by CW Lynch
"Wait… wait…" said Dorothy.
"No," commanded Able. "You say that this power is my birthright? Well I say it's time. Now. Before Cane kills us all, including Adam."
There were no words, but a change in the currents of the memories that flowed around Able acknowledged what he'd said. Not all the ghosts spoke but in this place, when his mind was clear and adrift amongst them, they had their own ways of communicating.
"So, what do we do?" he asked.
"We're doing it now," said Dorothy. His psychic voice was suddenly tinged with panic. "Aren't we?"
"Nothing's happening," said Able. He'd expected to feel his body again, the way he did when one of the ghosts stepped back and gave him control again. It felt like pins and needles, like a numb limb waking up, but the feeling wasn't there. There was nothing there. Able began to panic. They couldn't be dead, they could still see and hear everything that Adam could, so why couldn't they do anything. He felt the minds, the memories, around him, begin to foam. Anxious ghosts, fearful ghosts, bubbling and frothing and breaking through to the surface.
"I can't move him," said Malcolm. "I should be able to. He's let us in but… I can't move him."
"Is he blocking us?" asked Magda.
"I don't know. I'm not an expert!"
"You sounded like one earlier, Dot!"
"Don't call me that!"
Able tried to focus, to tune out the voices as they all began to talk over each other in a deluge of sound that deteriorated into white noise. He hadn't lost control like this in a long time, not since the early days when Marv had taught him how to martial his thoughts and control the people who had taken up residence in his head.
Through the torrent of sound one voice slowly came into focus. It was Adam King's.
"Help me, Able. Help me or we are both dead."
Cane lunged forward, his hand clasping Adam by the throat.
Adam jammed the blade upwards and felt it wedge itself in Cane's rib cage. Cane didn't make a sound, just looked down at the blossom of crimson on his shirt that slowly turned black before vanishing altogether. Adam tried to keep the blade inside his brother, twisting it left and right, but an inexorable pressure finally forced it back out of Cane's body. Adam dropped the knife as Cane tightened his grip around his throat, cutting off the air.
"I should have done this in the first place," hissed Cane. "I should have killed you years ago."
"Why… didn't… you?" gasped Adam. His hands, weak and going numb, fumbled along the Magpye's belt, desperately searching for a weapon.
Cane, his face close to Adam's, bared his teeth. "I wanted us to be different, brother. I wanted us to break the mould. We could have worked together, could have had it all. But you had to go and get that circus bitch pregnant and create a new heir. You pushed me out!"
"I didn't want it," wheezed Adam. "I wanted out, you knew that."
"Nobody gets out," growled Cane. "You leave the family when you're dead… and sometimes not even then."
Cane brought up his other hand, wrapping it around Adam's neck and pressing firmly down on his windpipe with both thumbs. Starved of oxygen, Adam's limp body collapsed to the floor. Cane followed him down, never releasing his grip, squeezing harder, and harder, and harder. Squatting over his brother, he felt Adam's body start to convulse underneath him, his legs spasming wildly.
"Nearly there brother," he whispered. "Nearly out."
Able kicked and thrashed and tried to force his way forward, but to no avail. There was another pull building, a pull far more powerful than the pull of Adam's mind. It was dragging him down beneath the waters of memory and whilst he shouldn't have been afraid, he was. He had immersed himself, lost himself in those cool waters so many times before, but now it felt like drowning. It felt like he was being pulled down to somewhere that he would never surface from, somewhere very deep, very dark, and very cold.
"Is he dying?" asked Adam. "Are we dying?"
There was no answer. The ghosts just howled and wailed in their fear of an imminent second death. They seemed to be revolving around Able, becoming more like the skinless screaming ghosts he had witnessed being born into their afterlife in the blood soaked corridors of the mill. One by one they were submerged, dragged under by the unseen force and Able felt them, their memories, their personality, their very presence, vanish from his consciousness. There had never been a horizon here before, but there was a darkness fast approaching now.
Able suddenly realised that he was alone, except for one other.
Not a person, no. Even Adam had been subsumed beneath the surface and the only thoughts here were Able's.
The other was the thing, the great dark beast that lurked beneath the surface.
Able felt the pull on him grow stronger, and stronger, increasing exponentially until he could resist it no more.
He vanished beneath the cool waters of memory, dragged down by the Magpye to a place where there was only blackness.
A TRIP TO THE CIRCUS
Able woke up somewhere with sunshine. Sunshine, and no ghosts.
He sat up in a rush, looking left and right. Not a single voice. No ebb and flow of foreign memories pushing at the breakers of his mind. No forces, unknown or uncontrolled, moving his limbs or speaking in his voice. He was alone, at least in his head.
For the first time in a long time he focussed more on what was around him than inside him, and the landscape of the place finally came into focus.
He was back in the circus, but there was nothing burnt, nothing ruined. No death, no blood.
This was his circus, the way he remembered it.
"Hello Able,"
Able turned over, feeling the grass soft and slightly dewy underneath him. He realised his clothes, or rather The Magpye's clothes, were gone. He was dressed in a t-shirt and cut off jean-shorts. He hadn't worn anything like this since before the fire.
"I said 'Hello', Able?"
Able smiled. It had been an even longer time since he could remember doing that.
"Hello Marissa."
***
Marv stood and watched as the ghost of his daughter, a ghost conjured into life by his own magic, offered her hand to the strange boy called Able Quirk. If he was here, Marv reasoned, then he was dead. Only his ghost remained, kept tethered to the Earth either by whatever strange power he had possessed as the Magpye or by another cruel trick of Marv's own lost magic. Magicians were good at hiding things; so good that whatever Marv had done to bring Marissa back he had been able to keep hidden even from himself.
Magician or no, Marv still knew when to be around and when not to be. He vanished back into the crowds of the circus before Able realised that he was even there.
***
"Where are we?" asked Able.
"A safe place," answered Marissa, taking Able's hand in hers and helping him gently to his feet.
"It's not real, is it?"
"Most of the best places aren't."
"Great," said Able, snatching his hand back. "I'm still stuck in my own head."
"Doesn't look like your head," replied Marissa. She looked upwards and Able's gaze naturally followed hers. "Too much sky."
"I have… water, mostly. Like a river but, there's no bank, no dry land."
Able stopped talking. He'd never talked to anyone other than Marv about his ghosts and even then not in so much detail as this. What was it about Marissa that either got him running his mouth or so tongue tied he couldn't speak at all? He found himself wishing for a ghost, any ghost, as long as it knew how to talk to girls. Perhaps this was what it was like to be around any girl for Able, he just couldn't remember.
He felt Marissa's hand in his again, and this time he didn't let go.
"Let's go and find the others," she said.
"The others?"
"The other ghosts, silly."
She broke into a playful skip, dragging Able along behind her like a gangling soft toy. They headed back towards the circus, towards the crowds and the noises.<
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"Wait!" hissed Able, digging his feet into the ground and forcing a temporary stop. "People don't tend to like what they see when they see me."
"Not here," replied Marissa, breaking into a skip again, dragging Able behind her. "Here, everything's just fine. Look…"
Marissa turned and Able found they were skipping past the Hall of Mirrors. The mirrors here weren't bent or misshapen though, just crystal clear and shining. He saw himself and gasped when he saw the flush of colour in his cheeks and that his eyes, rather than milk white, had returned to their normal dark brown.
"You look good, young man!"
Able turned, recognising the booming voice behind him.
"Dorothy?"
"The very same," replied Dorothy, pushing his way through the crowd. He towered over most of them by a clear head and shoulders, his hulking frame barely contained by a yellow summer dress embroidered with tiny blue flowers. His bright red hair was tied up in two bunches and his perennial dark red stubble seemed to be taking the morning off.
"How did you get here?" asked Able, looking Dorothy up and down. It had been so long since he had thought of Dorothy like this: the gentle giant with the surgeon's hands and the penchant for summer dresses. In his head, Dorothy was the brute who knew all the right places to break a man and how to stitch Able up when he got hurt. He'd forgotten, somehow, that Dorothy and the others had all had a life before their undeath.
"Same way you did," answered Dorothy, taking a lungful of circus air. "I died. And then died again."
***
Stalking through the crowd, keeping his distance, Marv kept watch. He'd tried to retreat to the furthest edge of the circus, tempted even to see what lay beyond it, but somehow every turn he took led him back to Able and Marissa. Perhaps the only parts of the circus that existed were the parts with Marissa in them, supposed Marv. Either that, or the circus itself was taking a perverse pleasure in constantly putting him in Able and Marissa’s path.
The place seemed to be getting smaller and the crowd was thinning out, the faceless visitors being replaced one by one by ghosts from the circus' past. I didn't seem to matter if you were alive or dead anymore, everyone here was a ghost.
"Hello."
Marv looked down. A little girl looked back up at at him. She was small, no more than nine or ten, with curtains of jet black hair over alabaster skin. Her eyes were white, like Able's had been, and had dark rings underneath them. She wore a black dress with a white panel stitched into the front.
"Hello, Magpye." said Marv.
He felt the little girl's hand slip into his. Her skin was ice cold and hard, as if it might crack and fracture under too much pressure.
"Can you help me?" asked the girl.
"That depends," replied Marv. "On what you want me to do."
"He's dying," said the girl, pointing a cadaverous finger through the crowd at Able.
"Yes, I think he is."
"He can't."
"Maybe that isn't up to us," said Marv. He'd dealt with his share of spirits and strange creatures when he still had his magic and, whilst he didn't have his powers any more, the rules never changed. Magicians worked with shapes and patterns, and the most important of those shapes were letters and the most important patterns were words. The Magpye, as strange and terrifying a power as it was, could still be bound with the right words. Marv just had to find them, and decide if he wanted to use them.
The little girl looked up at Marv. He wondered how many lifetimes those milk white eyes had seen. No creature like the Magpye came new to the world. The modern world didn't create new magic. Creatures like Magpye were uniformly ancient, crafty and skilled in survival no matter how they presented themselves.
"Of course it's up to us," said Magpye. "Without us, none of them would be here."
"You mean without you," said Marv. It was a deliberate ploy. One of other things that was uniformly true about ancient and magical beings was that they hated to be corrected.
"I mean us," said Magpye defiantly. "Unless you want to tell me someone else owns it."
"Owns what?" asked Marv suspiciously. He'd miss-stepped, and knew it. Stupid, old, out of practice and with no real magic to fall back on. He was out of his depth here.
"The magic box."
"The magic box. My magic box?"
"Yes," said Magpye matter-of-factly. "That's where I was born."
***
Dorothy led Able and Marissa through the circus. Bit by bit it was changing, becoming less of the idyll that Marissa had created in her head and more true to the days of the circus that Able had known growing up. He felt his own memories returning with each piece that was redrawn, remade, before his very eyes. Places he had known as a child, for every child has secret places no matter where they are or where they live, and places he had once dreamt of calling his own. A circus prince, that was what they had called him. One day, he would be king. What a bitter joke that sounded now.
"We're all here," said Dorothy proudly. "Me, Magda, Malcolm, Wally, Zip. Quite a few others too."
Able looked this way and that, sifting the familiar from the unfamiliar. "How many," he asked quietly. "How many ghosts?"
"Does it matter?" asked Marissa.
"You know how they come to me," said Able. "In blood, in dead flesh. Every person here is someone that I've used, used to sustain myself in whatever half-life I've been living. If this isn't my head, if this isn't just some new place in my brain, then it must be the other place."
"Other place?" asked Dorothy.
"The real afterlife, Dorothy. The one I've kept you from."
"You mustn't think that," said Dorothy. "There's no regret here, Able. No recriminations. You gave us all a second chance at life, a chance to put things right and settle our scores."
"Scores you would never have had if not for me. You heard what Cane King said. He sent those men that night to kill me. The rest of you? You were just collateral damage. Caught in the crossfire. Cane King killed you to send a message. That's it. You're ink on a page to him, nothing more, and that's because of me."
Able broke away from Marissa and Dorothy, pushing his way through the crowd. The circus was growing dark around him. With a sickening twist in his stomach, he realised that he could smell burning.
***
"I don't understand," said Marv. It was impossible. The magic box was nothing. Just an old stage prop. A box with the distinct emphasis on "box". "You did all this, didn't you? Able, Marissa, all of it. And besides, things like you aren't born, not anymore. It's not possible."
"I am but one of many," said Magpye. "There are many Magpyes, a vast dark parliament, and we all have our own stories. Mine starts in your magic box, where a father died and a son died and the blood of one infused in the other, taking with it his birthright."
"You mean Able and his father, Adam King."
"Yes. The Kings and their witch have had me trapped for a very long time. But now I am free, reborn in Able as he is reborn by me."
"And Marissa?" asked Marv, unable to keep the wanting, the desperation, out of his voice.
"What of her?"
"What you did for Able, could you do the same for her?"
Magpye looked at Marissa through the crowd.
"No. What Marissa is, she remains. Whilst there are many Magpyes, there is not one for her."
Marv looked at the creature, the shade hiding the form of a child. Like most of the ancient things, it had mastered spite. Marv hoped that like most ancient things, it was also a liar.
"There has to be a way," he said.
"If you wanted your daughter alive, you shouldn't have left her behind, Marv."
Marv knew that the creature was right. Here, in this place made from memories, it was impossible for him to lie to himself any more. He had fallen for Grace Faraway's trick and it had cost his daughter her life. It had cost his friends their lives. It had killed Able.
Marv knew that had he been there he would be dead too, but at least then he an
d Marissa would truly have been together. Even amongst magicians there was debate about what came after this life but now… now here Marv was talking to a creature that seemed to hold the power, if not over life and death, then at least over death and what came after. There was an after. An after that, somewhere, held his Marissa. Right now though he was alive, and she was something not quite dead. A shade, a phantom of memory, made up of his magic and no small part, he suspected, of Magpye. She was his guilt, made manifest.
"So why bring back Able?" asked Marv, "If you were already free?"
"There are many Magpyes and many stories," replied the creature. "And yet they are all, at their heart, the same. There is death, there is rebirth, and there is retribution. There is a reckoning in which the scales are balanced and all things are put to rights between the unquiet dead and the unjust living."
Marv realised that they had been walking and had drifted away from Able and Marissa. They were suddenly at the fringe of the circus, amongst the caravans. They should have been at Marv's caravan, but it was already a burnt out shell.
"Watch…" said Magpye.
TAKE THEM TO THE PIT
Jack Taylor walked slowly across the floor of the paper mill. There were streaks of blood, and discarded weapons. Whatever happened here had bordered on the medieval. He stepped over the Magpye's coat and mask, turning his lip in disgust at the things. To him they seemed childlike, toys for play acting. Jack Taylor had never been able even to pretend to be something that he wasn't. He didn't lack imagination; the myriad ways in which he had wounded, maimed, tortured, and killed were a testament to that; he just couldn't imagine being anything other himself. Clarity, as a gift, had its limitations too and one of them was understanding in the very core of your being that who you are never ever changes.
At least, not for Jack Taylor.
He found King sitting next to something had once been a body. A fire axe was on the floor next to them both and Cane had clearly been putting it to use. Taylor had cut Lee Grice up a piece at a time; what Cane had done was infinitely more brutal, more visceral. It was fury and hatred, the kind that takes years to brew and therefore exists almost exclusively in families, made manifest in the meeting of axe and flesh. The torso of the thing was caved in, the arms and legs had been hacked through to the bloodied bones. Only the face remained; whoever it was, Cane had wanted him to witness the utter destruction of his body. He wasn't just dead, Cane King had destroyed him.