Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  He ran out of words so abruptly that it almost hurt, desperately searching for something else to say, finding nothing. Just gazing up at that face. There seemed to be no change. No reaction at all.

  Then the shadows cleared, and Walter blinked open eyes that were ice cold, lacking any trace of warmth or compassion.

  "You're right," Walter said, and it was aloud—or at least, as aloud as Lucas had ever been, at a normal ghostly level of sound.

  Despite his fear, Keith felt his heart leap.

  "You're right," Walter said again. And then, amused, "but you're wrong. I did learn how, but I failed to bring my daughter back. As you say, I had hoped to, so I would see her again. I knew that if I died and moved on, I wouldn't see her—I certainly wouldn't go the same place she would. Perhaps it was that obsession that kept me here. But what good is it now? She's moved on, and I will not. I refuse to see what my final reward is. But I wish to stay myself. I knew that I was forgetting. I could feel myself forgetting by inches, and I would hate to end up like them."

  He gestured a hand dismissively toward the Terror holding the bottle. Keith flinched, fearing it was a command, but the Terror didn't move.

  "Some pawn for other people to use. No, thank you. I will be myself forever. And I am grateful that you have given me more time—but I've begun to forget once. It will happen again with time. So I will experiment until I can guarantee that I will be eternal."

  Walter smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. Keith realized, as he lost his grip on the last piece of hope he’d allowed himself, that he’d guessed wrong.

  Walter was that sort of human being to start with.

  "So, if you will excuse me," Walter said, and gestured to the Terror again.

  This was it. Keith let out a whimper, tried to fling himself forward—but the ghost's attention had been fixed on him and a force slammed down around him, holding him back. The Terror lunged, the bottle descending.

  "Hiraeth," Keith wailed, horror and grief tearing the word out of his throat.

  And Marion came out of nowhere, barreling forward, slamming head-first into the Terror hard enough to knock it back. The bottle went flying from its hand, hitting the floor and rolling loudly, somehow still unbroken.

  Marion went down hard too, slamming onto her shoulder, and her sudden freedom made sense: she had no arms. A quick glance toward the Terror that had held her showed what had happened: It had been holding her arms and, without the command to chase her, was still doing so.

  She'd ripped them out of her joints to get free.

  But she hadn’t bought them much of an advantage. Hiraeth was struggling against the Terror that was holding him, but he was still caught, badly-injured, and he, at least, couldn't rip his own limbs off as easily as a doll could. Lucas was intangible, incapable of doing more than moving objects now and again, and Keith himself, though straining hard against it, was held by Walter's own ghostly force. Marion was the only one of them who had been free and able to act, but—

  It wasn't enough. The element of surprise had only saved Hiraeth's life for a few seconds longer. Light, small, and now armless, she had no real ability to fight, and the Terror she tackled was already back up, grabbing her, smashing her down into the floor.

  Keith looked around desperately.

  His eye fell on the bottle.

  Even more frantic, he pulled at the pressure holding him, squirming and yanking, trying to get even one arm free to reach for it, grab it, and couldn't. He twisted, muscles tense, pulling at his own arms so hard that he thought he himself might pull them out of the socket, but still couldn't move.

  Marion let out a yell as she was swung into the floor a second time. Hiraeth made a choking sound. Keith saw that the Terror's grip on him had shifted, over his throat, his face.

  Keith relaxed all at once, let all the fight go out of him. There was no way he could get free.

  Unreliable or not, it was the only option.

  He sent his mind out, flung it towards the bottle. He didn't try to grab with any finesse, just slid a paper-thin edge of his mind underneath the bulb, curved it up, and then flung it, with all the energy he could muster, toward Walter.

  Time seemed to slow. Keith thought he could make out every detail to be able to regret it for what was likely to be a very short rest of his life.

  The bottle had flown on a perfect angle, a beautiful arc. It should have hit, and might have done if Walter's attention hadn't been fixed on Keith to hold him in place. But Walter saw it all, saw Keith's focus on the bottle, saw Keith go limp, saw the bottle move and fly toward him.

  Walter dodged.

  It went sailing past in that smooth, gorgeous arc, not touching any of his insubstantial body at all. Keith's eyes jerked up from where it should have hit to Walter's face. He could feel the horror on his own face, see the triumph on Walter's.

  It's over, he thought, and then slowly realized that he hadn't heard the bottle hit the ground.

  Walter jerked abruptly, gaze lowering to his own insubstantial chest.

  The bottle was stuck into him from behind. It held in the air, much as it had with Lucas, caught by ectoplasm as much as it could be caught by flesh. Shocked, Walter stared at it, then turned to look behind himself.

  Keith jerked his gaze to where Walter was looking, and saw the same thing he had: Lucas, hand out.

  Lucas, whose only supernatural power was the ability to move objects.

  "You didn't," Walter breathed.

  "Honestly," Lucas said, tired and triumphant, "fuck you."

  Walter opened his mouth again, trying to find some retort.

  And then he popped.

  He was gone as if he hadn't been there, sucked into the bottle. The pressure around Keith vanished at once, and he forced himself to fall forward rather than back, hand out, to catch the bottle as it fell from the air.

  Feeling it sitting warm in his palm, he shuddered at how close that had been. No good capturing an evil ghost only to immediately free it again.

  Around them, the living dolls were all collapsing, falling to the ground as if their strings had been cut. Without Walter to control them, they had no commands to receive and were just mindless souls, trapped in their vessels.

  It had become suddenly dark, the evil ghost’s glow gone and Lucas without one of his own. Hiraeth’s lantern had gone out during the fight, and his own, sitting on the workbench, was running low without his energy to provide it additional fuel. Even with his eyes mostly adjusted to the dimness, it felt like an oppressive, muffling darkness.

  Keith let out a breath. "Is it over—?" he began, stupidly forgetting, in the middle of everything, how much he hated that question in a movie, how much it invariably meant it wasn't.

  All around them, the Terrors began to howl as they went berserk.

  chapter nineteen

  In retrospect, he should have expected it. The Terrors had only been behaving—as much as what they'd been doing could be considered behaving—because they were controlled by a stronger ghost. With the ghost gone, there wouldn't be anything controlling them at all.

  There was no way to take them on while they were in a killing frenzy, focused now on nothing but devouring, killing. Keith and the others would have been in an awful position even if they were uninjured. As things were, in the pitch darkness, with Hiraeth on the verge of passing out, Marion's arms gone, himself exhausted and wounded, and Lucas barely able to touch anything, it was impossible.

  No time to think about it.

  He threw his mind into the wiring—wiring he already knew to be damaged—and pushed energy into it, let it spark.

  It lit with an explosion, wood blowing outward and catching at once with the fuel of his power, flame starting to lick up what was left of the walls. The Terrors wailed and writhed, pulling back from their group as they switched, instinctively, to trying to find darkness to hide in rather than attacking the people in front of them.

  The path was, briefly, clear.

  But th
e stairs were wood.

  "We have to go," Keith managed to gasp, running forward and scooping up Marion's torso, carrying her under one arm. She didn't protest, just let out a startled sound, head rolling up to look at him. "We have to get out of here—"

  Lucas was kneeling over Hiraeth. "Get up."

  "Not so sure I can," Hiraeth said, the sound strained, a weird little smile on his face. "Not sure I have a choice, though."

  Keith wheeled, Marion still under one arm, reaching his other hand out, though it was distressingly full with the ghost bottle in it—but Lucas was already there, reaching a hand down as if he were going to haul Hiraeth up bodily.

  He couldn't, but didn't seem to need to. His hand pressed against and into Hiraeth's torso, and Lucas frowned down at him. Something seemed to pass between them, Hiraeth's eyes widening and the flickering light of the flames illuminating something odd passing over his features—and then Hiraeth was up. Weaving and stumbling over doll bodies, but up nevertheless and running for the stairs.

  "Go," Lucas shouted at Keith, and the sound had a horrible echo of earlier that sent his heart thundering, but it wouldn't be the same this time.

  Lucas was back.

  Lucas was here to stay.

  Keith spun again and ran, hauling Marion with him as they made it past the piles of collapsed dolls and clattered up the stairs. There was no chance to go back for her arms, but better to escape without them than risk it and get trapped. Together, they burst out on the main landing with a cloud of smoke accompanying them, then out the front door, almost falling down the front steps.

  Hiraeth kept running, Lucas soundlessly following behind him. Although Keith wanted nothing more than to collapse, Keith followed their lead, feet pounding for the second time along the dirt path from the mansion. It was a good few minutes of running—as far as Keith could tell with the adrenaline and exhaustion, anyway—before Hiraeth finally stopped, leaning against a tree and gasping for air.

  Keith sank down, cradling Marion in his arms and not totally sure that he'd be able to get up again. "What… why did we keep running…?" he managed, chest and throat tight.

  White-faced, Hiraeth managed a ghastly smile. "Well," he said. "As the fire spreads in the house, the Terrors will have less of a place to go. They'll probably go for the stairs before they burn through entirely, and even with the sunlight, they'll escape into the shadows of the wood. Didn't think we'd want to be there when they did."

  "No," Keith agreed, after some consideration. He put Marion on her feet, and she caught her balance, though not easily. "I don't think so. What about the dolls?"

  They hadn't been moving at all. Hiraeth frowned faintly. "I think this is for the best," he said finally. "It sounded like good old Walter truly destroyed who they were supposed to be. If their vessels are destroyed, maybe their essences will be released and be able to recover someday. If not… if not, it'd be better to let them rest than keep them trapped in those dolls."

  They were silent for a long few seconds.

  "We should keep going," Marion said. "If we can."

  "Yeah," Hiraeth said. He pushed off the tree, swayed, and used his stumble to carry onward.

  Keith heard himself let out a whine, but planted his hands on the ground and pushed himself up. When he lifted his head again, Lucas was standing in front of him, watching him with a concerned, tired look on his face.

  "Lucas…?"

  "C'mon," Lucas said. "Let's go. I'm… really looking forward to going home."

  Home. In this case, just the dorms, but close enough. The word caught in his chest with a hunger he almost didn't know how to identify. Home. Rest. Recovery.

  Keith pushed on.

  They headed down the path in a swaying, stumbling way. About twenty minutes along, Hiraeth took out his cellphone.

  "What're you—"

  "Calling the fire department," Hiraeth said. This time, his smile was more like its usual self, wry and quirky and warm. "I gave it long enough for the house to go, but even if it's in a clearing, it's still in the woods. We don't want a canopy fire."

  "Jesus," Keith said, horrified. "I hadn't thought about that."

  "That's what I'm here for," Hiraeth said, and even managed a wink.

  He made the call, and they made it the rest of the way out to the old construction lot. "Hope she gets us home," Hiraeth said, patting the vehicle sadly. "Not sure we're in a great state to deal with it if she breaks down on the road home."

  "Never mind the car," Marion said bluntly. "What about you? Are you up to driving? I'm not sure how you even made it back this far."

  "I'm all right. Lucas helped me."

  "Lucas?" Keith turned to him in surprise. "What did you do? And how?"

  Lucas looked somewhat embarrassed. "Well, I probably won't be able to use enough energy to touch anything for a while, but I mean, it worked. I just… put some of my energy into him to make his legs move."

  "You can do that?" Keith asked, startled.

  "Apparently?" Lucas's embarrassment deepened. "I figured, since Others are energy filling a vessel in a way humans aren't, I might be able to put something in that vessel too."

  "That's what she said," Hiraeth said, an obvious effort to lighten the mood. He gestured them again toward the car. "While I appreciate Lucas's loan very much, as strange a sensation as it is, I don't know how long his addition of energy will last, and I'd rather get us back to my place before it goes. And before the fire department is here with questions, too."

  Keith got in the car.

  Fortunately, Hiraeth's clanking, smoking old beast of a car managed to get them back to his place safely—only to let out one horrible, choking rumble and cloud of foul smoke as he put it into park. Hiraeth stared at the dash for a long moment before turning the ignition on again to only a sputter and more smoke.

  "Ah," Hiraeth said, and touched two fingers to his forehead. "Well. Better her than us."

  Tears welled up in Keith's eyes; he forced them back. Stupid, to mourn for a car after all this. Just the shock, he reminded himself. The shock and the acidic smoke stinging his eyes.

  He got out of the car.

  They made their exhausted way up to Hiraeth's apartment. There, Hiraeth dug out first aid supplies from his bathroom. At Keith's insistence, he even patched himself up first.

  "Sorry about your arms," Keith said to Marion, as Hiraeth took care of himself. The longer they took getting bandaged, the more aware he was of her sitting very awkwardly upright in Hiraeth's desk chair, not able to get bandaged.

  "They're just arms," Marion said.

  "Yeah, but—"

  "She'll be fine," Hiraeth said, with moderate cheer for someone who was stitching part of his own arm back together. "I know people who know people. If I couldn't find someone who can get doll arms that match her body, I should close up shop. Anyway, I think you can even order doll parts on eBay."

  Keith looked between them. They genuinely didn't seem concerned at all. "Oh," he said awkwardly. He couldn't seem to calm down, mind racing from one point to another as soon as one issue was resolved. "What are we going to do with the ghost bottle?"

  It was currently sitting on Hiraeth's desk, where it was probably safe, but Keith kept imagining scenarios that could knock it to the ground and make it break. Falling against the desk. Knocking a lamp over.

  Earthquake.

  "Leave it with me for now," Hiraeth said. "I should be able to call in a favor and get it exorcised."

  Lucas said, "You said that so easily. Mind if I'm not there to see that?"

  "I was thinking you might not want to be, darlin'."

  "So that's it," Keith said, almost lost. "It's really all dealt with now? He'll get exorcised, and Marion is safe, and Lucas is safe…"

  Hiraeth shrugged a shoulder, then winced. "Well, the woods are going to be full of Terrors, but honestly, it's not going to be more Terrors than were already in the city. So I'd say it's pretty much over with, lover."

  Keith flushed and
glanced at Lucas, flustered and unsure as to how he'd take that upgraded pet name.

  Meeting his gaze, Lucas blinked at him, raising both brows. "Well. I'd say the Terrors are officially not our problem, to be honest."

  "Yeah," Keith said hoarsely. Either he had really not minded at all, or had just missed it. Hard to say which. "I sure hope not."

  "Shouldn't be," Hiraeth said. He snipped the end of his suture thread and beckoned with the needle. "Your turn to get bandaged up, Keith."

  Keith, staring at the needle, said, "Just bandages, right?"

  "Unless your cuts are deeper than you're letting on," Hiraeth said, bright-eyed, "just bandages, yes."

  ***

  When they had finished with the bandages, Hiraeth offered to let them stay over. "It's already evening," he pointed out. "While I imagine you hardly want to eat right now, you’ll need to do so if you're going to heal, and I'm in no state to help get you back to the university."

  "Your car isn't, either," Lucas agreed.

  Hiraeth smiled and pointed to Lucas, a what he said, though the gesture made him wince. "And I'm not sure you want to be taking the bus right now. Plenty of room in my bed if you want to share it tonight."

  Keith could feel Lucas's constant presence next to him, relaxed. It seemed to him as though the offer had a deeper significance than just convenience. Hiraeth was asking a silent question about the two of them: how things were now that Lucas was back. If it had been a temporary thing only, comfort and nothing more. How they would continue, if they did continue.

  They wouldn't be having sex tonight regardless, not both injured and exhausted. So the question wasn't about sex, not really.