Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  I took one long, hopeful look down the road for Schenk. “Last chance, officer.” I checked my phone’s GPS for guidance, waited a beat longer, and then started away from the car, heading for the entrance.

  Someone had closed the New Red Hook Cemetery gate and secured it with a padlock. This was a rather amusing symbolic gesture since the gate only extended twenty feet on either side of the road before going to overgrown, brown hedges. Entrance to the graveyard was a pain in the butt but hardly impossible. I set the evidence box on top of the hedge, tossed my backpack over it, and then began muscling through, kicking down hard with my boots to snap branches. The wind shoved me back once, slamming into me with a bracing force. I gritted my teeth and snarled at it, which didn’t do much to help but felt really good. If the hedge had been green I’d have taken energy from the leaves, but the leaves were long gone. Any crisp leaves that stubbornly held their post were snatched away to go skittering across crusted snow.

  Driven forward by the stubborn determination to beat Mama-Captain to Father Scarrow, I plunged out the other side of the fence, reclaimed my backpack, slung it on my shoulder, and grabbed the evidence box. To generate some much-needed heat, I started to run, awkwardly at first, but finding my stride through the calf-high snow on what I assumed was the road, since the snow here was a foot lower than the surrounding humps. I hustled, wishing for the schlip schlip schlip of the snow suit, longing for Harry’s added strength, or some witchy sources of warmth, thinking, Man, magic fucking blows in the Great White North. I hadn’t noticed the giant gap in my abilities any other winter, but to be fair, every other winter I generally wasn’t outside chasing shadows. I was usually just chasing brownies with espresso.

  I reached the fence on the far side, marking the few tall headstones I recognized from my last visit; an obelisk for a town founder, a weeping angel for a fallen nun, a tall cross for a war hero. Here I paused and checked my phone. No messages, no texts. I checked the GPS and texted my current coordinates to Schenk. When there was no reply, I assumed he was a good driver and was being cautious. I put my phone in my front pocket for easy access and went to the gap in the fence.

  The last time I’d been here there had been hard-packed trails leading down a slippery, treacherously steep and uneven path full of ankle-snapping rocks and mud holes. Now, that was all covered with snow. It looked to be all one height, but I knew that to be false. Hidden under this drift was a plunging path. No sign that Father Scarrow had been here before me. I looked back the way I’d come, the places I knew I’d stepped. Next to the obelisk, my footprints were still visible, but beyond that, to the tall cross, to the angel forever sobbing into cupped hands, there was almost no sign that I’d been here, beyond some faint and fading ruts in the thick white cover. I took a deep breath and plunged into the drift, stomping firmly with my boots to find solid ground. The ground dropped suddenly, but I expected it and kept my footing. For a few steps the snow reached my hips, but then I was through the drift and onto steadier ground. It wasn’t long before I wished I had stayed in the car.

  The pond came into view. The blue forensic tent had been left up, but the storm had shoved it half aside. I imagined Mother Nature laughing at the foolish attempts of man to hold back her forces and tossing the structure out of her way. It was now a crumpled blue thing mostly buried in the snow on the shore, one corner of tarp flapping madly against several jutting rocks. The wind was at my back now, pushing me onward, and I leaned back against it, sure that what I would find ahead was not something I wanted to be rushing toward.

  I was right. My feet came to a full stop. I put the box down and let the backpack fall off my shoulder. It was a good thing that Mr. Merritt wasn't within earshot.

  They stood there, some more solid than others, vapors and shades hovering a foot and a half above the frosty water, marking their final resting place like sentinels. Hundreds of silent apparitions, unmoved by the raging wind; their white, misty faces were barely more than vague impressions staring at nothing. Even the best sketch artist would have produced little in the way of identifying features with most of them, but here and there I could see a narrow chin or a broad forehead. The one closest to me was slim and angular.

  My breath left me and my mouth dropped open. A crowd of ghosts populated the space above the pond. There was still no sign of Scarrow, dead or alive. The water level in the pond seemed low. For as far as I could see, under the floating spectral shapes, the water appeared no more than calf deep. I could now see where I couldn’t the last time I had been here, the light brown soil beneath the water, lumpy and uneven, speckled with white-grey chunks of broken cement, old tombstone bits, and slime-coated limbs of trees. Lightning flashed overhead followed by an immediate crack of thunder. I cut my eyes to the ghosts. No reaction. They didn’t move, flinch, grow, shrink, nothing. They just hovered there, staring. Waiting.

  I dug out my phone, pulled off a glove and shoved it in my snow-crusted pocket, hissed at the painful cold on my bare hand, and started pushing the button to take pictures. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. When I got to a hundred, I sent the last one to Batten then dialed his number.

  He answered with, “Is that what I think it is?”

  “What the fuck do you think it is?” I asked over the wind, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them, the sight was still the same.

  “Um, ghosts?”

  “Yeah,” I said, unable to form a wittier reply.

  “How many?”

  “Based on a prior conversation with a triple-x exorcist ex-priest?” I tried to remember the exact number, and ended up with, “Six hundred sixty-something.”

  Batten sounded unhappy. “You’re doing something stupid right now, aren’t you?”

  “I’m talking to you, so that's a given. But I'm also saving someone’s life.” Hopefully.

  “By being stupid.”

  “No,” I said sourly, squinting through the snow and wind.

  Batten warned, “I don’t own a black suit.”

  Liar. “You’re not going to need one.”

  “Not writing your eulogy.”

  “You won’t have to,” I promised. “But just in case I’m about to die,” I grinned into the storm, “talk dirty to me.”

  “Jesus fuck.”

  “No, nicer. Be romantic and shit. We can get to the kinky role-play later.”

  “Marnie…” He sighed long into the phone. “Get the fuck out of there, please.”

  I bit my bottom lip. “Oh, how I would love to. If there was anyone else who could do this,” I trailed off and scowled against the blowing grit. The snow was like sand; tiny and hard, it hissed against the accumulation on the ground. The few buckthorn trees clustered around the shore thrashed in the wind. “There’s a man out in this shit who thinks he doesn’t need help.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t.”

  “And maybe he does,” I said. “I didn’t call you to talk me out of this. I called you to get me all hot and bothered before I bite the big one. Don’t let me die all cold and lonely. Where’s your heart? Have mercy, dude.”

  I thought I could actually hear his eyes roll. “Let me get some privacy, Weirdzilla.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “The dead guys are at rest. Sex me up, pal.”

  “Meh,” he said warily. “Your brother’s a telepath, and he’s been fighting rest lately. I don’t trust him.”

  “Make with the words,” I said.

  “Let me make sure Chapel’s not still here, Snickerdoodle. Hold your horses.”

  I stamped my feet, and started toward the shoreline, watching the ghosts to make sure none of them so much as looked at me. They stared in unison at the hill behind me, like they were waiting for something. “Hurry up, man, I’m ten feet from a battalion of entities from beyond the veil, for fuck’s sake.”

  “They can’t hurt you, right?”

  “Uh…” I scrunched my face under my ski mask and the pain was definitely not fucking off yet. I paused in my stride until the discomfort subsided, the
n continued forward. “Well, I wouldn’t say that anymore. Let’s just say I may have papers to write when I get home.”

  The ghosts stared through me like I didn’t exist, or they hadn’t noticed me. Yet, my mind teased. Their filmy forms did not stand in an even, military formation, but scattered here and there, and though they faced the same direction, they didn’t seem to be aware of their surroundings or one another.

  Until the first one turned to look directly at me.

  My throat closed around a strangled little squeal. The spirit dipped its chin to take a closer look at me without a change in expression; it didn’t seem to care that I was there, but I was absolutely sure that it was aware of me.

  I opened my mouth to say something to Batten but what came out was, “Mr. Ghost, Sir? Scientific theory states that you are lost and unaware of the physical realm.” Heart hammering in my chest, I sidestepped twice to the left along the jumble of snow-covered rocks. The apparition turned, a smooth motion that did not require limbs, to follow me with its gaze. “Nope, see, you just broke the rules, there. You’re not supposed to see me.”

  Batten said something in the phone but it crackled and cut out. I looked down at the phone and watched the signal drop from four bars to two, one, and then I lost the call.

  “Sir,” I whispered tersely at the ghost, “you may have just cost me my last corporeal nookie. Now, I don’t know if phone sex is a thing after death, but I will never forgive you if that bitch kills me today. Shame on you for denying a girl the last groin-tickle of her life.”

  I waggled my phone at him, and then checked the bars. My signal bar was dancing up and down erratically. I thumbed the GPS; I had enough signal for that, apparently, and I texted the numbers as quickly as I could to Schenk in case I was about to lose my phone entirely.

  “If I wasn’t searching for a dumbass exorcist, I’d get video of you breaking the rules, there, Casper.” I took a deep breath to calm myself. “I owe Father Scarrow and his doodads an apology.”

  If Scarrow wasn’t lying dead in the spot where we’d found Britney and Barnaby’s MUCE-covered corpses, then where the hell was he? I couldn’t stay out here and wait all day. Call Mama-Captain to her grave, here? Call to John Briggs-Adsit? Release the spirits back to beyond the veil? The ring in my pocket began to pulse with warmth and I thought, Dream on, demon, I’m not giving these innocent souls to you. But thanks for warming my crotch.

  If I called Mama-Captain with the lacrimosa, would she come? Would she shove it down my throat and kill me? I went back to the evidence box, moving slowly in case it was possible to startle a herd of ghosts into a stampede. What’s a herd of ghosts called? the scientist in me asked. You knew this, once. You don’t know it now? And in my mother’s voice, I thought, What good are you, Marnie-Jean?

  The spirit closest to the evidence box turned again to watch me, and I slowed to a tentative creep. A host of angels, my brain began, stubbornly working on this question instead of dealing with whatever the hell was brewing before me. A racket of banshee, a scamper of boogeymen… The ghost’s mouth began to open. It sank slowly, revealing black empty space purling with white mist that spilled out. The ghost next to him flinched and turned to face him. A congress, I thought, not in the least bit relieved that it had finally come to me. A congress of ghosts. One by one, several dozen other ghosts in the congress faced the gaping one, as if sensing something wrong.

  A long, low noise started under the sound of the storm; a dragging moan lifted from the shore and then cut off as though whisked away on the wind. A female ghost from two rows to the left over started drifting closer, whispering something that I couldn’t quite catch.

  “No-no,” I said. “Don’t do that. Don’t go into stampede mode or anything. Settle down there, mist-face.”

  The ghosts she passed noted her movement, and drifted with her, slipping into one another, passing through, stirring like foggy broth. I went to my backpack quickly and grabbed the scrying board.

  All motion stopped in my peripheral vision and I glanced up. They had all gone still to stare directly at me, each and every one of them.

  “Fuckanut,” I whispered. They won’t hurt me, I told myself, but my fat lip begged to differ. Where the fuck are you, Father Scarrow?

  I was about to take my gloves off to lay fingers on the planchette when my phone vibrated. I dug it out and looked at the text.

  From Schenk: GPS check on Scarrow’s phone shows it in the vicinity of the tunnel. Going there. Guard opening gates.

  “Well, double-fuckanut.” I looked across the shallow water to the other side of the pond, where the land took a small rise before it would dip again to the Blue Ghost Tunnel. At least Schenk would be able to drive most of the way there until the unplowed snow bogged him down. I had to decide whether to hoof it back to the car, which was probably buried, or find my way around or across the pond. I didn’t know which would be the better choice, but rolled off my glove and texted back: Ok, on my way.

  Need the good news, Cinderblock, he texted. Tell me something reassuring.

  I replied: Isn’t that what hookers are for? but after a moment's consideration, and because I couldn’t bear the thought of knowing that Longshanks was heading to a ghost-infested tunnel with his nerves on fire, I added, I’ve got everything we need. Just find Scarrow. It’s going to be okay. Only enter tunnel without me if you must. Rid yourself of doubt and fear. Then, thinking of the Twizzlers, added, Leave your gun in the car.

  He didn’t reply. I set my jaw tightly, mentally willing him to agree, feeling my brow furrow with concern. I repeated, no gun, adding half a dozen exclamation points after it.

  When he replied: got it, I set my phone to take video, leaned it against the evidence box, and pressed the button to start recording. Then I took off my other glove.

  “All right-y then,” I announced, laying my bare fingers on the planchette. “It’s time to put this congress to work.”

  CHAPTER 29

  THE INSTANT MY flesh touched the cool wood of the planchette I had the undivided attention of every spook, specter, and spirit in the vicinity. Several closest to me began to whisper, their secrets intimate, appealing to me to hear their pleas; it was almost impossible to ignore the voices of the dead, but I kept my head down, glancing up only to make sure none of them were coming at me too quickly or showing signs of aggression. For the most part their hollow entreaties sounded nostalgic, aching for the warmth of life or simple acknowledgment.

  As the Blue Sense began to rise, I could sense their collective confusion. They did not, as a congress, understand why they had been called forth, nor did they understand who I was, or by what mechanism they were stuck, but they did know, in no uncertain terms, where they were: home, and lingering by their own remains. Some of them were only now coming to grips with the fact that they were dead. Even having been gone for so long, some had never truly processed crossing over. They had been in one good place and then another with no sense of loss or change. These were the people who had died peacefully, surrendered to Death and to Heaven without fight or trauma. Others knew they were dead, but had earned their accession and had been at peace; they were not happy to be back and longed for release.

  “Just one favor before you go,” I promised. “Kind of a life-and-death favor, okay?” I had been crouching beside the scrying board. Now I sat right down in the snow and straightened my back, and addressed them in a loud, clear voice. “Humble spirits, I beseech thee. Draw from the water the strength you require, and having done so, return beyond the veil to the peace you crave.”

  Some of them got the gist of it right away. I watched as ice formed on the surface of the pond, first as the sheen of frost which cracked and dissipated; I could practically see the change in temperature as the spirits drew heat from their surroundings. Further out, another crystalline sheet, forming and breaking, drifted and began to solidify under the multitude of spectral shades. Overhead thunder was muffled by the heavy fall of snow. What had Father Scarrow sa
id about thunder-snow? (“Ionized air during a lightning storm offers up more energy for the incorporeal human entity to draw upon.”) The scrying board dusted with mixed ice pellets and flakes as they slanted down around me.

  Soon, one crystalline sheet became two, and four, like multiplying amoebas, and joined each to each, crackling against one another, a bridge of ice across the pond. The wind snatched away the sounds of their effort, but each spirit had something to say on the matter, a cry of wonder, a moan of exertion, a final whispered secret, told desperately through the fog of spectral mist. I nodded at them, and reassured them, “I hear you. Leave your words with me. I will speak for you.” Probably, I should have taken notes. Shorthand. Something. I was a lousy secretary for the dead.

  When the combined whisper of six hundred dead overpowered the howl of the wind, I began to think that I’d made a mistake in promising I’d deliver their messages. There were so many, and I couldn’t understand a word of it, now. Hopefully, my phone was capturing enough to filter through later. The whispering slowly shifted into a litany, over and over, repeated by rote, softly at first, but growing louder and more insistent. They wanted something. I was wrong: it was one message. When I figured out what they were saying, the words sucker punched me low in the belly.