Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  "A silver stag is a good vessel for me," Hiraeth interrupted finally, "because it matches my nature. I said before it can be harmful for an Other to take an unsuitable vessel because it conflicts with our nature. We will lose some of ourselves in taking it on. So, when you explore her, try to understand her symbols. Who she is that is not the doll vessel she's in. Any Other will be ill-suited to a doll—they're symbols meant entirely for humans. Reflections of humanity as objects, treasured in childhood make-believe but frightening when you're older. Like they're people gone wrong somehow, empty and soulless. Isn't that why you have so many horror movies with them?"

  Keith frowned. "Okay," he said. "But—what I don't get is… symbols are contextual. Different cultures will view a symbol differently, and the same culture will view it differently in different historical periods. So—"

  Hiraeth blinked, then smiled. It was a tender, affectionate expression, focused entirely on Keith. His heart seemed, somehow, completely exposed in that smile. "You're very smart," he said softly. "Yes. And we change over time. I've been a stag a long time now, but I might not always be one. As my symbols change, or if something happens to change my view of myself. Trauma can do it, or abuse, or egotism. Things like that. But you're right that just because I'm a stag, it doesn't mean every other stag will be just like me—"

  Marion made a throat-clearing sound, though she had no throat to clear. "You think I'm your friend, don't you?" she asked, blunt and clear. "Why don't you tell Keith her symbols so he can look for them?"

  And that sudden warmth was shuttered behind its usual easy smile. Hiraeth said, "I don't think so. I hope so, but I don't dare think so. Lots of essences were gathered, and I don't want you to get hurt because Keith is looking for the wrong symbols. Imagine digging around and pulling out minor, brief similarities as the key to your whole identity! No, I don't think it's safe for me to do that."

  "So he is to look for symbols without knowing what they are?"

  "I guess so," Keith muttered. He sighed. There was no putting it off. That was as much information as he was likely to have to guide himself with, going into this. "Uh, we should probably sit together, Marion. I don't know how long this'll take."

  She finally seemed a bit scared, looking between him and Hiraeth before she finally sighed, at a loss. "Is your bed alright?" she asked Hiraeth.

  He smiled at her encouragingly. "I don't mind," he said. "It's more comfortable than any other option around here. Besides, I'll want to be using my desk while you two work."

  "Oh…?" Keith looked at him, then the desk. "Your computer…?"

  "Right. I thought, since we know the problem is a ghost, I'd see if I could look up the history of that house," Hiraeth said. "I mean, I'm pretty good with researching at this point. It was a skill I needed to develop when I opened up the shop, so I have a few ideas on where to start."

  Keith's brows rose in sudden realization. "You think he's haunting the house?"

  "There has to be a reason he's using it as his home base," Hiraeth agreed. "From the sounds of it, the previous tenants left without taking everything, which you must admit, is classic for a haunting. And he's brought objects back in that wouldn't be theirs, from how you described it, which is also sometimes something you see with ghosts. I think I should be able to research him—he's obviously got certain skills, given the fact that the dolls were specifically made, and he seemed to have a workshop for it. A doll-maker or a collector or someone with a young child who loved dolls…"

  "You've got a point," Keith had to admit.

  Hiraeth gave him a thumb's up. "So I can look into ownership records, local doll-making history, that kind of thing. If it takes you guys a while, I'll have something to do other than stare at you, and if not, you're welcome to watch and make suggestions."

  "Thanks," Keith said. It could be helpful, and besides, he thought it might be a bit too much pressure to have someone watching. He shifted over on Hiraeth's bed with a little anxious jolt, making room for Marion.

  She hesitated, then rose. Hiraeth took his desk chair as she walked over, her limbs clacking, then sank daintily down next to Keith, crossing her legs. Her posture was stiff due to the limited number of joints, and faintly uncanny, but he was starting to get used to it by now. It was hardly her fault.

  "Okay," he said. "Um… give me your hand." Sitting cross-legged himself, he rested his hand on his knee, palm up.

  It was the only way he could think of to begin. He could only get memories off objects at all by touching them, and what little empathy he did have was stronger when touching someone.

  She put her hand on top of his, cool and smooth, the back of her hand nestled in his palm. It didn't trigger any immediate involuntary memories, but he was listening for her energy, and it sent a faint shiver through him, the sense of another person's essence rubbing up against his own.

  Keith put the quartz sphere on top of her palm, so her hand was sandwiched between him and it, though he felt a little silly about it. Nobody here was going to laugh at him, and he needed whatever help he could get. Besides, trying to act as though he was above that kind of reputation… it was too late anyway. He was already that weirdo "Morose" Marose, who muttered to someone nobody could see.

  Or used to.

  Anger flared, then vanished. He was better when he was talking to someone nobody else could see. He was living fully. Talking to 'nothing' meant that Lucas was there with him.

  He forced himself to let go of that anger, and the lingering shame went with it. Being part of the Otherworld meant knowing that people only saw half of what you were doing and half of who you were.

  That was just how it was.

  Keith drew a slow breath in. Hiraeth wasn't watching them—true to his word, he was typing away quietly on his Chromebook and giving them privacy. Keith closed his eyes and focused on the hand held in his, feeling out the small shape of it without moving his fingers, pressing his energy up against it to touch the joints to sense the strings and hooks inside them.

  He extended his reach, felt the crystal resting above, and pushed energy into it cautiously. It seemed to warm. He could feel it even though he was no longer directly touching it.

  "Okay," he muttered aloud, and carefully, hesitantly, he pressed his mind into her, tried to read memories off her as he might off any object, at the same time as trying to feel her out empathically, pick up her spirit.

  And he fell.

  ***

  It was like a hypnic jerk. But while those always made him twitch awake gasping, with Lucas leaning in from his usual corner to ask if he was okay, this didn't. He just fell like a rock, stomach left behind.

  Keith opened his eyes, and for a moment he couldn't see anything, just darkness and little sparks of light. It was as if he hadn't opened them at all but had squeezed them tighter. He gasped for breath, trying to find some air in that strange void.

  And then he hit bottom—a painless, sudden jolt—and opened his eyes for real. There was a candle in the hand that had previously been holding her hand, and it cast a flickering darkness off tall wood desks and meat hooks. They seemed like torture implements in the pulsing darkness, a groaning coming from the shadows as the chains swung.

  He froze in place, breathing shallowly as shadows shifted and throbbed. There was a sense of presence in them, terror and threat. He couldn’t shake the sensation that, if he moved too fast or carelessly, if he felt too much, they would notice him and react.

  He couldn't let it get to him. Terror and confusion was an understandable state for her right now. He breathed slowly, looking around and trying to get a better picture of the place.

  It was definitely meant to represent a doll-making workroom, although the furniture was oversized, the workbench sitting at neck height, chair seat up by his ribcage. He could just make out tools—wrenches, screwdrivers, and various doll parts—sitting on the bench.

  The large meat-hooks that he'd already noticed hung from heavy chains, swaying back and forth slowly,
as if in some kind of breeze. They created a metallic noise that filled the room, more a grinding sound than any sort of jingle, the links too heavy to do anything else. The movement reminded him of a clock pendulum.

  Against one wall, to the left, was a pile of broken doll parts. They all looked identical to Marion, though that didn't mean much. Her form itself had been unremarkable, just a plain doll body. Some had similar curly black wig hair, and others hadn't yet had the hair plugged into them. Even from where he stood, with darkness floating through the room, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, he could see that their torn-apart forms showed devastating damage. The body parts were cracked and broken, the hooks and strings bent and shattered. Their blank eyes—for those of them that had eyes—stared sightlessly. Some had none, and only had blank holes in their faces.

  It reminded him of the ghost, and of Lucas during his bad moments, and he swallowed a bitter spike of bile, shivering. Hiraeth had said that dolls made a bad vessel for Others because they were a human symbol, broken and empty reflections—lost childhood, Keith could have added, a part of your life gone that you could never get back. Like ghosts.

  Like Terrors.

  Standing quietly as he was, he began to pick up the sounds of a scuffle. It seemed to be coming from the other end of the room, but he couldn't see that far, not with the roaming, fog-like patches of darkness.

  Staying here didn't seem to be doing any good. Slowly, he drew a deep breath in—managing, though only barely, not to flinch as he saw darkness sucked into his mouth like steam being absorbed—and forced his shoulders to relax, spread his hands at his side.

  Projecting calm as best as he could, he began to walk through the thick darkness towards the sound of struggle. Slowly, as he advanced, the darkness cleared away, and he was able finally to get a good look at what was happening.

  The good news, he thought with a grim sort of humor, was that it wasn't Terrors.

  It was dolls, though, a pair of them, two mostly-identical Marions fighting each other. One Marion had a distorted face, wrinkled oddly, eyes huge, brow line creased, mouth opened and distended in a scream. She'd managed to get one hand in the other Marion's hair and another around her throat, dragging at her as if trying to pull her apart.

  The Marion she was attacking seemed to be half-broken, cracks showing all over her casing, one eye missing from a socket. She had blush-painted cheeks and a pink smile painted on her face, but that seemed to be just how its face was decorated. It was struggling, trying to push the other Marion off from itself, tugging at the solid grip on its throat.

  Beyond them was a door, shut tight, and he thought about trying to just dart past them while they were distracted and get it open, but he could see from here that there was a keyhole under the doorknob. If this was symbolic, a metaphor created from Marion's mind and her memories, the keyhole wouldn't be there if the door wasn't locked.

  It had taken Keith too long to consider his options. The two Marions looked up at him abruptly, moving as one. The combative one had pinpoint pupils in her glass eyes, the other a drugged look in its single eye.

  Keith swallowed hard and tried to remember to keep projecting calmness. He forced a smile onto his face, though he thought it probably seemed a little sickly, then lifted his hands a little to show he was unarmed. "Hey," he said. "What's going on here?"

  "I have to kill her," the grimacing Marion said. "So that I can find the key."

  "Oh, please, you mustn't," the smiling Marion said at once. She didn't sound choked, despite the hand around her throat. Then again, he thought grimly, her throat was a solid piece, and wouldn't start to close off until it cracked under the other's grip. "I need to keep the key safe until I know for sure we're free. Just wait a little longer."

  That answered that, at any rate. He glanced past them at the door, then looked at them again, carefully. "Where does the door go to?"

  "Inside," the smiling Marion said. "Oh, it goes inside, where I am meant to be. The part of me that knows who I am is in there. The part of me that is no doll, that isn't this me."

  "She can't be trusted with it," the attacker said. She began to pull again, yanking as if she could take the smiling Marion's head right off. "She doesn't know how to hide it. If we get caught again, he'll realize that there's a way to get the memories out and then he'll get what he wants."

  "You'd rather spite him?" Keith asked, carefully.

  "Oh yes," the grimacing Marion said.

  The smiling Marion made a noise of disagreement. "It doesn't matter to me, what he knows or doesn't know. I just hope to get that door open."

  Keith swallowed. Very carefully, controlling his voice to try to avoid his own fear—if she came after him in this place, he'd have to fight back, and what would happen to the real Marion if he killed some image of herself?—he said, "We got Marion away from that guy, though. She wants to remember."

  "I think it's the right thing," the smiling Marion agreed.

  "I think it isn't. We don't know. Better to wait. Play it safe."

  At least nobody was attacking yet. He kept speaking in a soft, calm voice. "What are you trying to do? If you get it from her, the key will be out either way. You don't need to hurt her."

  "I'll put her on the pile with the others," the grimacing Marion said. "Then I'll hide the key deep beneath it. Nobody will look under them. Under despair and fear and loss, and soon, the corpse of hope. I'll have to kill her to get it out of her chest, but anyone would think to look inside Hope, so I need to take it out of there. It's not safe."

  "You're Hope," Keith repeated dumbly, looking at the smiling Marion.

  "Oh, I am," she agreed.

  He was sure he'd be having nightmares about this scene at some point. He shifted his gaze back to the attacker, carefully. "And you are?"

  "Survival," she said. "I killed Despair, and no key was there. I killed Fear, and no key was there. I killed Loss, and no key was there. None of them thought it would be there. But Hope is sure there is a key inside her."

  "There must be," Hope said. "In my chest, where my heart should be."

  "So I'll tear off her head and all her limbs," Survival said. "I'll reach into her torso's cavity and pull the key out and hide it. I can retrieve it later, when it's safe."

  It was too much pressure. His head was throbbing, and he felt sweat trickle down his brow, could smell himself already. He kept his hands out and visible and his posture as relaxed as he could. "I don't think you should kill Hope, Survival," he said. "What's Survival without Hope?"

  "Oh," Survival said. Her fingers uncurled a little, with a click-click-click. "I don't know. I don't remember, without the key."

  "It's miserable," Keith said, throat aching with his own memory. "It's possible, of course. You can survive and maybe eventually a new Hope could be born. But during that time, there's no reason to carry on. No motivation. If you kill Hope, you won't remember why you're hiding that key any more. I can guarantee you that. I saw that before coming into here, talking to her. The whole reason you're fighting so hard is the hope of recovering your memories safely. Without that, why would it matter to hide the key? You'd give it up, because it wouldn't matter to you either way. Right?"

  Click-click-click. They unwound further, and her right hand fell from Hope's throat, though her left hand was still in Hope's hair. "You may be right. But then, what do we do?"

  "I'll take the key," Keith said, strained. "You don't know if she's safe or not, but I do know. I know she's sitting in a friend's room, and she can't know who she is without those memories. She can't move forward. She wants to do it, and that doesn't have to conflict with Survival. She's asked me to go looking, so please entrust it to me."

  "You'll tear Hope apart instead?" Survival asked, looking between them.

  Hope's single eye widened. "Will you? If it will save us, I'll let you."

  "No, I…" He cast his gaze around, terrified of the responsibility he was taking on, and saw the tool bench. "I'll—I'll open you up, but I won't
tear you apart. And I'll put you back together after. Will that do? I want to keep Hope safe."

  Survival finally let go of Hope fully, and the two looked at each other evenly for a long moment. "I'll allow it," Survival said, and cracked her fingers softly, an implicit threat.

  "Right," Keith said, watching the movement of those fingers anxiously. His throat wasn't solid porcelain.

  Managing to keep from turning his back on her, he headed over to the workbench, found a screwdriver, and sat on the floor in lieu of trying to climb onto the too-tall chair. The darkness was thicker down here, but he did his best to ignore it, putting the candle down in front of himself. "Can you come here, Hope?"

  "Of course."

  She came, lay down across his lap. His fingers found little flesh-colored caps along her sides, so he popped those off. Underneath were screw ports, and he very slowly, very carefully, undid those. He tried very hard not to think about what he was doing. "Tell me if this hurts…"

  "Oh, everything hurts," Hope said. "That's what I am."

  That thought was a little too horrible to face directly. He shuddered, stammered, "If it hurts more than it should, then," and just kept working on it until he could pull her entire back away.

  But the hollow inside was empty.

  "It's not there," Survival said, her voice accusing.

  Hope gave a shudder at the words. Her chin slowly tilted up, eye rolling. "It's not there…? But of course I should have that. I'm Hope."

  Keith stared in, looking around inside her open torso, hoping that just the darkness was hiding it, knowing that Survival would blame him in some way if it wasn't there.

  And then he froze. He looked up slowly at Survival looming threateningly over him.

  "Oh," he said. "Oh. Of course. It's not in Hope. It's in Survival."

  "What?" Survival's eyelids half-lowered, the closest her doll body could come to narrowing her eyes at him.