Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  As we walked, Scarrow would give a tug on their leash and the dogs would shut up for a second, only to start warning us again; they did not like the fact that Harry was following us. He fell behind, keeping a safe distance, a well-dressed shadow at our backs. The ice-draped forest on either side of us pressed in.

  “Are we there yet?” I asked, shoving my feet through the snow another three steps. “Dear Diary: We were not there yet. We’re never going to be there. Love, Marnie.” My toes were already numb, and the wind whipping snow against my eyes through the ski mask was pretty irritating, but thanks to Harry’s foresight, my body was warm in the snow suit. Now that the glossy fabric was damp, it went thwish thwish thwish, which was fractionally less annoying than schlip schlip schlip. Once we got to a more heavily-wooded area that blocked the wind, it let up enough for me to open my eyes past squinting.

  As Scarrow had warned, we had come to the spot where the road was unplowed; the snow was at least a foot and a half deep, and the path looked like it went on forever. The encouraging bit was the ATV track in the snow up ahead; at least we weren’t the only ones who ever came out there. Positive thinking: if the ghosts murdered us, someone would find the bodies eventually. Agent de Cabrera would be so proud of me. I looked back from where we came and longed to see Mr. Merritt and the warm comfort of the hearse driving up the lane to rescue us.

  There was an unhappy squawk in the trees as we trudged past.

  Ren said, rather unnecessarily, “Ravens.”

  “I live with a dead guy; me and carrion birds don't get along.”

  “Three of them.” His breath fogged in front of us.

  “So?”

  “Three ravens together serve as a phantom vessel for the spirits of the departed if they cross the veil on purpose. A ghost has traveled from the other side to reach out to someone. Perhaps you, perhaps me, perhaps both of us together. Or perhaps your companion.”

  “What a load of hogwash,” I said, glancing behind me to double check Harry’s reaction to the birds. Harry shook his head. No ghosts yet. “Where do you get this psychopomp crap?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Says which scientific journal?” I asked.

  “Says my own powers of observation.”

  “So the ravens told you they were actually a spirit in disguise,” I clarified.

  “Not in so many words,” Scarrow said with a tolerant smile, as though I were the confused one.

  “I got a word for you: 'Nevermore!'”

  Harry coughed theatrically to cover a surprised laugh, and an affectionate tendril wrapped around me through our Bond.

  “You’re a straight-up fruitcake, aren’t ya?” I said conversationally. “Like, escaped last year from a mental institution and are hiding out from the guys with the butterfly nets, that kind of fruitcake.”

  “Now who’s dropping hogwash?”

  “Look, holy dude, you can’t just say stuff and make it be true. For instance: despite appearances, that wild grape vine is actually a new species of hippopotamus.”

  “You’re being stubbornly ridiculous.”

  “No, I’m showing you what you sound like. If those three ravens — I only see two, by the way — are a spirit divided into three bird bodies, you prove to me that it’s true.” I had gotten two cups of popcorn and a large soft drink thrown at me the first time I'd seen The Crow in the theater and the bad guy had done his quick impression of the bird in the church. There's a bird that accompanies each revenant – a Debt Vulture – but it had nothing to do with supporting their UnDeath, except to hang around, waiting for it to end. I kind of felt bad for Harry's, whom we'd named Ajax, because that had to get boring as fuck after the first hundred or so years. It's not like they could do crosswords or play Peggle to pass the time.

  “I could,” Scarrow said, “if we had more time, because I’ve got all my equipment. But we can’t be out here all night. We should visit the tunnel and get back before we freeze, yes?”

  “What kind of goodies do you have in this backpack?”

  “We want to record some EVPs, use full spectrum photography,” he explained. “We’re going to monitor EMF fluctuations. I’ve seen them go from eight to point-zero-three in the tunnel. I want you to see what Britney Wyatt saw.”

  My mind flashed back on the canal, on her head-first plunge into the cold, dark waters, her last thoughts of Simon, her inability to struggle, her desperation to come up for air, and her sinking, sinking, sinking…

  “MJ?” Harry said softly behind us, and I snapped out of it. A quiver of his discomfort slipped through our Bond, but my Cold Company tucked it away.

  Father Scarrow said, “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

  “What did Britney Wyatt see?” I side-stepped.

  “She mentioned several resident spirits in the tunnel. I’ve visited them myself.”

  Simon said Scarrow had sent Britney away. “Did you go with her?”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “She was using an Ouija board. I came on my own, with the dogs. It’s an excellent training ground.” He had something in his pocket all ready to go, and showed it to me.

  “What is that, a digital recorder? Are you kidding me?” I stared up at the stars, seeking patience in the heavens. The Blue Sense reported that Renfield Scarrow was sincere, and that he truly believed what he was dishing.

  “I’d simply approach the birds, ask questions of their spirit, and record their answer.”

  I humored him for a moment. “Questions like, who were you in life? Why have you returned? Do you have a message from the Beyond?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you propose blocking radio frequency contamination from the marine radios? Look where you are. We’re right on the canal near the twin flight locks. Ships are still going through until, what, the end of the month? Into December?”

  “I haven’t asked, but…” He drifted off. “I get quite a lot of activity at the rectory as well.”

  “You live on the Haulage,” I said. “That’s also on the canal, with the ships, and the locks, and the marine radios. Sorry, spanky, but I believe that’s too fishy to count as proof. Try again.”

  “Very well,” he said tightly. “Take off your ski mask and show me that fat lip.”

  “I’m not arguing that there are ghosts,” I repeated for the hundredth time. “Hell, I’m no longer claiming they can’t affect the physical realm, since I got viciously Twizzlered in Barnaby Nowland’s apartment. I can’t prove that was a ghost’s doing, and not…” I threw my gloved hands wide to demonstrate my helplessness. “I dunno, candy possessed by mischievous sugar sprites?”

  “Well, now you’re being absurd,” Scarrow said.

  “Only just now?” Harry said behind us, pushing his voice forward past the wind with his preternatural vocal talents. Thanks to his audiomancy, it sounded like he’d murmured it in my ear, close enough for me to hear the teasing tone.

  “Okay.” I turned for a moment and stared into the woods near the place we’d heard the bird complaints. “Hey ravens, if you’re a spirit trying to make contact with us I invite you to do so.”

  Scarrow gave me a long look. “You should be careful what you say. You don’t know who that is or what they want.”

  I smirked. “I’m pretty sure that is nobody but a couple of birds, but if you want to find out, we’re going to need to communicate, right? And I’m not talking about random snippets of speech from the dudes on the ships.”

  “I wonder what would happen, Marnie, if you had some faith.”

  “You don’t know me,” I said. “I’m all about believing in stuff. I fall for all kinds of nonsense, like predictions by the weather man and promises men make when they’re horny. I have plenty of faith. Probably, I have too much faith. I have faith in the problem-solving magic of an Oreo cookie. I have faith in the restorative powers of frequent masturbation. I believe the Dark Lady and Her Consort tolerate me with the kind of loving resignation one reserves for housebreaking a
puppy, most days, but I also believe that if I keep trying, everything will work out fine in the end. And I have faith, Father Scarrow, in that glorious, mysterious creature and his incredible prowess,” I said, cocking a thumb over my shoulder at Harry, who had stopped to turn his head to the west, staring into the woods. In profile, Harry looked like he was posing for a portrait: Dandy in Ice and Lace, perhaps, or Fopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I knew he sensed my blend of devotion and amusement, and I felt a preoccupied push of pleasure through the Bond. I had to bite my tongue so as not to implore: Behold the Face of Immortality! Isn’t he nifty-keen? It didn’t matter how many times I saw him, or witnessed his tricks and talents. Every single time, it got me. Instead of making a fool of myself, I told the priest, “I have no doubt that my Cold Company can provide the answers I lack, and will valiantly and effortlessly protect us from any unseen terror that’s lurking out here.”

  “How charitable and flattering is my advocate,” Harry said. “Alas, I believe your observations are flawed, muffin.”

  “Way to piss on my speech, Harry.” I sighed. “I was trying to be faith-y.”

  When we started walking again, Scarrow asked, “May one ask what’s in your backpack?”

  “I don’t have your fancy doodads and dangle-rods,” I side-stepped. I’d had Mr. Merritt get me an Ouija board from Toys 'R’ Us that afternoon, just for fun. I doubted it would work. Genuine scrying required a give-and-take element, blood or bone, an offering or sacrifice of some sort. Besides, the exorcist seemed not to like the idea of the Ouija very much, so it was mostly to needle him. I changed the subject. “Schenk told me you got booted by the church.”

  “For my work with exorcisms, yes.”

  “They didn’t like you taunting demons.”

  “They didn’t like me disproving the relationship between demons and poltergeists.”

  I waited for him to say more. Eventually his ego prodded him to reward me. “Current belief held by the Church is that a poltergeist is an angry ghost, held back from ascending to perfect peace by a demon,” he said. “This demon is usually controlled, in turn, by a witch practicing demonology via the lesser key of Solomon.”

  “That jibes with current scientific theory in the preternatural biology community as well.”

  “My own personal observations have disproved this.”

  My personal observations, on the other hand, were exactly what I'd said they were. Nearly being sacrificed to one of those demons gave me strong opinions and keen insight into the subject. It also made me punch little old ladies right in the clambasket for doing it. The ring of Asmodeus in my front pocket seemed to grow warmer, although I was sure it was my imagination. “How so?”

  “Places haunted by a poltergeist have resisted expulsion.”

  “Maybe you suck at expulsion,” I suggested, remembering the ghoul of Danika Sherlock roasting in a pit of flames, a demon named Berith being cast from her corpse, feeling the infernal thing blow past me like the breath of Hell.

  “No. I don’t.” He said it seriously, without a trace of egotism, and I believed him. “People tormented by a poltergeist often show no signs of possession, which would be typical in the demon-poltergeist-victim triad, if the church were always correct.”

  “You seem to be, shall we say, not a big believer in the Church's inerrancy?”

  “I’ve been searching a long time for what I call a self-determining poltergeist. They’re very rare, you realize. Most poltergeist situations that you preternatural biologists deal with are actually spirits trapped by lesser demons, weak demons, and are easily expelled.”

  “But?”

  “This spirit is old, powerful, and appears often. It’s strong, the strongest I’ve ever encountered outside of the MacKenzie poltergeist in the Covenanter’s Prison section of Greyfriars Kirkyard.”

  We crested to the top of a little hill, the ground ahead sank and curved into the woods behind several piles of concrete chunks and boulders covered with snow caps. The trees here were mostly deciduous, chestnuts and maples naked of their leaves, some broken and tilted by this winter’s early blizzards.

  “There’s a fair amount of psychic effluvia in this area.” Harry observed, looking down into the gulch. “And more than one disturbed spirit.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered. “I’ve got goose bumps in places I can’t mention in front of a priest.”

  Ren’s brow quirked as his lips slid into the kind of smile I didn’t think anyone who'd taken a vow of celibacy, even if it had been revoked or recanted, should be allowed to indulge. Harry could smile like that. I wished Batten could smile like that. I'm pretty sure Asmodeus could turn that up to eleven when he put on his angelic aspect and needed to seal the deal on a soul-stealing seduction. But some defrocked dude who'd forsaken the pleasures of the flesh should absolutely, positively, no-fuckin’-way have worn a look that lewd. I almost broke into the giggles again, but Harry picked up on the run of my thoughts and soothed me without a word.

  Scarrow said, “You grew up in Virgil, you said? Have you ever been here?”

  “No, but many of my sisters have. And my little brother,” I said, glad that Wesley was not here. Kinship of the Departed could very easily overwhelm the new dead, and I didn’t need my brother convinced that he should try to join the spirit world. That wasn’t possible for revenants. Since bending his neck to Master Strickland in exchange for immortality, Wesley’s soul was earmarked with a different forwarding address, substantially farther south, metaphysically speaking.

  We were hovering, and I felt their reluctance. Now that we were here to witness the dead, none of us wanted to, not even Father Skinnyjeans and his patient dogs. The train tunnel was barely in view; all we had to do was go down this frosty gravel path, around a little bend, and into that dark hollow. No biggie. I swallowed hard, and started down.

  “All aboard, motherfuckers,” I said as I lead the way, “we’re taking the express train to creepyville.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “DON’T GET ME wrong,” I said, staring up at the bricked-in tunnel. To the left of a gated opening was a small, square hole in the wall, circled by a bunch of boner-related graffiti. “I don’t doubt that this place is lousy with ghosts, but that doesn’t mean—”

  Something inside the tunnel moaned, and all the little hairs on the back of my neck tripped up in unison. The dogs whimpered and settled into a nose-down position. Wind. Just wind.

  “Well, there's no point in all of us being eaten by a poltergeist, so I'll just-” I backed rapidly away from the hole in the wall and Harry hooked me by the elbow. My snow suit legs went schlllllllllip. “So I’ll just go first, shall I?”

  “You are ever so brave, my pet,” Harry’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  “I’m warning you guys,” I said, “if something jumps out of the dark while I’m halfway through this hole, I will pee. I will pee forever. And it'll be inside this stupid marshmallow suit, so I will die like some pee maggot float nobody ever wants in the Macy's parade.”

  My knees crunched in the snow as I got down in front of the square opening in the wall. The stone was damp and slick, a revolting shade of grey-green. My suede gloves would definitely need to be dry-cleaned after this little excursion. I stuck my head in to look inside, and instantly drew out with a loud, “Nope!”

  “Dear?”

  “It’s bad in there,” I said, letting the tone of my voice and a shuddery little unghh describe what mere words could not. I did not wait for their encouragements or reprimands; I tried again, tucking my head in, holding until the jitters passed, tucking my shoulders in, waiting for some unseen horror to lunge out of the dark and eat me head first. When nothing did, I inched further, and was almost through when one of the dogs barked sharply; I jerked, losing my grip on the stone and tumbling the rest of the way in. I shot to my feet, assuming a karate stance. I’m sure any ghosts in the tunnel were mightily intimidated, even though I don’t know karate, and punching a ghost seems like it wouldn’t
be a very effective deterrent.

  Harry chuckled, which must have opened some sort of stress-busting floodgate for Father Scarrow, who guffawed loudly.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck you both so hard.”

  “My own darling, are you quite all right?” Harry said through his merriment, gliding forward toward the wall hole. “If I might suggest a course of action?”

  “Not necessary,” I called, poking my head back out.

  “Do you mean to say this concatenation of events—“

  “Totally planned,” I fibbed. “Scaring off any wild animals and such.”

  “As one does,” Harry said agreeably.

  “Like Bear Grylls does,” I said. “You bet your ass.”

  “What do you see?” Scarrow asked.

  “A whole lot of fucking dark, since I'm inside a walled-off tunnel, at night, in a snowstorm, you cross-stroking wankbasket.” I dug out my phone and turned on the flashlight app, shining it into the depths of the tunnel. It was low, rounded, quiet-but-not, dark-and-darker, and it felt terribly unwelcoming. Some ass-clown had apparently been playing Pennywise, because there were broken balloon husks strewn on the ground. Rotted railroad ties were coated with a layer of glittering frost. The mud between the ties looked slippery, and there were footprints in it. Big ones. Big floppy clown shoes? “Because that’s exactly what I need, Brain. Invoke a Stephen King monster while I’m down here. I bet this suit don't float.”

  The light from my phone illuminated thick moisture in the air that was probably, with my luck, full of mold spores and hanta virus.

  “MJ?” Harry called. “What do you see?”

  “I see nothing,” I concluded. “I see squat in a bucket of nada. Is that what I'm supposed to be seeing?”

  “How precise is my darling,” Harry marveled.

  “Fine. I see rather informative graffiti telling me to go fuck myself. Might do that later. Also, Big Ben was here,” I said. “That seems to be important, as it is repeated several times in various colors of spray paint. Maybe these are his footprints.”

  “Anything useful, ducky?”