by Ari Berk
He turned and ran through the front door, slamming it shut behind him.
The moment he was back in the house, he felt some relief. Inside was better. Even inside Temple House. Here were walls and doors, borders and boundaries. Things that might be warded with words. But as his mind expanded to become part of the place, he could feel its gaps: spaces under doors, old ill-fitted windows, crawlspaces leading to vents leading to grates leading to outside and open air. And all the chimneys. Temple House had well over twenty that Silas had seen, and there were others in corners of the house he’d never gotten to.
“Silas!” his great-grandfather cried from the dining room. “What is it?”
“Nothing is getting in this house!”
“What should we do?”
“I’m thinking. I know a way, something I learned, but I am worried it might hurt you if I do it . . . certain words of compulsion . . . but they are very old . . . very dangerous . . .”
But Silas couldn’t finish the thought. Outside the front windows, something was scratching and tearing, trying to claw its way through the walls.
Silas ran quickly toward the front of the parlor.
“Close the curtains!” his great-grandfather called.
“No! I need to be able to see outside.” Silas blew out the candles closest to the windows.
“Do you think looking twice at whatever’s out there will make it any better?”
Silas didn’t answer, but went to stand before the front door.
Augustus Howesman shouted, “Don’t open the door again, whatever you do!”
“I’m not opening it, I’m sealing it. Maybe the front door will stand for all.”
Silas put his hand on the cold metal of the enormous iron door. He drew in breath and, slowly exhaling, put his intention into the door, through the hinges, out, into the walls and floors of Temple House, sending it up, beyond the ceilings of the lower floor, up through the beams, into halls and chambers, attics and bedrooms, around window frames and into all the brickwork and wood. He focused his mind upon the door, upon the thick forged might of its bolts and hinges. He closed his eyes and spoke.
“Let nothing come against this house. May no harm come to those within. The door is closed against the night. Let bolts and locks and hinges hold fast. I close this door and seal it in the name of Undertaker and Janus, and may these words hold fast, through night, through day, over water, in this world and in all others!” Silas opened his eyes. In the pit of his stomach was the gnawing fear that words like that only really worked in Arvale or in the shadowlands. He needed to know if they held weight in all worlds. He was sickeningly sure he was about to find out. Before he drew his hand away, he felt the door vibrate as something scraped against it from the outside. Then a shock shot across his hand, as though a great wave had struck the door and now the force of water poured against it. But the door held fast.
As Silas walked back to the dining room, his great-grandfather said, “Good. That’s something, anyway.” But the corpse looked at the fireplace, where a rustling noise could be heard somewhere up the flue. “How many fireplaces are there here, Silas?”
Silas heard the noise too, and he paused. It was some kind of scrabbling along the roof. He knew Temple House too well to dismiss its night noises, and now who knew what might be up there. There were too many hearths, he thought, way too many to secure them all individually. If something was going to use the chimneys to get into Temple House, there would be no way to close and bind them all in time.
“Silas? How many chimneys, son?”
“A lot. One in every bedroom, the foyer, the kitchen, the study. There’s a huge fireplace in the rotunda, and I have no idea if it’s open or sealed . . . and . . . too many.”
“Never mind. Too late for that. I’m sure what you’ve done will suffice.” But the corpse did not look so sure, and muttered, “I cannot understand why your mother chose to remain in this house. I have always considered this one of the worst parts of town. It has a penchant for attracting trouble. Why did I carry her here instead of Fort Street?”
“Don’t blame yourself. This had become her place. She made her own decision to stay here. But no, I agree with you, this is never going to be my favorite house in Lichport.”
The wind howled in the chimneys and rushed down the fireplace, blowing hot embers, ash, and soot into the room. As he moved about the room making sure none of the embers were still burning, he admitted to himself that this was never going to work. There were too many ways into this house, more than he even knew of. It would be impossible to seal the house with any method available to him. He considered trying to seal off the dining room, but even this room had two fireplaces, large windows, and several doors. Then there was the basement below with its coal scuttle, storm doors, and who knew what else.
He was counting the possible entryways here and in the adjoining rooms when something caught his attention. On the dining room buffet next to his mother’s corpse, dozens of ancient figurines stared at him with open vacant eyes. They were ushabti figures, once placed in Egyptian tombs to serve the dead in the afterlife. These had been part of his uncle’s collection. His great-grandfather had found them and set them up while Silas was at Newfield. Here was something. The ushabti were interred as servants: servants for the dead. Any unpleasant task, the ushabti would willingly perform. The statues ranged in size, some as small as a couple of inches, others a foot tall. Some were made of bright blue-green faience, others of terra-cotta, some carved of alabaster. Most of them gripped tools in their hands, ready for tasks that awaited them. Silas thought about all the fireplaces in the houses, all of them opening out to the furious night. And without thinking, Silas’s mouth began to move with the elder words growing from the blackened earth he’d swallowed, words copied down from the walls of tombs out of the Book of the Dead. Silas spoke quickly as his great-grandfather watched, unable at first to understand what his grandson was saying. Silas closed his eyes and, raising the hand that bore the blue scarab ring, framed the spell to his need in his own tongue.
“O Ushabti, residing in the tomb house of my mother, any work that falls upon me, you must do as well. Any task that must be done, it shall be allotted to you, servants of the dead. Be watchful and cast down any obstacles before you. And now I, as the living Osiris, call upon you to stand against those that come against this house. Stand up! Stand up! Stand up and serve and say ‘I am here!’ ”
He opened his eyes to look at the ushabti again. Very softly at first, voices rose in his ears, words rounded in smooth clay syllables and bright as faience and polished stone. Once, twice, three times the voices of the figures, all speaking in unison said, “I am here!”
Silas spoke again. “Servants of the deceased of this house, rise up now and serve at every hearth. Stand and protect this house from any night terror, from any pestilence, from any harm. Should any evil enter the tomb house, raise up your arms and fight! Let nothing harmful enter the rooms of this house. Let no harm come to the dead within it!”
A fine dust, like a mist made of their faience and terracotta and alabaster, began to flow about the figures and spill onto the floor. Small figures of vapor, reflections of their statue forms, moved through the air in all directions, some passing through doorways toward the back of the house. Others traveled up the staircase and into the galleries and rooms of the upper floors. From all over the house, noises leapt up: the slamming of flues and window shutters. Doors all over the house were being closed in such quick succession that it sounded like clapping.
The fire iron still lay on the floor where Silas had dropped it when he first saw his mother’s body. He bent to pick it up. The cold iron felt good in his hand. As he rose, Silas looked at his mother’s face and his breath caught in his throat. Death sat so lightly on her that for an instant, Silas was tempted to say her name to wake her. Instead, he turned away from the corpse and steadied himself for whatever came next.
The glassy eyes of the Ammit statue, positi
oned at his mother’s feet, glinted with reflected fire.
Augustus Howesman was wide-eyed, riveted, watching the small shadows move out of their statues. He stammered, “Son . . . son . . . what is all this?”
“I am trying to protect this house.”
“It felt right to place them here, near the corpse. Was it helpful?”
“Yes. Thank you! I don’t know. I hope so. I feel like everything I do is guesswork, like every time I find my footing, the floor drops out of the world again. The world of the dead is so much wider and more various than I ever thought possible. It feels like I’m never going to understand it all so long as I’m alive.”
Augustus Howesman looked down at his own hands uncomfortably. “Grandson, do you think it’s possible that a spirit could be forced from its body?”
“Great-grandfather, don’t worry. Nothing is coming in this house.”
“But what you’ve just done—is it that easy to pull a soul from its housing?
“No. At least, I don’t think so. That was different.” But was it? Silas thought. “I can’t swear to much one way or another anymore, and we don’t have time to speculate now. But I will swear to this: Nothing in this world or any other is going to hurt you or Mom if I can help it.” Silas saw his great-grandfather smile thinly, trying to hide his fear. “Just stay close to Mom, okay? You watch over her, and I’ll watch over you both.” He put his hands on the old man’s shoulders.
From above came the sound of an explosion, like someone had driven a train down the chimney on the upstairs landing. Silas ran to the bottom of the stairs. From just out of sight on the upper floor came the sounds of contention. The air rang with desperate cries, and on the floor, objects thumped and crashed, knocked from their shelves.
Back in the dining room came sounds of cracking and of clay shattering. Running back from the foyer, he saw some of the ushabti’s statues breaking to pieces, their spirits fallen to whatever force was pushing its way into the house. More in his mind than in his ears, Silas heard small screams; distant, low, torn from throats of chalk. They faded quickly and Silas realized that not all the ushabti were meant for this purpose. They were household servants, not warriors. They could briefly delay, but not detain or destroy. Outside had pushed its way in.
“Silas? Silas? Please! What is happening?” Ausgust Howesman yelled. Silas was unnerved at the desperation in his great-grandfather’s voice. He quickly returned to the foyer, where he could better hear what was happening in other parts of the house. Silas looked up the stairs and began to move quickly backward. Furious shadows poured down the staircase like a black and churning river. Silas held up his hands to shield his eyes from the dust and ash that flew at his face.
Through his fingers, he could see the stone of his ring giving off a pale light. It burned the finger and the part of his face where it touched the skin. His father’s writings filled his mind, and he remembered that the ring granted safe passage and protection from evil. Silas could see the words of the ledger in his mind’s eye: “Even the fearful demons who haunt the plains of Caanan and the lands of the sons of Ammon could be struck down should Pharaoh raise his hand against them and utter the words inscribed upon the stone. And of his travels, perfect memory was granted also by the might of this stone always.” Even as he wondered how to direct the ring’s power, words from the Book of the Dead, words from the land of the scarab’s making, pushed aside all other thoughts, and Silas’s voice called out into the tumultuous air of the house:
“May the river of the night seek another course.
May the devils of the air be put down into the earth.
Get back! You who come to snatch away the coffer of the heart.
You hear these words. You fall into the earth.
You shall not wound any here!
Obey me, you serpents of the grave!
Get back! Retreat!
Go back to your place of putrefaction below the earth!
I shall suffer no defeat, for my words are the words of truth.”
His incantation rang like a pure bell upon the air, but again, for such words to work, the dead must comprehend, and the spirits that assaulted his mother’s house had little if any of their minds left. Some dropped out of the air, tangled into a mist, and then vanished, but others had already flown past him and into the dining room. The only thing they could discern was the corpse’s vacancy. Nothing else existed for them.
Silas heard his great-grandfather’s voice rising in panic. He ran back to the dining room.
Augustus Howesman lay over the corpse of Silas’s mother, using his own weight to keep Dolores’s body on the table. All about him, the writhing Larvae grappled at Dolores’s limbs, trying to pull her away. Portions of the Larval mass boiled up to the ceiling—the chandelier swinging madly like a pendulum around them—only to fly back down at Dolores’s face, trying to seek entry into her body. Silas’s great-grandfather had clapped his large hand over her mouth even as the spirits swarmed about his own face. The old man was clenching his jaw, and all the muscles of his face distorted in fear as he pressed his lips and eyes closed so tightly that Silas could see the skin cracking.
Silas did not pause as he entered the room. He knew he was out of options and would have to risk the use of stronger words. Most of the candles had been blown out, but where they had dripped soft wax on the tables and pedestals, Silas gathered it up. He ran to his great-grandfather’s side and said, “Do not ask questions. Put this in your ears and do not take it out until I tell you.”
Eyes still closed, Augustus Howesman nodded furiously. Silas took some wax and pressed it into his mother’s ears. Then, before doing the same to his great-grandfather, he said, “Do not hear my words. Do not!”
The thought of what he was about to do sickened him, but he called up the words of judgment and destruction he’d used at Arvale, and behind them, that simple formula that wreaked such havoc upon the dead. He had no idea if it held any power so far from the Limbus stone of Arvale, but even as he thought the words, Silas could feel a static rising in the air of the room and throughout the house.
“Now I speak my judgment against the Larvae, against the hungering dead. Here and now, they shall depart, shall be as if they never were, and shall never again trouble the living or the dead!”
Instantly, the flood of spirits hung still and ceased their churning of the air. Many still opened and closed their mouths, blindly trying to find the corpse. Beyond the windows, it was the same. The Larvae could no longer move forward or backward, up or down. Then, as he had done once before, Silas pitched his voice into a roar.
“Cedo nulli!” he shouted. His words rattled the house and boomed outward through wall and floor, door and window.
At once spirits fell away from the two corpses and onto the floor. The room grew still. Nothing moved against the walls, or raked against the bricks of the chimneys outside. The floors of the house were covered with maggots that slowly, pathetically, turned themselves once, twice, and then did not stir. Their white bodies dissolved in a mist that instantly sank through floorboards and carpets, and back down into the quiet earth below the house, leaving only the reek of mold behind.
Silas’s whole body was shaking.
The room was recast in a predawn grayness. In the fading shadows, the jaws of the Ammit seemed to gape slightly.
Many of the ushabti on the sideboard were broken, a few were still intact. Silas passed his hand over them, saying without thinking, “You have served the tomb house with honor. Thanks be given to those who cross the night and step once more unto the western riverbank at dawn.”
By the table, August Howesman stood over Dolores’s corpse, his eyes still closed. Silas put a hand over his. The old man opened his eyes and looked frantically about the room. Silas nodded, and reached up to pick the wax from his great-grandfather’s ears. Cold and solid, it came away mostly in a large piece, molded in the shape of the corpse’s ear canal.
“I think it’s over,” Silas said
, but before he could tell his great-grandfather anything more, another light came flooding into the room: crimson and yellow, as though the sun had risen in the south and was shining into the front windows of Temple House, though that was impossible. Hadn’t the spell banished all?
Something outside was burning.
Silas ran to the large front windows of the parlor and looked out onto Temple Street, where what looked like a bonfire had been lit. Flames rose off the street and licked at the gray sky. In the midst of the conflagration, a shadow stood and turned its head to look at where Silas was watching. At first, the flames seemed to subside. The shadow within them coalesced into the shape of large man, portions of his skull gleaming through the dark skin of his head and a coronet of silver upon his brow. The specter wore the clothes of a hunter, a black leather jerkin with ragged sleeves that dipped and waved, unconsumed as they passed through the flames. This was not one of the Larvae, but some other Wandering Spirit. Had it sent them? Or was this another graveless ghost also come for his mother’s corpse?
Silas shouted back into the dining room, “Cover your ears again! Cover them!”
Locking eyes with the spirit in the street outside, Silas yelled, “Cedo nulli!” once more.
The spirit remained.
Low laughter rose in the cold air beyond the window, and the glass trembled.
Silas’s mouth went dry. Words coursed across his mind, but if that spell had no effect on the ghost, what else would work? “Let nothing come against this house, let nothing come against this house,” he repeated to himself, but then cried out in pain. The skin where the curse-wound had been bristled and burned beneath his shirt.
Outside, a voice rose out of the flames. Silas instantly feared it, even as he strained to hear it better.
“Old Law holds true,” it growled. “Even though you yet live!”
The glass was growing warm. Sheets of ice were sliding from the roof of Temple House and crashing on the steps. From the dining room, his great-grandfather was calling nervously, wanting to know what was happening. The house noise muddied the clarity of the words coming from outside, making it hard for Silas to hear them.