Spirit

by J. P. Hightman

“The ghosts of Salem,” said Tess, thinking aloud, her voice shaking. “There was something they wanted me to feel. It’s the widow Malgore…. she’s trying to keep them apart. She’s killed or she’s driven out everyone they’ve come near, everyone…to keep them apart.”

  “Who?”

  “Wilhelm. Abigail. They’ve been trying to reach us…”

  “Reach us for what, Tess?”

  Tess gazed at her, unsure. The question hung in the air.

  There was something very touching about Annette, looking so helpful. Tess cursed herself for listening to Tobias, for letting him desert her. Where in God’s name was he?

  Tobias awoke in the snow. He had fallen from the tree and survived, but Wilder was gone. Not a soul was visible in the woods. Except the one leaving him. Light and vapor fled his body, soaring away in the snowfall.

  It was a man’s form, in Puritan hat and cloak, but hardly there, like a rippling silk, blown away, growing even more indistinct, just silvery light fading and soon lost in the trees.

  It joined with the second spirit-shape, the ghost of Abigail, and the two vanished into the distant air.

  And then from the other direction, out of the mist and trees, an emaciated woman with alabaster skin was coming forth, wrapped in animal pelts, and she was raised up, high, and Tobias saw that she was riding an immense black creature.

  Tobias looked upon it with total incredulity.

  It appeared to be a great black jaguar, with massive muscles and odd lumps of flesh beneath its slick hide. Its slightly misshapen head was marred by tumorous clumps and growths covered in dark fur, and two small sharpened horns. It stepped over to Tobias, its fangs bared. The woman leaned down and hissed savagely. She grinned, showing ragged teeth made of thorns, and a bony, almost-feline face, like that of her steed.

  Widow Malgore had returned.

  She had donned the gear of hunting, as her sick mind saw fit, and she was enjoying the pleasures of the chase.

  She kicked at the jaguar—who proceeded to dive into Tobias’s chest, lifting him. Tobias wheezed painfully as he was flung around, writhing, and he could see the snout and jaws of the animal on his chest, clutching his clothes. He was trapped in those strong jaws, hanging by the loose clothing at his midsection as if he were held in a sack. His feelings were of detached horror—how very strange, these jaws have hold of me…

  “Tobias!”

  It was Wilder, rising from behind a tree, injured but fighting, firing his pistols. The huge jaguar was struck in the middle, crying out; it dropped Tobias, leaving him gasping. Widow Malgore stabbed the cat with a small pitchfork, and the monstrous animal galloped away in extraordinary leaps, carrying her into the mist.

  Wilder went to Tobias, lifting his head. “Are you all right?”

  “Exceptional.”

  “The others?”

  Tobias shook his head, not knowing.

  “Diàvolo. It was her demon, wasn’t it? In thrall to her…,” Wilder asked, quoting the nursery rhyme. “Old Widow Malgore, kept a devil slave…’?”

  Tobias couldn’t answer that, but told him of the spirit-vision he’d received from Wilhelm, and his discovery: “She’s alive. She can be killed.”

  The foreigner scoffed. “I always believed it. It was never in doubt, Goodraven. That’s what this is for.” He set down the witch’s dagger in the snow. “But you wouldn’t listen. I suppose we have to learn things for ourselves, don’t we?”

  “This is proof, don’t you understand? The spirit is helping us; I saw the mother survive the gallows with my own eyes.”

  He wasn’t sure Wilder was even listening to him; the man was examining Tobias’s injuries. “Your wound’s not deep, signore, you’ll be all right,” Wilder said, “and she’ll need time to draw strength. We need to keep moving. I can protect you.”

  “That’s no longer convincing.”

  Wilder scowled. “I shall tear the head off the wretch and crush her skull….”

  Without warning Malgore flew from the mist and leaped upon him. His eyes went wide. He’d been stabbed in the back.

  Tobias gaped in horror as the huge man’s face imploded, sucked inward.

  The witch pulled back, floating above, carrying Wilder’s spine in her claws.

  His skeleton had separated from his body.

  Wilder’s skin flagged to the ground, bloodless, in a heap. The witch dropped his bones to the snow, and turned, flying back into the mist, her strength depleted.

  It was an instant and nothing more.

  Tobias stood stunned before the grisly heap of skin and bones. The man was dead.

  Wilder was dead.

  The wretch was gone, a retreat made clear by a long, terrible silence in the woods.

  Tobias stumbled away, and stared into the white void.

  After a time, Tobias retrieved Malgore’s dagger and pocketed it, though he could hardly imagine putting it to use. He slumped into the snow, placing his back against a tree, shivering, fighting to keep his brain working.

  Eventually, he became aware that Sattler was running toward him from ahead in the woods. “WE CAN SEE THE TOWN…,” he was yelling.

  Saying nothing, Tobias remained in a daze, as Sattler got closer. He was shuddering uncontrollably. There was little hope of getting through this now. Wilder had been the most capable of them, and they had lost his protection. The spirits could not keep Tobias safe and Malgore was out here, somewhere alongside them in the forest. They would be killed for certain.

  “What happened?”

  Tobias was not speaking, his thoughts running wild. Whatever it was the Puritan wanted him to know, the wretch did not want him to hear it. He had only part of a message.

  “It’s an endless feud…between them…and I don’t know how to end it,” Tobias uttered quietly, not sure if his words were even audible. “I’m going to die here no matter what.”

  Sattler stared at him in shock.

  But Tobias knew, it was the truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tess and Annette were looking for the missing blind boy away from the train, deeper into the woods. Annette had witnessed the spirit ripping away from Tess’s body, and was extremely disturbed. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked Tess.

  Tess said nothing.

  She felt as closed-in as if she’d been in a coffin, and she could scarcely find the air to breathe. Her throat tightened. Her skin, even the skin of her eyelids, felt taut. She felt exposed and so very far from help.

  “Say something calming,” Tess asked her. “Tell me about the children you want to teach.”

  Annette searched for words. “When all this is past, I’ll bring you to the blind children’s school. And you can see what I have done. I think the key to their lives is going to be music.”

  “Music?”

  “A blind child who is trained in music is useful. He or she could be employed playing piano or harp at a hotel or such. Imagine being free of charity. I have in mind that there could be an orchestra of them, world-class, all of them living quite well on their earnings.”

  It wasn’t an unintelligent plan, Tess thought. It was something that could truly change lives. The surprise of it distracted Tess; she was ashamed that she’d dismissed Annette as petty and small-minded.

  “I know the blind school is here to make those rich investors feel better about their greed, but it’s still a good thing,” Annette added. “Those children will benefit.”

  Unthinkingly, Tess said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “For thinking so little of you. For thinking you were keeping secrets from your fiancée with Michael—”

  “Michael’s feelings are not to be discussed,” Annette said, incensed. “He isn’t the way you might think. He’s the only one who knows I can’t have children, and that’s because Sattler might not marry me if he found out.”

  Tess felt even worse. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You can’t know everything, Tess
, whatever you may think. Judge less and help more.”

  This might have been like a hard slap to the face on a different day, but Tess was still absorbing the very fact of being alive. That relief passed quickly, though: a crackling in the nearby trees silenced the girls.

  Then for a long moment, there was no sound at all.

  “This Thing, this witch has such power,” Annette whispered. “She seems to cross space with mere thought….”

  But Tess had no reply. Her eyes were fixed forward in absolute terror.

  The fog was thickening about her. She couldn’t see.

  It had to be the spirit out here. This was how she traveled. But not alone; Tess could now hear people getting closer, calling for help, the muted cries of survivors.

  “It’s…trying to get inside us…,” Annette said. “The spirit tries to hide within…”

  “It’s desperate,” Tess tried to explain. “It wants to reach us.”

  Annette looked tearful. “Tess…I think it’s inside me…” The mist seemed to come from behind and melt into her, as her veins and her bones glowed inside her, now her abdomen, burning with light, vaguely blue as the mist moved down her. Then suddenly the witch was there, throwing Annette’s body back furiously against a tree.

  Nauseated, Tess heard bones breaking. And for the moment the light burned within the girl, Tess could see her skeleton, and another skeleton coming against it as she saw the two merge.

  The witch’s claws had reached deep inside the young woman, trying to grasp the blue skeletal spirit inside her, pulling it loose.

  For an instant, Malgore appeared to be holding a shimmering blue veil of light, Abigail’s very soul, but the spirit slipped out and escaped her claws, gliding free. Furious, the witch pursued the spectral entity, and the two passed into the snow and mist and could no longer be seen.

  Annette’s lifeless body collapsed to the ground.

  In terror, Tess ran the other way into the forest. Heart pounding, she came upon a spray of broken dolls—battered china girls with rouged faces and black pupils staring upward—lying in the snow. They were littered around the dead body of the thin woman, who still clutched several of her precious recovered toys.

  Tess realized that anyone the spirit tried to reach, the witch destroyed immediately, and with astonishing savagery. Over and over, Malgore had wrecked her daughter’s only voice to the world….

  Exhausted, Tess fell against a tree, listening, watching—as a boy ran past, his hands feeling blindly before him. Ahead of him, Malgore glided out of the frost, a flying, grinning thing dripping with ice, in animal hood and robes.

  Malgore blocked the panicked child. The boy stopped, out of space. The witch sniffed at him. She reached out a skeletal finger, stopping at the youngster’s eyes. A look of disgust crossed her visage, and the wretch shoved the boy to the ground, dispensing with him.

  Is he no amusement for you, thought Tess, unless he’s bait for others?

  Malgore stalked away into the woods, and the downed boy slowly turned as if aware of Tess.

  He panted, whispering, “Are you…alive…?”

  Unable to speak, she took his hands, put them to her face, and nodded.

  The two of them stayed hidden, clutched together against the tree a long time. When finally the woods grew completely quiet, Tess eased out and peered around the tree, but little could be seen through the mist. Fallen bodies could be dimly made out, but she had no way of knowing for sure who had been lost.

  She slipped back to the tree.

  “I don’t hear it anymore,” whispered the boy.

  “No.”

  A little more time passed, and Tess found the courage to move from hiding. Suddenly something lunged at her from the other side.

  Carl’s body slumped to the ground.

  Drunk as he was, he’d gone out to help the others. She shouted as he fell, his corpse plunging into the snow.

  Terrified she’d given her location away, she stood quiet, looking around. She snatched up the blind boy’s hand and ran amid the trees, toward the train for shelter.

  As they got closer, shadows in the car windows moved; people awake now, talking.

  Tess stopped just before entering, feeling exactly what was happening inside with the survivors. “They’re fighting. They’re going to turn against each other.”

  She gripped the boy’s hand tighter, filled with dread.

  At a small hill, Michael stood waiting as Tobias and Sattler caught up to him. Coughing now, with a bloodied arm, he seemed weaker than ever. Tobias looked at him and thought, Some people, even if they’re timid, pull themselves together in a crisis and find the guts to go on. Not so with this one.

  Sattler begrudgingly helped Michael rebandage his arm.

  Looking inward, Tobias found that he had been more capable than he’d imagined. If only his mind would work as well as his body; the clues had been laid before him, but they did not quite fit properly. The dead couple; the doctor; the flashing of images; surviving the accident by some aid: what was the sum total of all these parts?

  They rested, catching their breath. It was quiet. No one wanted to discuss their chances. Tobias yearned for the cleverness of Tess. The cold was seeping into him. Strange, how in a wintery place, thoughts seem to slow.

  “I don’t know what it is I have to do,” he said, still in a numbed state of mind, his shock wearing upon him even now.

  Sattler stared.

  “They’ve been separated. They can’t touch. But I don’t know how to bring them together,” he went on. “They can’t expect me to kill Malgore, I wouldn’t know…”

  “I don’t think I understand you.”

  Tobias looked at him, lost. “These things are asking me to do something and I don’t know what. Bring them their earthly possessions? Is that what they want?”

  “You mean the box we took, with their wedding rings?”

  Tobias was too deep in thought to answer, so Sattler looked at Michael for a response. “What is he talking about?”

  Tobias pulled himself out of his daze and patiently explained, “These objects take on tremendous significance in the dead mind. The spirits may gain strength from them…possibly…”

  “Strength for what?” asked Sattler.

  “To kill the witch.”

  Baffled, Sattler and Michael looked at him as if he were insane.

  “We have to bring the spirits their possessions,” Tobias said emphatically. “So they can rid us of that thing. Are you listening to a word I’ve said?”

  “I think we’ve all been out here too long…,” said Michael. He’d lost consciousness during the attack, and wasn’t at all sure what he had seen. Only some beast in the fog, possibly a wolf, he told himself, something that he could accept as real. “Let’s just get on to safety now…”

  And he looked up, carrying everyone’s gaze to the winter village ahead of them on the hill. The winter carnival awaited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Outside, still terribly shaken, Tess and the young boy were gathered by the overcrowded parlor car. They found everyone, inside and out, wrapped in noisy debate, terrified, unsure as to what had truly happened.

  Stuck outside with the bulk of the crowd, Tess watched in a dazed and ironically unhurried state of mind. Men yelled. Women shook their heads. People pointed, gestured. She forced herself to focus again.

  The men had moved the bodies taken by the latest attack out onto the snow, but the grisly work had taken its toll on everyone. It was late afternoon now, and night would be hurtling toward them soon.

  “This is going to keep happening until we are dead or we all lose our minds,” said one man.

  Someone was muttering to himself, “Why did it only take some of us…?”

  Another man outside shouted, “We want on there—we want in the train—”

  “There isn’t enough room for all of you!”

  “Then you come out and make room—”

  “Wait a minute.” Tess r
aised her hands, facing the train car. “You can’t leave all of us out here in the cold.”

  Alan, whom Tess remembered was a Navy man, looked at her sharply from the train, a rush of panic coming off him. “Only two of the cars offer real protection. What would you have us do?”

  “There has to be a fair way to divide these cars,” Tess answered. “We cannot do this. We cannot lose all civility,” she cried.

  “Look, now,” Alan growled, “no one is coming for us. I don’t know what happened to those young men, but someone is going to have to go after them and get us help.”

  No one in the crowd called for violence, but their faces clearly favored the idea. Tess felt their desperation. She faced Alan. “Whatever’s out here is getting closer and it is getting angrier. We have to construct a barricade.”

  “Barricade won’t do it,” yelled an angry man, and he lunged to pull Alan off the train. But Alan kicked him back, and slammed the train door shut as the crowd surged forward, begging for entry.

  Tess cried out for calm, “We can’t do this—Stop—” but her voice was drowned out by the crowd. She escaped the mob, which hammered at the train everywhere, and managed to get to Ned, who was scarcely able to speak after the loss of Annette.

  “I can’t handle this alone,” she told him.

  He looked at her with sympathy. “You don’t have to. I’m with you.”

  Indignantly, Tess looked back at the train. “They’re not going to help us.”

  Their world was divided between those on the train and those left out. None of them were safe, but she felt betrayed, watching Alan and the others, locked behind the car windows. They looked back at her with only worry in their eyes. They were used to little hardships, perhaps, but nothing worse.

  It felt like the woods behind her were moving in, the earth slipping under her feet, a near vertigo clouding her mind. What insanity ever to travel here. Trying to catch her breath, Tess saw Lucinda moving out of the crowd.

  “Where is Elaine?” the Southern woman asked. “I can’t find her. I think she’s gone.”

  “Lucinda,” Tess said, vacantly, as though in a daydream.