A Game of Ghosts

by John Connolly

  Philip took one of the chairs by the fire, crossed his legs, and clasped his hands in his lap.

  ‘Feel free to look around,’ he said. ‘Mother will be with us momentarily.’

  ‘Maybe once they’ve finished embalming her,’ said Angel softly.

  His voice was barely audible to Louis and Parker, and should have gone unheard by Philip, yet Parker noticed that he reacted. It was there in the barest narrowing of the eyes, and a twist of the mouth, but it was enough. Parker had been in Philip’s company for less than an hour, but he was already pretty certain that the man was insane. He stood before Angel so that Philip could not see his face, and mouthed the words Watch him. Angel didn’t even bother nodding.

  Parker strolled around the room, browsing the bookshelves. They contained bound volumes of the proceedings of various institutions of the state, both legal and governmental, dating back to the start of the nineteenth century, but he also found a section devoted to artists’ monographs and catalogues raisonnés, divided equally between twentieth century modernists and a variety of American landscape painters, from Ralph Earle and John Trumbull among the earliest to more recent artists such as Andrew Wyeth and Georgia O’Keeffe. Parker had identified at least one Wyeth among the paintings as he moved through the room, but Alfred Stieglitz and John Singer Sargent apart, most of the names among the monographs meant nothing to him.

  Before the second fireplace, also lit, were a pair of leather couches, some occasional chairs, and a coffee table holding a tray containing a china tea service and a plate of the kind of tiny cookies that disintegrated into a storm of crumbs as soon as anyone tried to eat them.

  Louis joined Parker.

  ‘At least he wasn’t lying about the tea,’ said Louis.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That they’re not going to try to kill us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have put out cookies.’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘And that Philip is crazy.’

  ‘I’d kind of come to that conclusion myself. I’m interested to meet his mother.’

  ‘Yeah, bet she’s quite the pistol.’ Louis took in the paintings on the walls. ‘Lot of money in this room, and Caspar Webb is dead. Smelled like he died downstairs, and died bad.’

  ‘Did he leave any family?’

  ‘Not that I heard.’

  They both looked at the painting on the wall.

  ‘Is that him?’ asked Parker. He knew of Webb only by reputation. If any photographs of the man existed, he had never come across them.

  ‘I only saw him once, a long time ago. But, yeah, that’s him.’

  ‘Remind you of anyone?’

  Philip was watching them from his seat at the other end of the room. Neither man even glanced in his direction to check the resemblance.

  ‘Now I really want to meet Mother,’ said Louis.

  And as if in answer to his wish, Mother appeared.

  IV

  Quis est iste qui venit?

  What is this who is coming?

  After M. R. James, ‘Oh, Whistle,

  and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’

  35

  Sally Buckner could clearly recall the first time she saw a ghost. It happened when she was five years old, and playing in the sandbox outside her family home. A fence enclosed the backyard, and a heavy locked gate at the side of the house led to the front garden. She was in no danger of wandering off, and her mother could watch her from the kitchen window. She was playing with some of her older brother’s toys, because Kirk was at school and she wasn’t. She couldn’t remember why. Sometimes, she thought that her mother might have suspected what was going to occur that day. Sally was always her mother’s favorite – her father’s too, come to think of it. ‘Sickly’ was the word their father used about Kirk, because he was frequently laid up with his chest. Sally would listen to him wheezing through the night, sometimes struggling so hard for breath that she feared he might die. On those occasions she would climb into bed beside him, hushing and calming him, and they would fall asleep in each other’s arms.

  Years later, she would wonder if their relationship might not have started had he been a stronger, healthier boy. Not that she minded being with him: she loved him. The Brethren didn’t care either. There were others who would continue the family line, and they had their own plans for Sally. The appearance of the ghost had confirmed as much. Perhaps the whole family had understood how events would transpire for Sally and Kirk, even then.

  Sally always did value boys’ toys more than girls’. She never had much time for dolls or miniature plastic kitchens. She liked guns and trucks. She enjoyed building colorful houses and bizarre vehicles using plastic bricks. On this particular bright sunny day, she was working on a series of great walls along one edge of the sandbox. She would build one, add battlements and a couple of Kirk’s model soldiers, then run a metal truck through the whole construct with all the force she could muster, sending bricks and soldiers flying into the early summer air. Some of them went into the nearby bushes, but she decided that she’d go looking for them later, if she could be bothered. Kirk had plenty of bricks and soldiers to spare.

  She was engaged in the raising of the most intricate defenses yet when a piece of plastic struck her on the side of the head. She looked to see where it had come from, and saw a girl standing in a small flower bed between a pair of shrubs. She was about seventeen or eighteen, with short dark hair and freckled skin. She wore a patterned denim pinafore dress, and her feet were bare. Her toes worked at the damp soil – Sally’s mother had watered the beds less than an hour earlier – but didn’t disturb it. They couldn’t quite seem to grip the earth, as though a thin pane of glass had been placed between her and the ground.

  But it was her eyes that drew Sally’s attention. They were clouded, so it was hard to tell what color they might once have been, and encrusted with mucus in the corners, like the eyes of someone who has been asleep for a long time and only just woken up. The edges of her mouth were crusted too: when she opened her mouth to lick at them – with a hint of pale tongue resembling the raw flesh of a fish – her lips cracked, but no blood bubbled from the cuts.

  And she smelled. It wasn’t a bad smell, just odd and vegetal, with a hint of burning. It reminded Sally of the water that accumulated in the bottom of her mother’s orchid pots, a kind of slow, wet decay. It seemed to roll off the girl like mist from the sea, and it fell on Sally’s skin as a chill, even though the sun still shone brightly on her.

  Sally had never seen a dead person before. She had no conception of death as such, and so struggled to factor the girl into her limited experience of the world. She was afraid, but only a little. The girl didn’t speak, but Sally sensed her feelings as colors that manifested themselves as a glow in the air around her. The girl was currently calming her with greens and golds, urging her not to be frightened, and Sally understood that she meant no harm.

  ‘You threw a brick at me,’ said Sally.

  The girl smiled, cracking her lips still further. Sally didn’t care to see that, but said nothing about it. She didn’t want to be rude.

  ‘But your feet can’t touch the ground,’ Sally went on. ‘So how did you move the brick?’

  Blue, then – an admiring glow. Sally was smart. Everyone said so.

  The girl lifted her right hand, and another brick flew through the air and landed where Sally knelt, almost touching her leg.

  ‘Wow,’ said Sally. ‘Could—?’

  But she got no further in her question, because the girl glanced back over her shoulder, as though summoned by a voice or presence unseen. She raised her right hand again, this time in a gesture of farewell.

  ‘Wait!’ Sally called to her. ‘I don’t know your name.’

  The girl moved her shoulders in a small shrug, pointed to her mouth, and shook her head.

  ‘Can I tell my mom about you?’

  A single nod, then the girl appeared to turn in
upon herself and was gone.

  Sally got to her feet, wiping sand from her knees. She walked to the flower bed and examined it, just to confirm that no footprints marked the ground. The vegetal smell was stronger here, but it was already fading, and within seconds it was only a memory. The chill remained a little longer before it too dissipated and all was warm once more.

  Sally ran to the kitchen to share the news of her sighting. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, shucking black-eyed peas to add to smoked ham for the evening meal. She looked up as her daughter entered.

  ‘Mom! Mom!’

  ‘What is it, honey?’

  ‘I saw a ghost. It was a girl.’

  Her mother smiled, and opened her arms to embrace her daughter.

  ‘Oh honey, I’m so proud of you …’

  It all seemed so long ago now. She had been chosen to protect the Brethren – the dead, the living, and those yet to be born – and unless some weakness of character were later to reveal itself and render her unsuited to the task, it was a duty she would carry with her to the grave.

  In the thirty-five years since, the girl had been Sally’s near-constant companion. Her name was Eleanor Craig. Sally had discovered this early on by using the native intelligence that had led her to be chosen in the first place. Eleanor could not speak, and Sally didn’t really want to spend hours or days trying to guess her name, so she wrote out the alphabet on a piece of paper, pointed to letters in turn, and marked them off according to the colors that the girl’s reactions took: blue for yes, red for no, like a child’s game.

  When she was older, Sally learned more about Eleanor from Internet searches, as well as the knowledge of the Brethren passed down through generations. Eleanor was part of the original bloodline, daughter to the Magus himself. She had burned alongside him and twenty others in the nineteenth-century siege at Capstead that put an end to the Brethren’s earliest predations. She would be Sally’s shadow, her link to the rest, until the time came for Sally to cross over and become like them. The prospect, in truth, gave Sally little pleasure, but the deal had been struck a long time ago and could not be undone.

  The water in the tub was now little better than tepid. Sally could see the wrinkles forming on her fingers and toes, but she did not want to get out, not yet. Kirk would be looking for answers and reassurance, and she had none to give him. She reached forward and turned the faucet, releasing more hot water. Eleanor was radiating black for rage, and a kind of pale blue for grief, but rippling through both was a dark indigo that Sally had glimpsed only rarely in the past, most recently just before she summoned Routh and sent him east to clean up the Eklund mess.

  It was anxiety.

  Sally wet a cloth and placed it over her face. Eleanor’s constant pacing was making her feel nauseous, and she needed a clear head to think. Eklund had given her the names of all those to whom he had spoken in the course of his investigations, and she had cross-checked them against the material on his laptop. Had Routh succeeded in securing whatever other material Eklund stored in his home, then Sally might simply have let those other parties be, because with Eklund gone all that remained would be whispers and lunatic theories. But now Routh was dead, murdered – that much Eleanor had made clear – by an unknown assailant close to Eklund’s house. The only conclusion to be drawn was that someone dangerous was also interested in Eklund, or possibly Routh himself. Until the facts became known, Sally had to assume that the individual or individuals concerned might continue to follow Eklund’s line of inquiry, or delve into Routh’s life, either of which eventualities might conceivably lead them to the Brethren.

  The solution, it seemed to her, was to remove from the game those among Eklund’s contacts who posed the greatest threat, just in case he had sown seeds that might later bear fruit. The books and files that Eklund admitted to keeping in his basement were dangerous, and it would have been better had they been burned to ash, but they were not in themselves enough to warrant a serious investigation. Eklund had a personal stake in his inquiries because of his family history, and no uninvolved parties should have been capable of making the imaginative leaps required to empathize with him, yet Eklund had managed to rally at least two others to his cause. If they died, the likelihood was that the investigation would die with them. Along the way, the Brethren would try to discover who had killed Routh, and make them pay for it. The resulting deaths would also help the Brethern in the long term. They would be the equivalent of money in the bank, and many years might pass before more killing was required. Sally herself could even be dead by then, or elderly enough to relinquish responsibility to the next generation.

  With the decision made, Sally removed the cloth from her face.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said softly, so that Kirk would not hear. ‘I can deal with this.’

  Eleanor stopped pacing and turned to face her. Even after so many years of her company, Sally still disliked looking directly into her eyes. They reminded her of what awaited all of them down the line, and so served as an unwelcome memento mori. She tried to focus instead on Eleanor’s freckles, fixing her gaze on her nose and cheeks as she shared her plans. Slowly the black glow turned to ivory, and the blue to a pale blush, but that sliver of indigo continued to wind through both, like a worm in the flesh of an apple.

  ‘You’re still frightened,’ said Sally. ‘You have no need to be. We have faced worse in the past.’

  You died amid flames and gunfire, she thought. You know this better than anyone.

  The bathroom window was fogged with condensation. As Sally watched, Eleanor walked to it and reached out a finger. Sally held her breath. Eleanor rarely interacted with the physical world. But now she was writing on the glass, her finger moving painstakingly to form letters in the moisture, the effort causing black blood to leak from Eleanor’s nose and ears, to weep from the corners of her eyes and bubble from between her lips. When she was done she vanished, leaving only the message on the window: nine letters, two words.

  HOLLOW MEN

  36

  Parker’s first impression of Mother was that a squat black spider had just scuttled into the room.

  The woman before him was shorter than he was, but appeared to be almost twice as wide. Her hair was entirely silver and cut in a bob to which a series of extensions had been added that hung over her back and shoulders like the legs of a dead crustacean. The head beneath was tiny, the skin pale, the eyes heavily kohl-lined to save them from being lost entirely to a combination of the deep hollows in which they sat and the swollen purple bags below. Her mouth was a thin red slash, and her chin was a dowel for the folds of loose flesh that descended in tiers down her neck to be swallowed up by her black gown. Curiously, though, her face was emaciated, as were her arms, which poked like twigs from her sleeves, and her calves, visible below the hem of her dress. Her feet couldn’t have been more than a size two or three, and were concealed by black velvet slippers. Only her torso was oversized, its fullness emphasized by the contours of her clothing.

  Her son joined her. Just as Philip bore clear traces of his patrimony, so too he was his mother’s child: it was apparent in the eyes and chin, and in the unwrinkled skin drawn tight over the bones of her face.

  ‘Mother,’ said Philip, ‘these are the men I told you about.’

  Mother didn’t speak, but silently took in Angel and Louis before her bright, clever eyes moved on to Parker and lingered on him for long enough to make him feel uncomfortable, like a fly waiting for the inevitability of the bite. It was an impression heightened by the realization that Mother had begun to move toward him almost without his noticing, her slippered feet making a slight hissing sound as she crossed the rug. He resisted the urge to take a few steps back to compensate. As she drew nearer, he picked up her scent. She smelled exactly like her son. Either they shared the same cologne, or they exuded a common odor through their pores.

  Parker, uncertain of what else to do, stretched out a hand in greeting, but Mother’s dainty fists r
emained by her sides. Philip, tagging behind as if bound to her by a length of silk, explained: ‘Mother dislikes unnecessary physical contact.’

  Parker made a point of not catching the eye of either Angel or Louis, but he heard the latter give a small cough, and Angel appeared to have found something interesting to look at on the ceiling.

  Mother spoke for the first time. Her voice had a dry timbre that was not unpleasant.

  ‘Mr. Parker,’ she said, ‘would you and your friends care to take a seat?’

  She gestured at the nest around the table, waited for them to approach, then perched herself on the smaller of the couches. All four men sat, Philip on the same couch as his mother, Angel and Louis on the couch opposite, and Parker in one of the occasional chairs. Philip picked up the teapot, inquired if anyone wanted milk, and – in the English manner – added it to the cups accordingly before pouring the tea. It was all very sociable, Parker considered, if one left aside the fact that sixty percent of the company was present under a degree of duress.

  Mother sipped her tea and nibbled on a cookie. Philip didn’t eat, and neither did he touch his cup after filling it. Angel took a cookie and managed to consume half of it successfully while leaving the rest in the form of crumbs on the couch, the floor, and his clothing. Mother was more successful in the endeavor, but she’d probably had practice. Nobody spoke.

  Finally, Mother finished eating, carefully tapped the cookie residue from her fingers into her saucer, and began.

  ‘What were you doing at Jaycob Eklund’s house?’

  Parker put down his cup. He didn’t know from tea, but whatever had come out of that pot tasted pretty good to him. He might have to ask Mother what it was, assuming they ended the night on good terms, which was far from guaranteed, especially with the bluntness of her opening question.

  ‘First of all,’ said Parker, ‘you have us at a loss, Ms …?’