Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  Keith squinted at Hiraeth, trying to guess if he was joking, and decided he wasn't. "Right, uh, you just get your stuff ready for you," he said finally. "Your food. Make yourself breakfast. I'll grab something from around the block and be back."

  "You can use the bathroom first, then, if you like," Hiraeth offered.

  Keith accepted the offer, and took a quick shower in Hiraeth's bathroom before dressing in his clothes from the day before. They were still dirty and torn, but he, at least, felt a little better just wearing them. Fresher. It was a weird feeling, thinking that nothing had really changed.

  He stared at the washcloth draped over the back of the tap as if wanting it to explain its secrets to him.

  After, he headed downstairs and thought about knocking on the closed back room door, but wasn't sure what he'd say to Marion on his own, so he just headed out. He got a breakfast sandwich and a 'protein plate'—peanut butter, crackers, cheese, and fruit slices—from a coffee shop partway down the block. He almost bought himself a coffee as well, but remembering Hiraeth's pride in his coffee, he thought that might be taken as an insult.

  By the time he returned, Marion was up in Hiraeth's room with him, and Hiraeth had changed into his clothes for the day, jeans and a button-up flannel shirt. He was eating a bowl of cereal, alternating with bites of an apple. Coffee was, in fact, brewing.

  "Good morning," Marion said, watching him unblinkingly.

  "Morning," he said awkwardly. "I heard you were going to still go by Marion?"

  "To you. And Others," she said. And then, awkwardly, "My old one hadn't fit me for some time. Since this is my body now, I might as well fit a new one better."

  He still wasn't totally sure he got it, how Others handled naming. If it were him, he didn't think he'd like very much to be constantly reminded of having been forced into a body he hadn't wanted, or have to reintroduce himself to everyone.

  But, he decided, it wasn't really any of his business, so long as he knew what name he should be using. "Right," he said. "Marion it is."

  She ducked her head, and he got the impression she was smiling, a little empathic pulse of warmth that couldn't reach her actual face. "Marion it is," she agreed. "Now. We have to save Lucas, yes? The friend who came with you. He… I remember him from before. I would like to help."

  Keith swallowed. "You don't have to," he mumbled softly. "You just got safe…"

  "I remember how we talked," she said, then shrugged. It was impossible to read her expression on that mask-like face, or see what she actually thought of the brief conversation she and Lucas had held. Keith couldn't even remember what it was about. "I'll help."

  "All right," Hiraeth said. He turned his computer around, pulling up the previous day's research. "Keith, you wanted to get a chance to read this."

  Keith came over and took a seat at the desk, half-reading, half-listening as Hiraeth caught Marion up on what his research had shown. Other than the man's name—Walter Bennett—there was very little Hiraeth hadn't explained before, with the focus on his daughter's death, his craftsmanship, and his hermit-like withdrawal from the world.

  There was also a picture of the man at work. He had a regal bearing, with short gray hair and a nicely trimmed short beard. Keith studied the picture, trying to memorize what Walter's face actually looked like while Hiraeth finished summarizing for Marion.

  "So the real question is," Hiraeth said, "how we intend to go about this."

  Marion leaned over her crossed legs on the bed, torso at an uncanny angle. "I don't know whether you'll need to go upstairs or downstairs to find Lucas," she said. "I suspect downstairs, since that's where he did the initial experiments on me and put me in this body. If he isn't 'done' with Lucas already, he'll be there. However, if he finished already… all I know is I was taken upstairs after."

  "It's risky business," Hiraeth said. "Going downstairs first is a sort of no-takebacks situation. The Terrors will be down there, hiding out in the darkness, and if it turns out he's upstairs after, we'll certainly be having to fight our way back out."

  Keith rubbed his forehead. "I don't know if it much matters," he said. "We have to deal with everything in there anyway, or we won't be safe. The ghost, the Terrors. They have to get dealt with. It's not like we can really just go in, find him, and get out. That might have been our original plan with Marion, but it's naive. This needs to be stopped."

  "You might be right. Not much point getting your man back just to have them track us down to steal him right back again," Hiraeth said, with grim good humor. "So then. We'll need fire if we want a chance against the Terrors—I've got a few lanterns we can bring."

  "I—I can manipulate fire," Keith said. It was remarkable how calm he was beginning to feel now that they were about to make this happen. "Not always with great control, but I can do it. I can spark it out of nothing sometimes, but it'll be a lot easier for me to use if we've already got fire with us. Anyway, inevitable or not, we should still decide if we want to start at the top and fight our way down if he's down there, or start at the bottom and fight our way up if he isn't. We do need to prioritize Lucas, even if we have to deal with everything. Getting him back sooner rather than later would help a lot."

  After a considering pause, Marion lifted a hand. "I have a thought."

  "Yeah?"

  "I don't really have any combat skills," she said. "And I'm not fully used to this new body yet. But I can be a distraction."

  "A distraction?" Hiraeth said uneasily. "If it's for Terrors, you'll get hurt for sure, my darling…"

  "No, I mean…" She hesitated, and belatedly lowered her hand. "The issue is that last time, the ghost was around upstairs, right? You probably don't want to risk dealing with both the ghost and the Terrors at once, but if he's undistracted and hears a commotion downstairs, he'll go down. Yet, if you want to try to check upstairs first, and he's up there again, you have to face him directly immediately too, and I think we all agree that it's most likely Lucas is downstairs. Which would mean you'd then get the ghost's attention and have to either fight Terrors after already having had a showdown with a powerful ghost, or go downstairs with him completely alert."

  They both nodded, uncertain.

  "He has no way of knowing I have my memories back," Marion said, tone faintly sly. "I could carry one of your cellphones. Take it with me. Go upstairs. If Lucas is there and the ghost isn't, I could just tell you. If the ghost is and Lucas isn't, I could talk to him. Distract him. Convince him I was desperate for my memories. So I came wandering back in to beg his help in recovering myself."

  "Marion..." Keith breathed.

  "All you'd have to do was listen in until you knew the situation," Marion said. "Then hang up the phone so there wouldn't be any way to tell another party was there. Then react accordingly."

  Hiraeth lit up, sort of tumbling off his chair onto her in a hug. She made an offended noise, sinking back under his aggressive attack. "You're a darling, Marion, you know that? You are, you are."

  "Why are you like this," she said, not really a question.

  "What if," Keith said, "the ghost and Lucas are both up there? Or other… used bottles? With spirits in. I don't know if you'd be able to tell if they're Lucas or not."

  She lifted her eyes to his face, pushing Hiraeth's antlers to the side and making him whine as it yanked his head around. "I can insert that into the conversation if he’s there," she said. "Ask about the bottles, and if they were like me, and what he intended to do. Whatever is necessary."

  "I think it's brilliant," Hiraeth said.

  "It does feel pretty solid," Keith admitted. He let out a breath and looked at Hiraeth. "There's probably other dolls than Marion there, but for whatever reason, they didn't move or act when I was there last. Hopefully that means that since he wasn't actively working on them, they're out of commission and we don't have to worry about them for now."

  Hiraeth nodded. "Right."

  "Given how many essences he's been collecting, if he hasn't dumped
them all into dolls, then there should be other, uh, 'occupied' bottles too." Keith made scare quotes with his fingers. "Is there something we should be doing to let them out?"

  "Smash 'em," Hiraeth said at once. "We'll be fighting, I bet, so we won't have room for anything fancier. If it's an Other essence, smashing the container should let it free to go find another vessel. I can't imagine a scenario where breaking the bottles will destroy our essence, but I can certainly imagine how leaving him to experiment on them might. And if it's Lucas's bottle, it should pop him right out. Ghosts don't really have anywhere to go."

  Keith swallowed around a sudden dry throat. The plan was coming together, and they were short on time. As soon as they were decided, they'd have to get moving. "And if Lucas isn't in a bottle?"

  "There's no way to plan for what may have happened in that case," Hiraeth said, in a tone like he thought that might be reassuring. "If he's in a doll already, hopefully his ghostliness kept his memories around for it. If not, hopefully he's as impulsively friendly as Marion had been. And if he's been experimented on in another way… Well, I don't know what might have happened."

  Marion shrugged, giving no opinion on that.

  "But," Hiraeth said, eyes warm as he reached to take Keith's hand, "I think our chances are good. It's only been a day, and as I said, if old Walter was specifically wanting a ghost but didn't think he'd get one, he'll hopefully take his time making sure everything's perfect before doing whatever to him."

  "Great," Keith said. It came out flat despite himself, and he forced a smile, squeezing his own clammy hand on Hiraeth's.

  It was hardly his fault that this was something they could only guess at.

  Hiraeth gave him a half smile back, then turned back to Marion. He'd extracted himself, but was staying close, trying to snag one of her hands as well. Keith wondered, abruptly, what the exact nature of their relationship even was. He'd been thinking friends, and hadn't seen anything inside Marion's memories to say otherwise, but was startled to realize he didn't know.

  "Marion, m'love," Hiraeth said. "Are you getting any sense of doom on this plan?"

  Keith had completely forgotten her powers. Maybe her plan was likely to work, just because it was something she'd come up with—

  She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "Though I don't know if that's cause to celebrate. I don't know how accessible my usual senses are. I didn't get this vessel in the usual way, and I don't know if it's just not triggering because nothing terrible is waiting for me, or if it's waiting for you instead, or if my skill is missing for good, or if it'll take time to come back. Don't rely on it right now."

  "I'll take it as a good sign anyway," Hiraeth said. He turned bright, terrified eyes on Keith, grinning at him. "Ready?"

  Keith knew the feeling. He smiled back, because if he didn't, he had no idea what else his face might do. "Ready as I'll ever be," he said, and squeezed Hiraeth's hand again, hard.

  ***

  They equipped themselves as planned, and did so as lightly as they dared: charging up their cellphones, and bringing kerosene lanterns. Before they left, Hiraeth dabbed some of the old perfume on Marion.

  "The smell should remind him of his doll work," Hiraeth said. "Make you feel more 'his'. To a ghost, that’s an attachment. You can say you found it in the stolen items along with yourself and when you put it on, you wanted to come back and get his help."

  She sniffed. "It's a little overwhelming."

  "Can't hurt, can it? Ghosts are tied to sensory things."

  "Can't hurt," she agreed after a brief pause. "Anything to keep his attention on me."

  They walked out to where Hiraeth had stashed the car and drove out in near silence, all of them too nervous to talk much, just watching the road and the world around. Besides, the car was making too much noise and bouncing too much with the undercarriage damaged to want to say much of anything anyway.

  And then they were passing the corner Lucas had died on and he wasn't thinking of much of anything anymore, not really, not except how empty the seat behind him was, how quiet, how that presence wasn't there and should be.

  As before, they parked in the construction lot and got out, Hiraeth coughing softly and waving smoke away from the car. "She's not long for this world," he said. "But she got us here alright, so we can be thankful for that."

  "Mm." Keith said awkwardly, not sure exactly how to comfort someone over a car when he felt like this.

  But Hiraeth wasn't expecting anything more. They walked quietly, carefully through the woods, stopping in the bushes outside Walter Bennett's house.

  Hiraeth turned the ringer off on his own cellphone and handed it to Marion. "Call my line," he told Keith, who did. She answered after fumbling with the vibrating phone. "Check," Hiraeth whispered into it, and was visibly relieved to hear his voice come through the other side.

  "So I'll just keep this in my pocket?" she asked, careful. "And when you hear whatever I have to say, you hang up and go in the house?"

  Keith nodded. "Thank you," he said. "Good luck."

  She nodded, squared her shoulders, and walked out of the bushes, approaching the front door. She tried it, found it still unlocked, and entered with a projected courage she surely couldn’t have felt.

  Keith and Hiraeth huddled around Keith's cellphone, listening. Keith turned the volume up and muted his side. In silent unified fear that the mute hadn't worked, they both did their best to breathe as quietly as possible as they listened to her walk up the stairs.

  Footsteps and creaking, wandering down a hall, doors opening, one after another. And then, after an agonizing pause of no sound at all. "Oh. You're here."

  No audible response.

  "I came back. I can't remember anything and I'm so scared. I want to know who I am… You said you could help me. Can you? Is that true?" She was selling it at least, the fear audible in her voice, trembling a little.

  Silence again.

  "Am I the only one up here? I thought you might be doing something with the ghost you caught. Is he downstairs…?"

  Silence. Keith had never wished harder to hear both sides of a conversation.

  "Downstairs… oh, in the basement. But can I ask you to work with me up here again, like before? I think it might have been working, if it weren't interrupted. Can you explain to me more of how it was supposed to work?"

  Hiraeth slammed his thumb on the hang-up button before Keith could even move. "Our time starts now," he whispered, and held out a hand to Keith. "And I don't know if we have much of it."

  Keith took Hiraeth's hand, dropping his cellphone into his pocket with numb fingers and scooping up his own lantern. "Let's go."

  They hurried into the house, and Keith didn't hesitate, pulling Hiraeth toward the door that Lucas had taken previously. It was new territory, but Lucas had described it well enough, and the second door he pulled open was the stairway down.

  It was pitch black down there, and both paused briefly to light their lanterns before seizing each other's hands again. It might be safer holding the railing, but even so, Keith didn't want to let go. Hiraeth felt like a lifeline. A warm, sweaty lifeline.

  They descended together into darkness.

  chapter sixteen

  The lanterns cast a flickering circle of light around them that Keith suspected did more to deepen shadows than actually illuminate the area generally. He tried to think positively: it at least lit the steps beneath them so they could see where they were going.

  The stairs hardly felt stable, creaking and rocking under their weight, but they didn't have the time to take them slowly, and, by silent consensus, they moved down them as quickly as they dared. Hiraeth was more sure-footed than Keith was, and was pulling him along slightly faster than Keith felt comfortable with, but he didn't want to let go and risk being separated, so he just let himself be pulled along.

  The stairs seemed to be taking longer than they should at the pace they were going, not at all matching the size of the house, as if they were go
ing beneath where he expected the basement to be. It was impossible to tell if this really was the case, or if it was just his distorted perception, though. Moving through the darkness, knowing an evil ghost was above, descending into who-knows-what, sure he'd have to fight…

  Of course his time sense would be ruined. Of course every half-second would feel like a minute.

  But still, it felt wrong.

  He'd barely had a chance to think that when a sensation rolled up from below that made him jerk to a stop immediately, almost yanking Hiraeth off his feet. It was terror, Terrors, a churning cloud of fear and loss and mindless hunger engulfing them from below, an aura roiling up the stairs.

  No way to tell how many of them were down there. More than one, at least, he'd seen two in the visions he'd had—with that first unidentified Other, and with Marion.

  But did Walter only have two of them? Or were there more that hadn't gone after her that night, that had been hunting others? He didn't know how Walter controlled them. Was there a limit, and he only had control of a couple? Was there no limit?

  How many Terrors were even in the city? He'd never had cause to wonder that before. They appeared so rarely and were so easily avoided with light and company and care. How many ghosts had lost themselves and turned instead of moving on?

  Lucas, you'd better not be one of them.

  Hiraeth pulled on Keith's hand. "I know, I know," he whispered harshly. "I know, my darling, feels like we're walking into the jaws of death, but we have to go."

  Keith shuddered hard and managed, somehow, to unstick his feet from the stairs to continue on.

  It didn’t take long after that for them to finally reach the basement, and now Keith wished the stairs were endless. But their shoes clattered from wood to cement and they were surrounded.

  The Terrors' massive bodies filled what felt like every shadow. Impossible to tell where the darkness ended and they began, not with only lantern light, and still impossible to tell how many there were. More than two, certainly. More than five, absolutely.