by Drew Hayes
“This person is a charlatan and a fake. I can’t believe you’re visiting a medium, Topher, you big, blond idiot. If you spent money on this, I’ll haunt your dreams for a year,” Velt said, expression perfectly neutral despite the words she was uttering.
“Holy shit.” The expression of barely-suppressed anger and doubt melted off Topher’s face, revealing a new one consisting entirely of surprise. “That was it. I’d even forgotten the blond part, but we did make the pact when I had bleached hair.”
“Does that mean . . . Auggie . . . oh God no.” Kay put a hand to her mouth, not sure if she was going to be sick or let out a wail, only knowing that she wanted to keep down whatever was trying to rise.
“Buddy, are you really here? What . . . what happened? Was it the noise, did something fall on you?” Topher scanned the room, desperately trying to make eye contact with a best friend he could no longer see.
“Actually, I’m still not certain what happened,” Auggie said, even though he was finally beginning to realize that Topher and Kay were deaf to his words.
“Don’t worry, I’ll explain it to them,” Velt assured him. “Listen up, everyone about to cry or break down: cut that shit out, right now. I’ve got good news and bad news, and the good news is that, while your friend is a spirit, he isn’t actually dead yet.”
“Wait, what?” Topher looked at her with a renewed hope that all but radiated from his face, still slightly damp with the tears he’d almost imperceptibly began to shed.
“Auggie wasn’t killed, technically. A very powerful, very evil spirit took control of his physical body, forcing his soul out like it was a hobo in a bus station. At the moment, that body is still alive. If we can get Auggie’s soul back into it, then he’ll be fine. Maybe a little more attuned to the supernatural, but overall, no worse for the wear.”
“You were not joking about how much impossible stuff you were going to ask us to swallow.” As though her last word had reminded her of the supplies she possessed, Kay pulled out the flask from her right boot and took a long draw of its content. She then passed it to Topher, who accepted it and drank a smaller nip himself.
“Actually, we haven’t even gotten to the really weird stuff yet,” Velt corrected. “So, like I said, the good news is that your friend’s body is still alive—”
“And the bad news is that an evil ghost hijacked it, we heard you,” Topher said.
“No, that was still part of the good news. The bad news is that said evil spirit is going to use that body to finish a ceremony that will summon a god of the undead, casting the entire world into a nightmarish hell of living death for several millennia. Oh, and we have to find a way to stop him.”
Kay and Topher stared silently at her for a moment. Then Kay went over to her backpack and pulled out a fresh bottle of clear liquor, unscrewed the cap, and took a mighty kick.
“I’m only going to warn you once: if you’re fucking with us, telling us our friend is dead as part of some horrible joke for video or personal amusement, I will break off every bottle I have in a different part of your body. And I have a lot of fucking bottles. So if you want to back out and get scarce, now is the time.”
“Warning heard, and understood,” Velt said without hesitation. While she wasn’t particularly intimidated by the other woman, she did find herself suddenly fonder of her.
“Wait, a lot of bottles? How many bottles of alcohol did she bring along on a one-night shoot?” Auggie didn’t seem to notice that he was rising off the ground in his fit of frustration.
“Auggie seems pissed about all the booze,” Velt relayed.
Kay’s face softened, and she set her current bottle down on the table. “All right, either you’re telling the truth or you’ve done a ridiculous amount of research and somehow convinced Auggie to play along. Between the two, a kicked-out spirit seems less impossible. Tell us what’s going on.”
“Pass me the flask and a bottle of water and then grab a seat,” Velt told them. “This is going to take a while.”
* * *
“Should we be listening to this?” Irwin whispered.
“Clinton and I have been here decades without knowing what bound us. You’re damn right we’re gonna listen in.”
“Besides, have you looked outside?” Clinton asked. “I don’t want to go near those other ghosts. They look . . . unfriendly.”
The three spirits had been in one of the back rooms, looking for a prop to use in hopes of making contact, when Velt and Auggie walked through the door. After watching her carry on with the apparently newly-dead investigator, it was clear this woman really had the gift. Normally, that would have sent them running toward her, desperate to ask for help or to pepper her with messages for loved ones, but her declaration that they were at the epicenter of an apocalypse had cowed the three spirits. Her words matched up with the scene they could see through the windows, so they decided to lay low and see what else she had to say.
They were currently piled up in a broom closet, the door slightly ajar so they could still hear the conversation beyond. Normally, the three never could have crammed in, but the upside to being incorporeal was that walls were more suggestions than firm boundaries.
“You think there’s any chance she might know a way out of here?” Irwin asked.
“I think it’s worth finding out,” Clinton said. “Let’s all shut up so we can hear.”
Outside the broom closet, Velt was keenly aware of the three spirits stuffed into the small space. People who can’t be overheard quickly lose their sense of what a quiet voice is. She paid them no mind as she began her story, though. If there was time, she’d give them a hand crossing over. If not . . . well, that would probably be because she was dead, or there was no more “over” to cross to.
Either way, their fate was as much bound to her success as the rest of the world’s.
* * *
The first site was easy to find, even with the changes the land had undergone. It was a barren patch of earth near the edge of the forest, where there had once bloomed the most beautiful flowers one could hope to see. That was before the defilement, though, before they made it one of the hallowed sites of their rituals. Now, nothing grew here, could ever grow here. There was simply too much death caked on for life to ever take root.
Hands, surprisingly strong and calloused, dug through the dirt that had witnessed the end of countless lives. How strange it was to touch again, to feel the soil give way beneath the flesh, to feel muscle work in harmony over thick bones. For one who had spent millennia as shadow and specter, such sensations were utterly foreign. The Emissary’s brief time with a body of his own was a minor blip in the expansive realm of his existence.
Soon, it would be gone, of course. Useful a tool though it was, he had no right or need to hold a living body. When the world was dead, all flesh would be pointless: everything would be spirit, and only spirits would be real. This body would be discarded and destroyed, just like every other flesh vehicle currently towing around a spirit was.
Still, the wraith wondered if perhaps there was time to get something to eat before that happened. He had gone eons without experiencing anything as unique as taste, and the body was rumbling with a desire for nutrition. There would be no harm in it, so far as he could see. He was just giving the vessel the fuel needed to stick to the task at hand, no different than raising sails to catch the wind. Yes, once the first site was finished and the end closer at hand, The Emissary would allow himself a brief respite to fuel this body. A last meal, as it were.
The last meal of the living world. It seemed only appropriate such an honor should belong to one of the conquering dead.
Chapter 6
“A cult?” Kay stared at Velt with uncertainty, eyes occasionally flicking to the copper-haired woman’s side. That was where the woman turned every time she spoke to Auggie, so presumably, Kay’s friend was located there. But despite endless squinting and head tilting, she saw no shimmer or shadow. The only thing she did know was t
hat her stomach had stopped bothering her. That, more than anything else, was why Kay sat listening to the crazy story Velt spun.
“Technically, they were an established religious order, but given how full-out crazy they were, ‘cult’ is as good a term as any.” If Velt cared about the skepticism in Kay’s voice, she didn’t show it.
“And they want to destroy the world of the living? Why? What good does it do?” Topher asked.
“Remember, this all started a long time ago. The world was different then: dark, cruel, wicked. To some people, the power of undeath seemed like a godsend. No pain, no hunger, no fear; not to mention the ease of travel by floating around. A lot of folks decided that their flesh was holding them back, subjecting their spirit to pointless torture. That led to ideas like transcending the flesh in order to purify the soul, but it also led to a few fringies deciding that the body should be disposed of altogether.”
“Speaking as one who has just lost his body, I disagree with such a philosophy quite adamantly,” Auggie mumbled.
“So, they wanted to get rid of their bodies.” Had Topher been able to hear his friend, he would have certainly responded rather than rudely pressing the discussion ahead. “Creepy and all, but isn’t that a mass suicide?”
“Wow, these fucks even did that right. They might be, like, the first cult,” Kay said.
“Lots of people who held the belief did exactly that,” Velt told them. “A sharp knife or a tall cliff and BOOM: no more body tying you down. Unfortunately, the sect that lived here didn’t think it was enough to just get rid of their bodies: they wanted to spread their faith to the poor, unenlightened masses of spirits who were still crammed into flesh. Hence the whole ‘trying to raise a god of the undead and bring a world of death to the land of the living’ shtick.”
“And, to do that, they needed Auggie,” Topher said. Unlike Kay, his doubt had entirely evaporated; every question he asked or comment he made all but dripped sincerity. His belief in the unseen had been rooted in the core of his being for so long that such strange tales weren’t a leap of faith for him. They were barely even a hop.
“Sort of. The ritual has several components, most of them completed thousands of years ago. They set up a giant casserole of magic and left it to bake, but the last bit of it has to be done tonight.”
“What’s so special about tonight?” Topher asked.
“Nothing in particular. It’s just when all the wards and spirit-capturing mechanisms they left have gathered enough energy. It’s been building for a while now; that’s how I knew to be here. The casserole is done. Someone just has to take it out of the oven.”
“Did she say ‘spirit capturing’ just now?” Irwin’s question was greeted with a rousing bit of shooshing from Clinton and Art.
“It seems like a big coincidence that all this happens on the night we’re here to film.” Kay’s tone wasn’t accusatory, even if the narrow-eyed glare she was shooting Velt was.
“No, I doubt it was a coincidence at all. The sect still had a few followers scattered about in the world of the living. My guess is that they pulled strings to get you here so that The Emissary would have bodies to use.”
“Yeah, let’s go back to that emcee guy,” Topher said. “I still don’t get why a ghost needs Auggie’s body.”
“It’s ‘The Emissary’, the spirit of the priest who started the ritual all the way back when. He needs Auggie’s body to complete the ritual. Well, he doesn’t actually need it; the body just makes things much easier,” Velt admitted.
“Wonderful! My body was stolen for convenience. I’m sure that will earn me ample respect in whatever heaven scientists go to.” Auggie paused for a moment, the weight of his statement fully striking home. “Wait, scientists do go to heaven, right? Don’t tell me all that ‘need to believe’ bunk is true.”
“No idea,” Velt said, turning slightly so the others knew she was speaking to Auggie. “I only deal with the ones stuck on this side. Whatever lies across the horizon is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.” Technically, that wasn’t entirely true, but she had enough on her plate at the moment; there was no need to complicate issues any more.
“Can we go back to the bit about us being evil-ghost bait? ’Cause that bullshit seems important.” Kay wondered if any part of this was real. It seemed too long-winded and elaborate to be a joke. Maybe she’d drank homemade moonshine and gone in to a vivid hallucination. If so, this was going to be a bastard of a hangover when she came to.
“I doubt it was personal. You’re just people who would walk right into a place renowned for being haunted without thinking about personal safety. It didn’t matter who came; all that mattered was that they had bodies. Otherwise, The Emissary would be stuck stealing energy from lesser spirits so it could complete the ritual.”
“What’s left to do? You make it sound like the hard stuff got completed forever ago,” Topher pointed out.
“To my understanding, there are four sites on the grounds: three forming a triangle around the island, and one on the island itself. They have to be uncovered so certain rites can be performed: a task that’s much easier with a physical body. Each one brings the dead closer to our world, and the final rite will awaken an old god who will finish the ‘overrunning-the-world’ part. The only saving grace is that, until that god actually rises, everything will be contained to the grounds of the ritual. Otherwise, shit would start getting crazy in the rest of the world.”
Auggie felt a strange stirring in his ethereal body, something akin to the shiver that would sometimes pass across one’s back. It lingered longer than any sensation in his flesh ever had, growing in intensity with each passing moment.
“Just to be clear: you want us to believe that an old-ass cult started a ritual to end the world in the prehistoric days, and tonight is when they finish it by digging up places that are magically still accessible, yet haven’t been found by anyone else in the thousands of years since they made them. Since Auggie isn’t really here, I’ll have to be the one to say it: you’re crazy and full of shit.” Kay rose from her seat, half-full bottle clutched angrily in her hand.
“Of course they’re magically protected and accessible; they’re part of a magic ritual. That much should be obvious.” Velt remained seated, seemingly undisturbed by Kay’s aggressive body language. In truth, she was perfectly braced for three different angles of attack and felt confident she could disarm the woman with minimal bruising. “I know this is a lot to swallow. Honestly, I never planned on bringing other people in to it, but my plans went to shit when The Emissary nabbed your friend’s body. Now, instead of just taking him out in spirit form, I’ve got to worry about a civilian life, not to mention try to track down a corporeal form on this enormous campground. You have surveillance stuff stashed all over, so I need your help.”
The tingling had turned to a light stinging. Auggie twitched about in a futile effort to find a position that afforded him some measure of comfort.
“Come on, she’s clearly lying. I don’t know how she found out the code phrase, but there’s no way you’re buying this. Right, Topher?”
“She seems honest to me. I know it’s far-fetched, but we seek out things that most people don’t believe in for a living. Should we really be the ones to dismiss the unexplained so easily?”
“What unexplained? She’s offered us nothing supernatural: just a wild story and a few tricks that could be research and cold-reading.”
“I think this debate just became pointless,” Velt interrupted. She was staring to her side, where Auggie had finally stopped twitching as the maddening tingle faded away. Auggie’s presence at her side was now quite evident to everyone in the room, because out of nowhere, Topher and Kay could now see the semi-transparent form of their friend and coworker perfectly clearly.
“Auggie?” Topher said, taking a tentative step toward his friend.
“Am I . . . can you see me?”
Topher nodded then leapt forward to embrace his best friend in a
hug. He went right through the spectral man, leaving both with a momentary feeling of chills and discomfort.
“But, how?” Kay asked.
“Like I said: every rite brings the dead closer to our world.” Velt got out of the chair and walked over to a random broom closet, yanking the slightly open door and revealing three more ghosts packed tightly together. “Even the ones who thought they were hidden.” She turned back to the living. “Now, are you two ready to stop doubting and start helping me? By my count, we have three rites left to catch this son of a bitch, and after that, the whole world is going to get a very firsthand look at just how real and dangerous all this stuff is.”
Topher, Kay, and Auggie all nodded, while the three spirits on the floor struggled to untangle themselves.
* * *
The first rite was done.
Around him, the world seemed to crackle with mystical energy, racing over the skin that he momentarily wore. Wisps shimmered about, visible even through the flesh’s mundane eyes. Soon, the world would see as the dead did. Soon, the dead would be free and the living a relic of the past. He needed to be careful, however. The first site was the easiest to access; the others would require more time and energy.
At the thought of energy, a rumble arose from the body’s stomach. It seemed his instincts had been on point: food was needed in order to keep the vessel moving. Once, so very long ago, he’d known these woods and what to forage for. Now, he no longer trusted the land that had risen atop the corpse of the once-familiar place. No, better to scavenge in the strange huts and see what modern delicacies could be uncovered.
He moved quietly as he headed back toward the dock where he’d found this flesh. The Emissary’s mind drifted to the woman who’d tried to catch him after he grabbed the vessel; she unnerved him somehow. The slight apprehension The Emissary had felt when she had so boldly attacked was ridiculous: she could hurt the flesh at most, and then The Emissary would simply overtake hers. He was a being of spirit, shadow, and magic—beyond her touch. Yet still, the idea of confronting her gave the wraith pause.