by Frank Hurt
Nancy paced through the International pickup and around the mage. “It’s not just the image then. It’s the connection that the ghost has to the physical object.”
“Right. Or the connection I have to the ghost.”
“Do you have any connection to this witness?”
Ember laughed. “Not really. I mean, he did give me a scar on my chest and he almost killed me. But I bit off his nose before he could.”
“You bit off his nose?”
“The tip of it, anyway.” Ember shrugged. “I feel queasy even now, remembering how his blood gushed into my mouth. It was pretty disgusting.”
“Disgusting,” Nancy agreed. “And I would think that tasting someone’s blood would leave quite an impression.”
“That it did.”
“Enough of an impression that you’d be able to connect with him in the spirit world?”
Ember blinked at Nancy. She said, thoughtfully, “might be.”
The ghost said, “what’s the worst that could happen?”
Ember nodded. It was worth a try, at least. She leaned back against the side of the rusted International, absorbing the warmth it collected from the afternoon sun. Her eyes closed, she thought of the sensation she felt when she summoned Barnaby via the photograph. It was a different feeling than when she called on him from his headstone at the cemetery. There, it was as easy as pronouncing his name with intent. It was so easy to summon a ghost that way, she had even done so accidentally when grasping Nancy’s locket while driving.
This method was more difficult. Required more focus. She blocked out the sound of the swallows. She lost herself in the wind, letting the scent of dried grass flow past. Ember felt the rough, rusted body panel and its warmth behind her, using it as an anchor. She remembered Douglas Demorrett’s pockmarked face, his greasy, jet-black hair. The sleeve of tattoos decorating his arms and neck. She remembered his hooked nose and how it resembled the sharp beak of a crow, his changeling subform. She recalled the taste of his blood, hot and toxic when it spurted from the crushed cartilage she had bitten into.
She was suddenly queasy. Before she could stop herself, she doubled over, heaving. Partially digested ham sandwich erupted from her throat, splattering the rotted front tire of the International.
Ember spit and cursed. She walked to the Ranger and retrieved a plastic bottle, grateful that she hadn’t consumed the last of her water. She swished her mouth clean. “Well that was a waste.”
“Um,” Nancy stood next to Ember. She was staring at the International pickup, a bony finger pointing. “You…did something.”
Ember’s gaze slid from Nancy’s extended finger to the rusted pickup. She blinked, thinking at first that her eyes were playing tricks.
The cab of the junked-out International pickup was filled with black ink. Though there was no glass in the frame, the ink appeared contained within the passenger compartment of the vehicle.
Ember swallowed hard, then approached the pickup. Where there was warmth, she now detected a chill. Where the rusted body panels were rough, they were now slick, oozing a substance that felt sticky when her fingers touched it. She tapped her fingers together, examining the viscous gel. Her hand found the chrome handle jutting out from the pickup’s door. She gripped the handle and pressed her thumb against the button as she gave it a tug. The door released, protesting as hinges unused for decades relented.
She stood before the open door, marveling over the black ink, how it remained contained within the vehicle. She glanced back at Nancy, who stood stationary by the Ranger. Ember swallowed again and said, “I’m going in.”
“Do you…do you think that’s such a good idea to go in there?”
The mage shook her head. Her ponytail swayed, golden in the bright sunlight. “Probably not.”
Ember stepped through the doorway and into an unknown world. For the first time in her life, She began to experience true darkness.
21
What an Ugly Thing You Are
Once, when Ember was a little girl back in Malvern Hills, she had discovered a container of pre-made white frosting in the kitchen pantry. Knowing only that she enjoyed the frosted parts of cakes the most, she grabbed a spoon and happily stole away to the gazebo in the garden. There, among the flowers and hedges, she stuffed herself with sugary excess until she made herself nauseous and her head hurt.
She felt like that now, as her abdomen twisted and her brain became too big for her skull. She clasped her palms to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. She fought the vertigo, willing it to pass.
The atmosphere smelled earthy and was somehow thick and sticky, like wet compost suspended in melted gelatin. The air tasted like how she imagined earthworm excrement must taste. It clung to her skin and clothes, coating her with transparent mucous. It didn’t feel like air as she knew air to be. It seemed to penetrate the pores of her skin and entered her ears and nose, coating her mouth and throat. For a moment she wondered how she was even able to breathe. She quickly shoved that thought aside as the anxiety of possible answers threatened to overwhelm.
After a while, the worst of the nausea and headache subsided, though it never went away entirely. She realized her eyelids were open, yet she couldn’t see anything but darkness. Wishing she would have known to bring a flashlight, she felt her jacket pocket and found a rectangular lump. Flipping it open, she pressed one of its buttons. The Tracfone’s screen blipped to life.
“What do you know, no mobile signal in the Spirit World,” she quipped. The thick atmosphere absorbed her voice, swallowing her words. Still, the wisecrack gave her an illusion of confidence. That and the phone’s dim light would have to be enough.
The phone’s screen provided just enough illumination for her to see the immediate surroundings. Pointing the screen away from her face at arm’s length, her pupils widened and took stock of the darkened world.
Behind her, the frame of the junked-out pickup remained, its door flung open. She was standing where the cab of the pickup should have been, looking from the inside out. If she concentrated, she could see the faint outline of another vehicle on the other side: her red Ford Ranger. Ember touched the rusted metal door and found it sticky. Still, she was reasonably sure that she could return to the physical plane by walking back through the door. Right. Just don’t lose sight of this, and I’ll be fine.
All around her were what appeared to be egg-shaped rocks the size of footballs. Some of those eggs rested on the slimy ground, while others floated untethered yet unmoving around her, defying gravity. When she reached for one of the eggs, she heard a stirring of distant whispers. She hesitated, the egg untouched by her fingers. When she moved her hand away from the egg, the whisper faded. As her hand returned, so too did the hushed voice.
Ember could not understand what the voices were saying, but she realized each egg had a different tone, a different whisper. A different story to tell.
“Souls,” Ember spoke to the eggs. “You’re souls, aren’t you? Souls stowed away in the Spirit World?”
She thought of Barnaby’s description of his surroundings when she asked him to describe the plane of the dead. He had talked of darkness and nothingness. Could this be what he was describing? Only, this place was not empty. It was filled with eggs—these pods encapsulating the spiritual embodiment of those who had passed from the world of the living.
She aimed the cell phone’s lit screen ahead of her. Its dim light painted a scene of an endless ocean of eggs and slime, as far up as the light allowed her to see. So, too, to all sides around her.
“One of these…egg pod things…must contain Doug. Which begs the question: how am I going to find him? Tell me where you’re hiding, Douglas Demorrett?”
The floor beneath her felt spongy, like a waterbed. She kneeled and pointed the phone’s screen at the ground.
Her heart thumped heavily in her chest as she realized she could see no ground, no floor.
Below her was only an expanse of darkness, of slimy atmosphere
and floating soul-eggs. In all directions, the same nightmare.
Her eyes widened at the sight of…nothingness. She tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “There’s nothing beneath me. How the bloody hell am I walking? How am I not falling?”
No sooner had she given voice to the thought, did she find herself sinking. She wasn’t falling, so much as drifting. A panicked squeak escaped her throat. She clawed at the air, trying to find a surface to clutch. Her fingers purchased only slime. The phone’s screen timed out and went dark, immersing her vision in black ink.
Then, she allowed herself to scream.
She tumbled in slow motion, spinning as she drifted at what felt like a faster and faster rate. She had the sensation of her head being beneath her feet. Her ribs connected with something hard, arresting her descent with a painful thud that muted her scream.
Ember hugged her arms around what felt like a slippery, stone column. Her cheek pressed against its cold, slimy surface.
She had the presence of mind to tap one of the phone’s buttons, turning the screen back on. Ember pointed the screen first at herself, inspecting her torso for signs of injury. The dim light showed through her, as though her body was only a faintly blue-colored hologram. I look like a ghost!
She pushed back against the panic rising within. “But I’m not a ghost,” she said, trying to reassure herself. “I’m not dead. This must just be how the living appear when they visit the Spirit World.”
She had no way of knowing whether she was speaking in facts or wishful hope. Either way, the effect on her nerves was enough to once more quell the anxiety so she could gather her thoughts and form a plan.
Ember got to her knees before gingerly standing on the hard surface that had caught her. It seemed to be made of stone, but shaped as a rounded tree root, extending its long tendrils outward into the darkness. On one side of the elongated root were two staggered rows of circular bumps shaped like suction cups. The air here—if it could be called that—smelled less like worms and more like rotting fish. She walked along the root until she reached the tree’s base, where several other equally uniform roots joined the stone trunk.
Touching the surface of the statue, she found no tree bark but a semi-porous, smooth surface that extended far upward into a cone bracketed with—are those fins? She stepped around its base, studying the body of the statue. Her phone’s light reflected a series of lines which resembled the zig-zag lacing of a shoe. She felt a chill run down her spine when she recognized what it was.
It was a giant eye, sewn shut.
The other side of what she thought was a tree trunk had a matching eye. It, too, was sewn shut. What she had initially thought was the statue of a tree was instead a giant squid. A blinded giant squid.
“What an ugly thing you are,” she said to the giant squid statue, to her instant regret.
For the rest of her life, Ember would wish she hadn’t shared that thought aloud.
Out of the darkness, something silently slid toward her.
22
It Gets to Keep Its Eyes
She sensed movement in the dark a scant split second before it collided with her.
Ember slipped as the statue’s tentacles moved beneath and around her. She fell into the abyss and felt one of the tentacles slide around her leg. Reflexively, she kicked at the slimy tentacle with her other foot.
The tentacle’s grip released just enough for Ember to slip free. A terrible hiss of surprise came from the giant squid which was no longer a statue at all (if ever it was). The cephalopod recoiled, retracting its tentacles defensively. Its long body ballooned and jettisoned itself through the thick atmosphere.
The phone’s screen went dark. Ember flailed, her eyes wide and searching as she gripped the phone in her fist and continued kicking. She kicked and reached, swimming in the thick air. Without any reference point to see, she couldn’t know if she was actually moving or if she was, in what direction. She could only think of the doorway home. How do I find my way out of here?
Her hand touched something, and she gasped.
A familiar voice lit into her with a caw. “Cunt!”
“I know that kindly voice anywhere. Doug? Is this Doug Demorrett?” Her fingertips felt the egg she bumped into. She ran her fingers around the mucous-slickened pod, finding it seamless, attached to nothing. “I can’t believe I found you! Now how do I get you out of there?” With her other hand she pressed a button on her phone, lighting up its screen so she could study the egg. Ember momentarily forgot her fear.
But fear hadn’t forgotten her.
A tentacle shot out of the darkness, coiling itself around her arm. A second tentacle gripped her leg, and this time when she kicked at it, the giant squid did not release her. Instead, it tightened, its suckers biting into her unrelentingly.
The long feeding tentacles pulled her in until she could see the squid’s arms, each lined with rows of suckers leading up to its beaked mouth. Ember twisted and fought, helpless against the foul-smelling cephalopod.
The squid’s beak clacked and a hissing sound emerged. “It doesn’t belong here. It should never have come here.”
One of the squid’s arms grasped her other leg and began pulling in the opposite direction, splaying her legs.
Her knees popped, followed by her hips. The horrible reality set in: she was about to be torn apart. She recalled Barnaby’s warning of going too far, treading where she shouldn’t. Understatement of a lifetime.
Her voice reached a higher pitch than she knew possible as she pleaded with the monster. “Wait, stop! You can talk. I can talk. Let’s…let’s negotiate.”
“It. Doesn’t. Belong here,” the giant squid’s beak clacked as it repeated the words.
“Is this because I said you were ugly? I’m sorry. Right, I’m sorry. You’re not ugly.” Ember sucked in thick air as lightning bolts of pain shot up her spine. “Bloody hell! What kind of game are you playing?”
The stretching stopped. The squid still grasped her by both legs and an arm—an arm which still held the illuminated cell phone. The creature suspended her sideways before one if its stitched dinner-plate-size eyes. It hissed, “Game? What kind of game?”
“Right,” Ember wheezed, feeling her body and its parts pull back in place. “What kind of game is this? Why are you even here? What are you?”
The squid’s gills expanded and contracted as it studied its prey. “We are the Sentry. We have always been here. It doesn’t belong here.”
“Brilliant. I don’t belong here. I couldn’t agree more. So why don’t…we…just let me go and I’ll be on my way?”
The suckers bit into her skin sharply, and the tentacles resumed pulling. “It. Cannot. Leave.”
She cried out. “Game! You asked about a game!”
The dismembering ceased again. The squid clacked, “It knows a game?”
“Oh, several. Sure. Sure I do,” Ember nodded eagerly. “Many and more games.”
“It will teach us? It will teach us a game?”
“For sure. For sure I would teach you a game.” Ember chewed her lip. “Oh, but you know what, it’s really quite difficult to teach you a game when you keep ripping me apart.”
The squid hesitated. Then, to Ember’s relieved surprise, the tentacles released her. She floated before the Sentry’s mantle, content to interpret the direction the squid floated to be “up” for her orienting purposes.
“What games will it teach us?” The giant squid was an impatient, curious child. A curious child that could tear her from limb to limb on a whim.
Ember rubbed her forearm where the suckers had bitten into her flesh. “I tell you what: I will teach you a game if you agree to let me go.”
The squid hissed, its tentacles reaching for her once more. “It cannot leave!”
“Right, right,” Ember held up her hand. “Fair enough. I cannot leave. I see that bothers you. Is that something we can talk about? Like, why you’re so adamant about keeping me here?”
&
nbsp; “It doesn’t belong here. It cannot leave.”
“Bloody hell,” Ember muttered. “Have you ever heard of circular logic, by chance?”
“It’s a game?” The squid sounded hopeful.
“It’s not—no, that’s not a game! What kind of bloody game would that be?”
The Sentry clacked its beak impatiently. “It will teach us a game!”
“Wouldn’t you agree,” Ember said, “that it would be infinitely more fun if there were stakes to the game?”
“Stakes?”
“Stakes. Rewards, right? Stakes such as: if I win, I get something. If you win, you get something. That’s fun, yeah?”
The squid’s tentacles floated lazily as it pondered. “If it wins…it gets to keep its eyes.”
Ember blinked. “Wait—I get to keep my eyes if I win?”
“Yes. If it wins, it gets to keep its eyes.”
“So if I win, I get to keep my eyes, but I’m stuck floating here in the Snot Sea, regardless?” Ember glowered. “Dare I ask what happens if I lose?”
“If it loses, we get its eyes. We’ll rip it apart. We’ll play with its parts.” The squid seemed pleased with the rewards it proposed.
23
Olly Olly Oxen Free
Ember opened and closed her mouth twice before she could settle on a response. “This doesn’t sound like the best choice of trophies you’re offering here. I don’t think you really understand how negotiations work, Sentry.”
“It will teach us a game now.” It wasn’t a question.
She muttered, “when you ask so nicely, how can I refuse?”
The squid’s beak clacked. “It cannot refuse.”
“Fine hearing you’ve got there,” Ember admitted. “It’s a wonder sound travels at all through all this snot.”