by Tom Doyle
The farsighted Eddy paused, brought up short by my simple intuition. “He’s gone. He came, he saw, he conquered, he left.”
“Where to now?” asked Scherie.
“Conquered?” said Dale, anger renewed. “Ah, hell, if we don’t know where we’re going, we’re going to the House. It’s only fifteen minutes away even if we drive like mundanes, and we ain’t going to do that.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Everybody in the van.”
Eddy didn’t object; he just held his hands open in the pose of a man too deeply in debt to ever call things even again. This was how they slowly went mad over there in the Peepshow.
I called over to the pilot, who had finally ventured outside. “Keep the plane here, refueled and ready for takeoff.” Eddy nodded his confirmation at the man, and the pilot replied, “Yes, sir.”
The van was blasting heat inside, which felt fine after the tarmac. Scherie drove with Eddy in shotgun, who continued to brief us about the fight at the House and the apparent treason within H-ring. Dale and Lara sat in the back. To my right in the middle seats, Grace was mumbling Latin, but nothing spiritual seemed to be happening. Eddy had brought a change of clothes for everyone in haute camo style, très guerilla chic. With very little self-consciousness, everyone but Scherie changed into them; my French suit hadn’t fared well through recent events. While I changed, I had questions. “OK, Eddy, you say that Roderick showed up at the House, beat up the good guys, and left. That doesn’t make much sense.”
“He also bound his sister to the House.”
“Revenge?” I asked.
“Maybe,” said Eddy. “But he took crucial time to do it. Since he left the House, we’ve seen nothing. This is as predicted. We follow someone like Roderick not directly, but through how he affects others. In earlier farsight, all Roderick timelines vanished after his homecoming. We thought that made the Morton House the crucial point. But we were wrong. I was wrong.”
“Dale,” I said, “if he didn’t do what you thought, what could he have wanted at the House?”
“Not sure,” said Dale. “But he might have done something else with the Left-Hand dead besides bind them. I’d like to talk to my dad and grandpa.”
As we zoomed at unsafe speed down 95, the van got abruptly colder, and Dale’s father, Will, and grandfather Ben appeared in the far back, crouching over Dale and Lara’s seat. Ghosts and the living all yelped in surprise and sudden discomfort. We were all crowded together, even with a van. Had Eddy even anticipated these dead passengers? I didn’t bother asking; Langley seldom showed its hand.
“We were looking for you,” said Ben.
I had seen so many spirits in my travels that it no longer seemed odd that these Morton ghosts were visible to me. Dale asked his dead relations questions, but meanwhile, Eddy was listening to his Peepshow earpiece. He spoke to us as information came in: “Something has happened at Arlington Cemetery. Vandalism at the Tomb of the Unknowns. No clear details yet.”
Dale broke off his conversation. The eyes of this brave man had a real fear in them. “The Tomb of the Unknowns? That sounds like something Roderick could use.”
“I’ll find out more.” My father had been buried at Arlington after he’d sacrificed himself to save me during the H-ring fiasco; he was now one of the spirit guards for the Cemetery and the Pentagon. I concentrated. I pressed against Grace to make a little room for another ghost to my left. “Dad, please come here.” As if someone had opened a window, the van grew colder, and my father was crowded in with the rest of us. He appeared as if he’d just arrived from a battle in some desert, though even in photos I’d never seen his First Gulf War service.
“What is it, Major?” he said, gruffly. “As you may have heard, I’m very busy right now.”
A summoning was still a little embarrassing for both of us, but I’d sort family matters later. “Please give us a report on Arlington, sir.”
My father described the vandalism of the Tomb of the Unknowns. “We didn’t see the intruder before or after. Some strange stealth seems to protect him from living and dead observation.”
Grace chimed in. “That sounds like a Renfield.”
“Who are you, ma’am?” asked my father.
I had other business to report that might only add to the awkwardness. “Dad,” I said, “this is my girlfriend, Grace Marlow.”
Grace briefly raised her eyebrows at “girlfriend,” though whether because I presumed too much or too little was still a little unclear to me. But she didn’t question the word.
My father’s mouth formed an O, then he sat a little taller and, smiling as if with living warmth, placed a hand over his chest in a traditional spiritual greeting. “Very pleased to meet you. Sorry it’s during a council of war—I’ll enjoy getting to know you better, but it’ll have to wait.” Fixing me again with his commanding stare, he took the time to say, “You’ll be squaring this situation with God, H-ring, and MI13, right, Michael?”
“Yessir.” Though I had no idea how.
“Outstanding.”
And that was all he had to say about that. God, I missed my dad sometimes. But back to the real business. “Then what happened?” I asked. The perp’s ID as a Renfield or whoever could wait a moment.
“The unknown dead rose,” said my father, “so damned many, and those just in Arlington. Perhaps they could have once identified themselves to other dead like me, but they were all past that. They still manifested in their uniform colors, but they were blurred, tattered spirits, some almost shapeless. They rose high into the sky. Those of us on patrol called to them, but it was as if they couldn’t hear us. I fired warning shots. I … I may have hit one.”
Ectoplasmic blasts against the fallen didn’t concern me right now. “Sir, how many?”
“At least four thousand spirits from the Civil War left Arlington, but I think others rose too—the forgotten. For a moment, I felt…” No, I wanted to insist, you’re never forgotten, but my father just shook his head and said, “Never mind. The Arlington number doesn’t matter. The problem has spread. At all the Civil War battlefields, all those sections of numbers without names, the unknown ghosts have left.”
“Where did they go?”
“If I knew that, I’d be there. They rose, then disappeared in a flash. We can’t see them anymore. They’ve gone somewhere hidden, like H-ring.”
We were pulling up to the front of the House of Morton, for once hypervisible and radiating more hate than I’d ever felt from it. I might be House’s friend, but what about my father? “Dad…”
“For now, I’ll stay in the van,” he said.
* * *
As we walked up the House’s steps, the Rezvani ghosts were drifting along with us. Scherie spoke to them soothingly in Farsi. House was roaring and crying, and I had to remind myself that we were friends now.
In the courtyard, we were greeted by Captain Kat Hutchinson, who looked like a younger version of our Colonel Hutch with darker hair. It still choked me up to see a Hutchinson. We’d all seen one another last at Hutch’s funeral, and there were no names hidden among us. One difference between Kat and Hutch was that Kat had none of the colonel’s power of reassurance; in fact, she tended to cause the opposite reaction. She looked exhausted, and spitting mad.
Eddy noted dryly, “You’re here without orders.”
“Goddamn it, Eddy, and goddamn Calvin too for trying to keep me out of this. When is he going to learn? Just because I pretend not to know things doesn’t mean I don’t see them, that I don’t care. I’m in PRECOG!”
I had some sympathy with her anger at Attucks, but time to rein things in. “Captain Hutchinson,” I said. “I could use a report.”
“Yessir,” said Kat.
Eddy prompted further, “On your own authority, you brought reinforcements?”
Kat nodded. “With the cover of a training exercise, I organized a relief team in Boston and had them at ready, then brought them down after the predicted commencement of combat with Roder
ick. He left the scene, but the fight with rogue craft elements went on for about one-half hour after his departure. Then Van Winkle farsaw our imminent arrival and told her co-conspirator to run for it. She and the ENCOM traitor fled with the survivors of their outside support. We missed them by just minutes before we marched in. Three were dead here, three others dead in the immediate area. I had medics for the wounded. The unofficial practitioners known as Queen and Alchemist were badly wounded, but they’ll survive.”
“And General Attucks?” I asked, with concern for her and the whole service.
“The general will be fine,” she said. “At least until he’s well enough to explain this fucked-up plan to me.”
As if to bring her back to focus, Eddy asked her, “Can you see Roderick? Can you see him anywhere?”
She closed her eyes. “No. He’s still gone.” Her eyes flashed open. “Eddy, I can’t see anything past tomorrow.”
“Good,” he said. “Neither can I.”
Kat seemed as surprised at this statement as I was. “Why is that good?” I asked.
“The whole world’s timeline might be one big flux,” said Eddy, “but that’s better than certain doom.”
“Still not very good,” I said.
“No,” agreed Eddy.
Punctuating this discussion, we made room for the cleanup crew. They were here to remove the dead. They’d finished the outside work, and they were just leaving with the two bodies from the courtyard. The House’s stealth should have made their job easier, but right now, House was moaning in despair. Below that noise, a familiar voice called to us as if from the bottom of a sealed-off well. “Let us out.”
“Madeline?” said Scherie. “Where are you?”
On hearing Madeline’s name, Grace shifted into a combat-ready stance.
Madeline, not visible, spoke with a stony control. “Roderick used the old family blood magic. He has chained us tight to the subbasement because he thought we could interfere. We know how. Release us and we can help you.”
“We’ve got a lot going on right now,” said Dale. “Give us a moment.”
“You don’t have a moment. We may already be too late.”
Ben Morton said, “Don’t listen to her.”
Will Morton said, “What? You think she can make things worse?”
Lara approached the House and put her open palm very close to the door. “In Kiev, Roderick talked to you. He has put you in the box again.”
“Who are you?” said Madeline, voice finally breaking into rage.
Lara addressed Scherie instead. “Tell her to go to the far shore. Much happier for all.”
“But will she help?” Scherie asked.
“Help, but not friend,” said Lara.
“Yes,” hissed Madeline. “We’re not your friend. We’re your ancestor, and ancestors call their descendants to death. But not tonight.”
“She saved my life,” said Scherie simply.
“It’s your and Dale’s call,” I said. Dale had taken this risk before, and the stakes had been smaller. Eddy and Kat remained silent, perhaps disinclined to question a Family’s authority on its home ground regardless of the result.
“Scherie,” said Dale. “I think we have to defer to someone else. One being gets the final say. Roderick bound these spirits to House forever, but that tie only works when it’s knotted at both ends, and Roderick never seems to get that House isn’t just a passive thing. I’m not going to make that mistake again.” He faced the door. “House, last time I ordered their release. This time, we’re asking. Shall we release them?”
A pause, and a vibration through the ground like a small earthquake. Then, the House of Morton spoke, and for the first time I heard the words with my own ears. It spoke like the rocks and stones of the Gospel might have, but its words were damnation. “Yes,” House said. “Release. Kill him.”
“Scherie,” said Dale, “please help me with this.” When Joshua had bound the Left-Hand revenants, he’d done so with terrible words and probably years of his own life. Dale’s last attempt to unbind them along with the destruction of the House hadn’t even fully taken. This would require some serious spiritual work.
Dale produced a jackknife, and Scherie and he each cut the palm of one of their hands. They dribbled the blood onto the courtyard stones, and Dale said, “Hear us. We are the rightful living family of the House of Morton. We speak for the dead, for Jonathan and Joshua and all the others of our line.” Dale raised his hand as if beginning the sign of the cross, then brought it down like a butcher’s cleaver. “We break the craft of Roderick, who is of the dead. We declare the time of binding over, and we free the spirits of the condemned. Madeline Ligeia Morton and all the revenants with you, rise and be free.”
Lightning flashed across a clear winter’s sky, and dark fire shot up into the night. Then Dale and Scherie collapsed to the ground, spasming like epileptics in a seizure.
As Grace went to their aid, House’s door flew open, and out strode Madeline Ligeia Morton, dressed as a warrior queen from Victorian imaginings, but the black-lit flames where her eyes should have been gave true dread to her appearance. She carried a spear and shield. Like a ruler of the damned, she roared at the Heaven she didn’t believe in: “Free forever!”
A stillness followed her ringing words. Then, I heard my father at the courtyard gate. “Again? You’ve let them out again?”
A voice in my head said, Try your power of command on her. I did my best to ignore it, even as Madeline looked down in disgust at Dale and Scherie, still quivering with their eyes rolled back in their heads. “Stop the faux groveling. Only the real sort will do.”
She pointed her spear, and real spiritual energy, not ectoplasm, sprung from it into the living Mortons. Their bodies relaxed. Dale blinked up at Madeline and asked the question we all dreaded. “What will you do with your freedom, Auntie?”
Rubbing her hands against her temples, Scherie gave Dale an incredulous smile. “Sweetie, when the world’s going to end, killing anyone besides Roderick wouldn’t be sporting.”
Madeline grinned and spoke through unmoving aristocratic teeth. “That’s the Morton spirit!” She nodded at my father’s ghost, a man she had fooled, fought, and helped to kill in life. “You say my brother has unleashed the unknown dead. We will search for them, though it may be too late. If we find them, we’ll keep them away from Roderick.”
I was uncertain that her means of doing this wouldn’t be as dire a problem. But then Ben Morton’s ghost said, “If you don’t mind, Aunt Madeline, we’ll go with you.”
The ghost of his son Will gaped at him. “You posthumously senile old man!” But Will must have seen something in Ben’s eyes, because then he said, “OK, Dad. Better than hunting Roderick with the kids.”
I kept my approval to myself. It would be good to have the orthodox Morton dead keeping an eye on Madeline. But where would we the living go to hunt Roderick?
In spiritual matters, like sought like. Madeline would hunt, but she had her own desires, and I wasn’t sure how like Roderick she was anymore. I had Left-Hand power in my flesh, but I felt no push or pull in any direction of the compass.
Compass. A compass worked with a needle, and I had the perfect one. “Someone get me some water. In a small bowl. Quickly.”
Staggering to his feet, Dale went inside and found a small metal mixing bowl and filled it with water. I brought out the sealed needle of tissue.
“Let me see that,” said Eddy, reaching for it.
“Hands off,” I said. Eddy’s hand jerked back like it had been burned.
I quickly added a silent prayer of “In God’s name.” But the damage had been done. Everyone was looking at me a little nervously, except for Lara, whose skittering eyes locked onto me with renewed interest. Eddy rubbed his retracted hand and said, “That’s an interesting power you’ve got there, Major.”
“We’ll discuss that later.” I placed the needle in the bowl, and despite its seeming density, it floated, as if c
lean water repelled it. The tissue drifted for a moment, then began to spin like a true compass, settling into a line that pointed southwest or northeast. There wasn’t much of America to the northeast of Providence, but plenty to the southwest. Something had already happened at Arlington; perhaps Roderick would be going somewhere nearby.
I snagged the needle from the water. “We’ll figure this out on the way to the airport,” I said. “Sir,” I said to my father, “stay with me for a little longer.” I had a feeling we needed some old knowledge for this problem.
In the van, I asked Dale, “If you were going to work serious Left-Hand craft near Washington, D.C., where would you go?”
“I would find the biggest hole nearby,” said Dale. “Some kind of mine or any other good wound in the earth.”
“Near the capital?” Grace shook her head. “Perhaps not a mine. Perhaps a bunker. We had one in the Cotswolds in the event of nuclear war.” I saw her meaning. Some wounds were bloodier than others.
“We have a lot of ‘secure locations’ down that way,” I said. “Which one would Roderick choose? Greenbrier is open to the public. Mount Weather is still active, but he could probably force his way in if he didn’t plan on staying too long.”
Dale’s face fell. “Mount Weather. My dad was near there when they found him, ranting out in the woods, walking toward D.C. It’s Mount Weather.”
“No,” said my father. “Not Mount Weather. Not exactly.”
A memory came to me. “Dad, when I was a kid, you packed us up in the middle of the night to go somewhere out in Virginia, and only stopped when you got an all-clear signal.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was when the Soviet Union was collapsing. Some commie craft diehards were planning something desperate. I brought you with me, against orders. We were going to H-ring’s relocation bunker. It’s near Mount Weather, and it’s deserted. It’s the perfect place for him.” Some of his living command returned as he fixed me with his eyes. “In God’s name, you must hurry.”