nodded. “What do you want?”
It drifted slowly closer. The deep voice—and this guy made James Earl Jones sound like Mickey Mouse—rumbled out. “You must understand your path.”
“My path.”
“That before you. That behind.”
I sighed. “That’s less than helpful.”
“It is more than necessary,” Eternal Silence said. “It is essential to survival.”
“Survival?” I asked, and I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled. When you’ve faced off with enough Grim Reaper wannabes, it gets kinda routine. “I’m already dead.”
It said nothing.
“Okay,” I said, after a minute. “Survival. Of who?”
It didn’t answer for a long moment, and I shook my head. I began to think that I could probably spend all night talking to every lunatic spirit in this freaking place and never make sense of any of them. And I didn’t have all night to waste.
I had begun to focus my thoughts on another series of Nightcrawler hops, when that deep voice spoke—and this time, it wasn’t something I heard. It just resonated in my head, in my thoughts, a burst of pure meaning that slammed into my head as if inscribed on the front of a cruise missile:
EVERYONE.
I staggered and clutched at my skull with my hands. “Agh!” I stammered. “Hell’s bells! Is it too much to ask you to turn down the volume?”
UNINTENTIONAL. MORTAL FRAILTY. INSUFFICIENT UNDERSTANDING OF VOCALIZATION. PRECONSIDERED VOCABULARY EXHAUSTED.
I actually discorporated at this full-on assault of thought. My freaking spirit body spread out into a giant, puffy cloud of vaguely Dresdencolored mist. And it hurt. I mean, that’s the only word I can think of that really applies. It wasn’t like any kind of pain I’d felt before, and I’m a connoisseur when it comes to pain. It wasn’t pain of the body, the way I had known it. It was more like . . . like the way your head feels when you hear or see an image or concept that flabbergasts you so hard that the only thing you can say about it is, “That is so wrong.”
That. Times a million. And not just in my head, but full body.
It took a full minute for that feeling to fade, and it was only then that I could see myself coming back together again.
“Don’t explain!” I said, almost desperately, when I looked up to see Eternal Silence hovering a little closer to me. “Don’t! That hurt!”
It waited.
“We have to keep this simple,” I stuttered, thinking out loud. “Or you’re going to kill me. Again.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and said, “I’m going to ask yes or no questions,” I said. “For yes, stay silent. For no, indicate otherwise. Agreed?”
Nothing. Eternal Silence might not have even been there, except that his cloak kept rolling and billowing, lava-lamp fashion.
“Is your cloak red?”
The hood of the cloak twitched left and right, once.
“Fantastic,” I muttered. “Communication.” I mopped at my face with my hands and said, “Okay. When you say everyone, are you talking, like, everyone I know?”
Twitch.
“More than that?”
Silence.
“Um. The whole city?”
Twitch.
“What—more?”
Silence.
“So . . . you mean . . . like . . . everyone-everyone. Everyone. The whole planet.”
Silence.
“And me understanding my freaking path saves them?”
Silence. Twitch.
“Great,” I muttered. “Next you’ll want me to take a pebble out of your hand.”
Twitch.
“I wasn’t being literal. . . . Okay, yeah, you and I aren’t going to communicate well this way.”
Silence. Somehow . . . emphatic.
I stopped and pondered for a moment. Then I said, “Wait. This is connected, isn’t it? With what Captain Murphy sent me to do.”
Silence.
“Find my killer?” I asked him. “I don’t get it. How does finding my killer save the world?”
The deep voice repeated earlier phrases. “You must understand your path. It is more than necessary. It is essential to survival.”
“There’s a little irony in Eternal Silence being stuck on a looping sound bite.” I sighed.
A wraith’s moan drifted into the air, and I tensed, looking around.
One of those ragged-scarecrow shapes was rising from the earth of a grave, like something being hauled up out of deep mud. It moaned in mindless hunger, its eyes vacant.
Then there was another moan. And another. And another.
Wraiths were coming up out of graves all around me.
I started breathing harder, though I didn’t need to. “Yeah, okay, brilliant idea for a safe house, Harry. It’s a freaking graveyard. Where else are ghosts going to be?”
Eternal Silence only stared at me. There was an amused quality to its
silence.
“I have to go,” I said. “Is that all you had for me? Understand my path?”
Silence. It lifted a green-shrouded limb in a gesture of farewell.
The first wraith finished with what was evidently its nightly routine of slogging out of the earth and moaning. Its empty eyes turned toward me and it began to drift my way, immaterial toes dangling down through the snow.
“Screw this,” I said, and vanished. One, two, three hops, and I was to the nearest brick wall of the cemetery. I gritted my teeth and plunged into it.
And slammed my face into cold stone.
Pain lanced through my nose, and I snarled at my own stupidity. Dammit, Harry. Walls are built to keep things out—but walls around graveyards are built to keep things in. I’d known that since I was a freaking kid.
I checked behind me. The wraiths were drifting after me in a slow, graceful horde, adding members as they went. They weren’t fast, but there were dozens and dozens of them. Again I was reminded of documentaries I’d seen showing giant clouds of jellyfish.
I gritted my teeth and thought fast. When walls are built, they are intended as physical barriers. As a result of that intention, invested by dozens or scores of builders, they took on a similar solidity when it came to the spiritual, as well. It’s why they held most ghosts inside graveyards—and it probably had something to do with the way a threshold formed around a home, too.
But where human intention had created a barrier, that same intention had also created an access point.
I turned and began vanishing in a line, straight for the gates of the boneyard.
I don’t know what I would have done if they had been closed. Shut gates and shut doors carry their own investment of intention, just as the walls do. But open gates are another matter entirely, and the gates of Graceland stood wide-open. As I went through them, I looked back at what seemed like a modest-sized army of wraiths heading for the opening.
I had a lightbulb moment.
The gates of the cemetery were being left open.
And hordes of wraiths haunted the streets of Chicago by night lately.
“Aha, Morty,” I said. “And now we know where they’re coming from.”
Someone, someone alive, was opening those gates at night. That meant that we had a place to begin, a trail we could attempt to follow to find out who was stirring up the city’s spooks to use against Morty—and why.