by Terri Bruce
Irene opened her eyes. Calm, cool detachment filled her, and she watched Zara step into the room devoid of any feeling at all. She felt nothing—not fear, not tension, not anger.
Zara crossed to Ukrit. “Hold out your arm.”
“No!” cried Boonsri, struggling to her knees from her meditative pose. “Take mine instead!”
Zara didn’t even look at Boonsri as she responded. “You? Don’t make me laugh. You’ve got nothing left. We both know you don’t have long now that the old man is gone.”
Ukrit’s eyes flicked to Irene. She locked eyes with him and nodded.
His face crumpled with fear, but bravely, he lifted a shaking arm and thrust it through the bars to Zara. Zara grabbed it and raised her knife.
Zara’s back was to Irene, and she was focused entirely on Ukrit. Irene reached out with her mind, pulling the feel of the bars into herself, letting the bars pull her to them as well. She let go of the strangle hold she kept on her physical shape and let herself melt into formlessness. She kept the feel of the magnetic attraction between her and the cage bars fixed firmly in her mind as she became nothingness. She flowed into the bars, though them, and into the space beyond.
It happened in one smooth movement. Irene rose to her feet, stepped forward, and seemingly melted through the bars of her cage and out into the room—free at last. In two strides she was behind Zara.
“Hey,” she said, tapping Zara on the shoulder.
Ukrit yanked back his arm in the same instant that Zara whirled in surprise. Zara’s eyes widened.
“How did you...”
Cold, hard, brittle rage tore through Irene. She burned incandescent with it, and it exploded out from her like a fireball, her Ka flaring wildly out of control. She glowed white-hot, the room lighting up like mid-day, and when Irene threw out her arms and shoved Zara full in the chest with both hands, the force of her entire being went into the motion. Zara slammed into Ukrit’s cage and then bounced off it, tumbling to the ground.
Zara struggled to her feet, but Irene grabbed her by one arm and swung her around, flinging her shot-put style across the room. Her Ka flared wildly, the shock wave tossing the witch like a rag doll. Zara cried out as her back slammed into the wall. Around her, the cages exploded into cheers and cries of encouragement.
Irene crossed the room in three long, laser-focused strides, Terminator style, she put her hand on Zara’s throat and held fast, squeezing hard and pinning Zara to the wall. Irene held out her free hand.
“Doll,” she said coldly.
The witch’s face puckered, as if she meant to refuse. She gasped for air like a landed fish, her fingers scratching uselessly at Irene’s hand like flea bites. Irene tightened her grip on Zara’s throat, yanked her forward, and then slammed her into the wall again, relishing the satisfying thud Zara’s head made against the wood.
“Alright!” Zara croaked. She thrust a hand into her pants pocket and pulled out the paper doll.
Irene took it from her, careful not to rip or crush it. “How do I destroy this?” she asked, and then, just so there couldn’t be any hijinks with imprecise language later, added, “How do I destroy it so that it doesn’t hurt me and it can’t ever be used against me again?”
The witch shook her head. “Impossible! There is no way to destroy it.”
Irene tilted her head, regarding Zara as she might a strange bug, and dug her fingers into Zara’s throat.
“I’m telling the truth!” Zara croaked, clawing at Irene’s hand. “There is no way!”
Irene narrowed her eyes, not believing her for a second. She’d never know if Zara told her the truth anyway. She’d have to find someone else to ask.
She slipped the doll into her coat pocket. “Did you make any others of me or anyone else, other than the ones on the bench? Do you have any more of my hair or anything else of mine?”
The witch shook her head. Under Irene’s hand, the witch’s pulse beat frantically.
“And the keys to the cages?”
Zara nodded at the workbench. “Hanging on the peg on the wall.”
“And how can I get back to where I was? Can I go through the crystal ball?”
Zara shook her head. “I have no idea. No one’s ever gone through from this side.”
“You mean no one’s ever escaped,” Irene said coldly.
Zara just stared at Irene mutely, her eyes wide with fear.
Irene contemplated the woman for a moment. She could feel the woman’s emotions, much like she could Andras’s, twanging like alarm bells—terror, despair, dread, but something else, too. Resentment? Anger? “Well, then I guess we’re done here.” Some of the adrenaline and blind rage was wearing off, and now other thoughts were beginning to filter through. Irene hadn’t thought much beyond this point. Now that she had Zara, she wasn’t sure what to do with her. Irene glanced around the room that had been her prison, looking for something to tie the witch up with.
She felt Zara shift position, move in some subtle way. Irene whipped her gaze back to Zara just in time to catch a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of Zara raising her arm.
Zara still had the knife.
Irene let go of Zara and jumped back just as Zara brought the knife down, stabbing air where Irene’s heart had been a moment before.
Zara let out a screech of rage and came at Irene, knife hacking and stabbing. It seemed as if she moved in slow motion, though. Irene could trace the trajectory of every movement, almost before it happened. She went still. Zara closed the distance between them with one final lunge. Irene reached out and grabbed Zara’s wrist with one hand, arresting the blow mid-air. She put her other hand on Zara’s chest, over her heart, holding the witch away from her at arm’s length.
Zara struggled to wrench her arm free of Irene’s grasp, but the two women were evenly matched, and it was a stalemate. Irene tightened her grip on Zara’s wrist and twisted hard. Zara gritted her teeth, against the pain, holding tight to the knife. Irene kept twisting, locking the elbow of her other arm to keep Zara at arm’s length. Finally, with a gasp of pain, Zara released the knife, and it clattered to the floor. Irene held onto Zara, one hand around her wrist, the other on her chest, afraid to let go.
“You’re never going to stop, are you,” Irene said, a fatalistic calm washing over her, “unless someone stops you.”
Zara stopped struggling and locked eyes with Irene. There was uncertainty now in the other woman’s eyes, but it didn’t matter. Irene was much too far past being swayed by any sign of remorse from the witch; Zara could be as sorry as it was possible to be and it wouldn’t make any difference. There was only thing to be done.
Irene concentrated on the feel of Zara’s beating heart below her hand. She pushed herself toward the heart while simultaneously pulling the heart to her, and her hand slid through Zara’s shirt and skin and breast bone and into Zara’s chest. Irene’s fingers curled around the witch’s heart.
Zara gasped. “No,” she whispered, her eyes wide. She struggled to pull free, but Irene curled her fingers around the wildly thrumming heart, so soft and slick and spongey in her grip, and began to squeeze very slowly. Zara froze.
“Please...” Zara whispered. “I’ll do anything...”
“You’ve done more than enough,” Irene said. And then she closed her fist—hard.
The witch’s eyes widened, and then her lifeless body collapsed at Irene’s feet. Irene stared down at the corpse for a moment, feeling nothing. Not horror, not triumph, not relief. Nothing.
All the other ghosts had gone silent—as if they dared not hope that Zara was really dead. Irene could have heard a pin drop as she crossed back to the workbench and plucked the ring of keys from the peg on the wall. She re-crossed to Ukrit’s cage and, in a moment, had it open. Ukrit rushed from the cage to Irene and threw his arms around her waist. She stroked his hair as he sobbed against her skirt, then she gently detangled herself from him and crossed to Boonsri. Boonsri came out of her cage more slowly, and Irene could see
she was barely able to hold herself together. Irene wrapped an arm around Boonsri to support her, allowing the young woman to lean on her for support.
“We have to get out of here,” Irene said, handing Ukrit the keys so he could open the remaining cages. “In seven days, Zara’s going to cross into the afterlife and then we’re all screwed.”
“No, she isn’t,” said Boonsri, nodding at Zara’s corpse. Irene turned to look.
The gray cloud that was all that remained of Hathai had flowed out of the cage she’d shared with Ukrit and now covered Zara’s body. The cloud trembled and shuddered and began to take shape. In a moment, a woman—short, middle-aged, with a sweet face—stood beside Zara’s remains.
Ukrit let out a cry and ran to the woman.
“Hathai?” Irene asked.
The woman nodded as she bent down to wrap her arms around her son. She was still translucent, not fully restored, but she was solid enough for Ukrit to wrap his arms around her, and the two of them clung to each other.
Boonsri gestured for Irene to take her over to Zara’s body.
Hathai let go of her son and reached out to take support of Boonsri from Irene. “We will take care of what remains of the witch.”
“You mean you’re going to kill her spirit?” Irene asked, and she thought maybe she should feel uneasy at the thought or insist that would be wrong, and yet, she still felt nothing.
“We are going to take back what was stolen from us,” Hathai said firmly. She appeared to think Irene was going to argue because she added, “This is a matter for us to take care of. She abused our ways, it is for us to punish her.”
Irene raised her hands in deference and stepped back. “I wasn’t going to argue.” She glanced at the gray cloud hovering in Sanit’s cage. “Do you think he can be saved?”
Hathai and Boonsri exchanged a look. Hathia, however, was the one that spoke. “She didn’t keep all that she stole from us. Some she used to make charms and medicines that she sold to others. I don’t know if there is enough left for all of us.”
“She stole from you, too,” Boonsri said to Irene.
Irene shook her head and stepped back again. “Not enough to bother me. I don’t want anything she’s touched. Use my share on Sanit.”
The adrenaline was wearing off; her hands and knees were beginning to shake. Bile was riding up her insides in waves, and she swallowed hard to push it back down. The shed was suddenly suffocating, and she was overcome with an overwhelming urge to flee.
“I... I need to leave. I need to go back... I need to find my friend...” She was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She backed away from the trio of ghosts and the dead woman’s body, faster and faster until she turned and fled for the house. She ran inside, and it wasn’t until she was on the other side of the back door that she realized she had passed through it, rather than opening it. She hadn’t even felt the sting of the ghost charms.
Dark, blinding terror was closing in on her, and she looked through everything she passed without seeing it. She ran for the tea room where the crystal ball with the gateway home resided. Part of her was terrified the ball would be gone, that she wouldn’t be able to get back, and she panted in relief when she found it exactly where she’d last seen it.
She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should collect some items to take with her—weapons, food, clothing, the book Zara had originally offered—but every atom of her being rebelled at the thought. Everything here was tainted; it was all dirty and revolting. She couldn’t stand the sight of any of it.
She paused for a moment to check her appearance and make sure there was no sign of the torture she had endured. Andras couldn’t know what had happened—not any of it.
Certain that she looked perfect, without a scratch on her, she put out her hand to the crystal ball. She stopped, her hand hovering over the orb, as she saw the ghost repellent charms etched into the surface. That bitch. She hadn’t left anything to chance. She’d tried to ensure that it was a one-way trip for any ghost that came through. The cold, brittle-edged rage bubbled up inside Irene again and like a laser-beam cutting into her brain the thought that she wished she could kill Zara again, but more slowly, making her suffer painfully, came to her. And then terror washed over her, drowning out the rage for a moment, because she didn’t recognize the cold, emotionless desire to inflict pain that was filling her with over-riding need.
She shoved the thoughts from her mind, focusing all her conscious thoughts on one goal: going home.
She slapped a hand down on the crystal ball, the angry sizzle of the ghost charms hardly more than a blip as she pushed into and past the crystal, feeling for the green forest where Andras hopefully awaited and pulling it to her as she let herself flow to it.
Eight
The brilliant greens of the lush forest landscape blinded her. Irene blinked rapidly to clear the spots dancing before her eyes.
As soon as she opened her eyes, Andras’s voice slammed into her like a tsunami.
Thank God!
Relief was palpable in his voice, and it rang in her head like a bell. Irene smiled wryly, her own relief flooding through her to mingle with his. She wished he was solid so she could collapse in his arms, feel their strength wrap around her while he whispered in her ear that everything would be okay. It would be hollow and it would be untrue, but she desperately wanted to hear it anyway, to pretend, even for a minute, that she could forget everything that had just happened and go on pretending that she could return to the land of the living, to the familiar and comforting. To a time when she wasn’t a killer.
“Hey,” she said unsteadily, unsure what she wanted to say about why she had disappeared, where she had been, and what had happened. She tried to affect a casual stance, felt it looked affected, tried to cross her arms nonchalantly, felt that looked even more fake, and finally settled for scratching her head behind her ear as an excuse to look down at the ground so he couldn’t see her face.
What happened? You disappeared.
“I... I was pulled back to the land of the living. These puddles... they’re doorways.”
And?
“And... nothing. That woman... you were right. She couldn’t help.” Irene could still feel the sensation of Zara’s heart beating in her hand, still feel the flames licking at her skin, still hear Ukrit’s cries of pain. She repressed a shudder, trying to tamp down the feelings and memories so they wouldn’t bleed through to Andras.
You have come to say goodbye? You’re going to return there?
“No. I...”
After her harrowing experience, she wanted to say that seeing the familiar landscape here filled her with relief, but if she felt anything, it was more a sense of fatalistic inevitability. She was doomed now to stay here, in the land of the dead. She closed her eyes and tried to let the sunshine warm the icy coldness that wrapped her inside and out, but it was only the memory of sunshine on her face. She felt nothing.
She opened her eyes, despondency overtaking her. She looked at her surroundings, taking in the beautiful trees and the puddle of water, and saw, instead, the molecules that made them up, arranged in tree-like and puddle-like patterns. None of it was real. Just molecules. Just patterns of light and shape filled with shimmering and pulsing rivers of golden energy flowing through them.
An overwhelming wave of sadness washed over her, too deep and profound to even cause tears. This is what she’d feared. She’d always known that everything she saw in the afterlife wasn’t “real”—it was all an illusion, a trick of her mind, to create context and relatability to the things she experienced here. That was part of why she’d struggled so hard to hold on the memory of being alive; without that context, this place became nothing. She was nothing. She was like the ones and zeros of a computer program, existing in a void of nothingness.
So where did she belong now? She could never return to the land of the living, that much was certain. She was a full spirit now—and a powerful one. She could pass through solid matter,
envision herself as anything she wanted, and she could kill—with a touch—and there was nothing and no one that could stop her. Not people, not other ghosts. She was worse than an Ugly; she was a Chindi, a malevolent spirit that could sicken the living just by being around them. And if she lost control of herself, of her Ka, even for a moment, people would get hurt—maybe even the people she had wanted to return to earth to protect.
She couldn’t go back to the land of the living, and her existence here, in her physical form, was now meaningless. She didn’t know where that left her.
“Hang on, I need to do something,” she said. She walked back to the puddle that looked out on a garden, the taste of that roadside melon she’d eaten not so long ago in her mouth. She wanted to see trees and the sun and birds and all the rest—the real version—one last time before she said goodbye permanently. She wanted to feel the breeze in her hair, the rain on her skin. She wanted to remember what it had felt like to be alive, because she would never experience it again.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” She dropped to her knees beside the puddle and thrust her hand into the water, reaching for whatever place existed on the other side and let herself flow through the portal.
She stepped out of the ball into a neatly trimmed lawn surrounding a cute suburban home. It was still gently misting here. She stood still, waiting to feel the droplets hitting her, but she felt nothing. She stuck out her tongue, trying to catch the rain on her tongue, but, still, nothing. She was a ghost, and ghosts couldn’t feel. She had gone too far beyond the physical, could no longer relate to it. Her mind couldn’t even dredge up the correct corresponding memories to replay in this moment.
As she stared out at the land of the living it all seemed so... beyond words, beyond her ability to express. The trees were beautiful... and empty. They were magnificent constructions, dazzlingly brilliant in how the leaves were created and attached, how the branches grew and forked, how the roots dug into the earth looking for water. Everything about them was a miracle—and yet, pointless. She could see the rivulets of energy—the trees’ life force—flowing within the confines of bark and branch, and it made no sense that the energy should be confined to a tree shape, circulating along the same veins over and over endlessly. What stopped it from being a river or a chipmunk or a person or a ray of sunshine? How limiting it was to be confined to one shape; how limiting it had been to be human.