by A. J. Aalto
His voice was joined by another; this one, I recognized.
“You do not belong here,” Father Scarrow’s spirit whispered. Then, confused, “I remain.” And, stronger now, “You do not belong here.”
I stood, and flashed my iPhone light around until I found a dark spot that wouldn’t light up. I squinted at it. “Don’t jizz a brick, holy roller,” I said. “It’s not like I’m out here eatin’ corndogs with the devil. I was trying to save your skinny ass. Looks like I got here too late.”
His shadow had no shape; Scarrow was having trouble forming more than an amorphous blob, but his voice was clear and gaining power. “The graves. The watery graves…”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re not drawing me back into the cemetery for a game of Graveyard Grab-ass, are you?”
I turned the planchette to GOODBYE and said, “Captain John Briggs-Adsit, I release you. Go into the light, John, and rest in peace.” The shadow flickered, like someone was quickly turning a light on and off, but when the flickering was done, still he remained. “Why isn't it over? Go into the light, soldier!”
John said, “You do not belong here.”
“Neither do you,” I damn near bellowed. “You’re dead, Captain. Fuck off into the light!”
Father Scarrow’s spirit made a mournful sound. Even dead he was a judgy judgypants. Eat me, you skinny-jeaned stiff.
“It’s Mama,” I figured. “Right, John? Maybe your mother wasn’t always dangerous, but she changed, didn’t she? The sicker you got, the worse she got.” The crouching shadow had nothing to say, but his eyes flew wide with terror. “You didn’t want to witness this shit, but you’re stuck with her.”
The shadow shifted. Ghostly hands slid over ghostly ears. The shadow began to rock back and forth just out of the range of the light from my phone. When I swung it in his direction, the shadow vanished. I turned the phone away only slightly and there he was, crouching and rocking.
Father Scarrow’s spirit wavered and disappeared. There was a soft, cold touch of air against the only bit of my neck not covered by parka or ski mask, like a hand tickling the soft hairs there. John’s ghost gasped and began fingering his open mouth again. I froze in place.
“She’s right behind me, isn’t she?” I swallowed hard. “Well, fuck. That’s right, you heard me. I’m swearing. I don’t care how much it costs me. Because there’s a dead exorcist lying beside a very scared ghost, and a killer poltergeist sneaking up behind me, and I can hear her fucking whispers now, so fuckityfuckfuckbitch!”
I side stepped closer to the Bible, wondering how badly it would hurt to pick it up. Sooner or later I would probably have to, when it came down to exorcism. Once upon a time Declan Edgar had given me a crucifix to wear, and I hadn’t burst into flames. Maybe the Bible wouldn’t be so bad.
“Hey holy man, got an ass blaster?” Scarrow’s spirit was silent on the matter. “You didn’t actually come out here without your electronic shitwidgets, did you?”
Had Scarrow had anything in his hands? I shuffled closer to the water to peer at the corpse. The ski mask felt like it was getting tighter on my face, pressing into my lips, squashing my nose. I pulled it off and hauled air deep into my lungs.
That’s when I discovered that spirit hugs are bad for the soul.
Incorporeal forces gripped me around the rib cage and began to tighten. I went limp, playing noodle, and slipped to my bum in the mud, throwing one bare hand out to slap the Bible. As soon as my bare hand hit the Good Book, the force around my chest loosened and I gasped gratefully as frigid air poured into my lungs. I didn’t even care that the Bible was peppering my palm with little bumps and blistering the skin. I crawled closer to the scrying board and grabbed the planchette like it was a weapon, shaking it in the air.
“Listen, you diaphanous dicksmack, I once raised a ghoul with an eyeball and killed a zombie with a box of dirty kitty litter. I am all-powerful and stuff, so watch your amorphous ass.” The Bible flew free of the mud and hit me in the temple too quickly for me to react. I pointed the planchette at the empty air. “That,” I enunciated with exaggerated care, “was not nice. John? Renfield? Mama-Captain isn’t being nice. Make her stop.”
Their shadows coalesced in one misty, two-headed hump at the far side of the water, huddled together. A fine-veined film of ice was beginning to form on the water, and the temperature in the tunnel was dropping quickly enough to hurt my exposed skin.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, you two,” I warned, scrambling to my feet, “but my faith in you is taking a major ass-reaming, here. Can’t you do something better than that limp-dicked conjoined twins shtick? She's eating your fucking lunch.”
The evidence box skidded away from me like it had been kicked. My backpack rolled in the mud twice, spilling its contents: little plastic bulk herb bags tied with twist ties, half a pack of Twizzlers. My golf pencil rolled into the grime, and my mini Moleskine diary fluttered out into a downward-facing fan. I hadn’t actually written very much in it yet, but now its pages (its beautiful, blank, soft-white pages, I lamented) were soaking up brown water.
“Oh, you cock-juggling thundercunt,” I barely breathed. “Now you’ve asked for it. John? I got something to tell you. And you’re not gonna like it.”
The temperature dropped so quickly in front of me that the humidity in my exhale froze and dropped like glittering ice dust.
“Mama’s got a secret shame. It’s kept you bound to her here, in the dark, in the cold, tormented in this dreadful limbo, for a long, long time.”
With a short, vigorous eruption of power, something shoved me in the solar plexus, but not hard enough to knock me back. She was gonna have to do better than that. I set my teeth, widened my stance, and continued.
“She hurt you, John. She hit you with the spoon. Right on the top of your head. Do you remember?” I showed him by using my free hand to remove the ski mask and pat atop my blonde, sweaty, tangled mess of hair. “Right here. She hit you hard. She was frustrated. You weren’t acting right. Not your fault, you know; the neurosyphilis could have caused psychosis. Breaks in reality. You probably had no idea you were acting strange, and certainly had no way to explain it, or stop it. Your mother would not have understood it, either. She had no way of knowing that your skull was deteriorated from the bacteria, but it was. I don’t know how many times she hit you. Maybe she hit you often. Maybe she hit you every day, near the end. Or maybe it was just one time. She lost her temper and whacked you. Either way, she killed you. That’s why you’re still here with her. That’s what Mama’s killing to hide.”
The poltergeist formed as a spiraling swirl of frost before me in a whirling fury. Apparently nobody likes the bad guy's big reveal monologue; especially the bad guy. Everyone's a critic. Sheesh. I slammed my ski mask to the dirt, planted both hands on my hips, and gave the misty ghost swirl the your move glare. She responded by tossing the top of the box top off, tearing at the plastic bags within, and tossing the skull to its shattering end, shedding herbs and lipsticks and bone chips in a blizzard of mortuary chaos.
I fell to my knees, grabbed the salt and sage, and began a hasty circle around myself, raking forward bits of skull until I had it all. I hurriedly collected the bible, scrying board, and cross into the protective circle with me. I wasn’t fast enough. The poltergeist tore ass past me, heaved Scarrow’s dripping body out of the water, and sent him through the air with so much force that his head flew off before he landed on me. His wet hair whipped MUCE through the air in a fan. It hit the wall with a thud and rolled to face me, tongue lolling out. I covered my head with my arms, cramming my eyes shut. I flashed back on Neil Dunnachie’s exploding zombie and the resulting raining chunks, and my gag reflex tickled in the back of my throat.
I snuck a peek at the tunnel. The poltergeist was no longer visible, having expended so much energy, but her draw caused a visible purl of white mist along the ground, and I watched it move toward me, leaving a trail that was stringy and sticky and wet, lik
e liquid cobwebs.
“Marnie?” Schenk’s bellow at the door. I was too afraid to turn around, to take my eyes off the danger.
“Scarrow’s dead!” I shouted, making a ring around me with salt and smudging the air. “Mama-Captain is here, too.”
“I’m coming in.” Schenk huffed angrily. I don’t know how he managed to squeeze through the hole in the wall, but soon he was jogging toward me, filling the confined space with his reassuring presence. “What the fuck are you doing in here alone?”
“Petulantly nursing a case of recreational self-destruction?” When he got close enough, I grabbed his arm and hauled him into the salt circle, pointing at the corpse of the priest. “I was trying to save a life, so curb the nerd-fury, Longshanks.”
“No,” he said automatically; I couldn’t be sure he was actually listening until he said, “Witness my nerd-fury. I told you not to come alone.”
“I thought I could get to Scarrow in time.” I swallowed hard with a gulp. “Patrick?”
“Yes, Marnie?”
“I got whapped by a dead priest.”
“Did you?” He placed his feet carefully as he moved past the emptied box, skull fragments, headless body, and punctured plastic baggies. I had no doubt he picked out every detail, from the smashed skull of John Briggs-Adsit to the empty herb bags, to the bible, to the scrying board. “You got a little MUCE right…” He wiped the corner of his eye to indicate mine. “Lower. Right there.”
I moaned unhappily and backhanded my face to clear it of goop. “Ick. A great muchness of ick.”
Schenk ran a hand through his short hair unhappily. “Did you touch anything?”
“All I did was check him to see if he was okay, I swear.” I flapped a hand at the corpse. “He’s not okay.”
“Vital signs?”
“Bad. Really bad. He’s got a terrible case of I’m-so-dead-itis.” I craned up at Schenk to see if my black humor would faze him, but I should have known better. “He’s got no pulse.”
“He’s got no head.”
“He had it when I got here,” I said, hearing the defensive tone. “Mama threw his corpse at me. Don’t tell Agent Batten or the FBI Internal Affairs dudes. They love to pin this shit on me.”
“Crime scene guys will collect it. Backup’s on their way, but the roads are approaching damn near impassable.”
Backup. That was the worst idea. “No, send them away. Can you keep them back?” I explained about the body heat, and the poltergeist sapping it and using it to become more powerful, more firm. “We need to get rid of the poltergeist with the fewest casualties possible. John Briggs-Adsit is held here by her. Scarrow is here.” I thought about the six ravens and reluctantly admitted, “I’m willing to bet Britney and Barnaby's spirits are still somewhere nearby. I don’t think we can send them to the light without getting rid of the poltergeist first. She's got them tethered to her. Or maybe it's like a tractor beam.”
The flesh crawled along the back of my neck and my shoulders went up. Schenk cut his eyes at me and I knew he was feeling it, too; a tug at our internal heat, and the goose bumps that followed.
“Aaaaand then there’s Mama,” I said. My innards squeezed in on themselves involuntarily and a great shudder went through them. “She’s squinkalicious.”
“Listen,” he said, and we both stopped talking, held our breaths, strained to hear what sounded like someone walking through puddles toward us. Plip plip plip. We stared as John’s ghost re-formed, cowered and sobbed quietly beside the exorcist’s corpse.
“How do we get rid of the poltergeist?” Schenk asked.
I thought about this. “The ghost hunters pissed her off, digging up old family shame. But the exorcist,” I gazed at the headless body in the ectoplasm-coated cassock floating in the water. “Father Scarrow was the real threat; he scared her. He was a priest and a scientist. Mama-Captain couldn’t wait to get rid of him. Isn’t that right, Mama? You needed him gone. Not only did he know what you were, but he knew how to find you, and how to get rid of you for good.”
Something sailed through the cool air and hit me dead center in the forehead. Two more squishy missiles whipped through the air, and I tried to dodge them unsuccessfully. I looked down at the cold little blobs at my feet.
“That bitch threw dead frogs at me. Did you see that?”
I felt a swell of unease through the Blue Sense, but Schenk’s deadpan humor didn’t falter. “I feel like the mood in this tunnel is such that laughing at your misfortune would be inappropriate.”
“That’s correct.”
“You have frog goo on your forehead.”
“My fault for taking off the ski mask.”
The wind dropped; I wouldn’t have thought it possible for the air around us to get colder, but it did, and my scalp tightened at the same pace as my ass. Then the wind picked up in a sudden, soul-shearing shriek.
“We can’t wait. Failure isn’t an option here. This poltergeist isn’t going to stop. She’s going to kill Simon and Ellie next. And maybe you. And maybe me. That last part is the bit that worries me most.” I jabbed a finger at the pile of stuff, and took the lacrimosa. “Grab that map and bible, constable. We end this now.”
CHAPTER 32
WE HIT THE pond from the northeast shore. The weather, which had been fairly shitty before we’d gone into the tunnel, had taken a power slide toward terrible and face-planted in downright hideous. The snow had become hail. The wind had picked up and was whipping in mad gusts. Never had I witnessed a noisier, more chaotic winter night. It would go down in the history books, or in my diary anyway, as the Great Ghastly Night of Twenty-Thirteen. Bare tree limbs thrashed. Clumps of snow picked up off the ground and flew through the air to mix with the hail. None of it slowed Schenk’s stride. With Father Scarrow’s bible stuffed under his jacket, strapped by his empty shoulder holster, he barreled downhill toward the pond leaving a wide swath of footprints in the snow for me to hop in and out of on my way after him. He made it down the hill without tripping and hit the ice bridge running.
Alas, I am not as graceful. After a brief, screaming trip down the hill, I came to a stop by executing a textbook belly flop into a frozen bush. I picked myself up, adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, and charged after him.
MUCE surged out of the water on either side of the bridge and wrapped Schenk’s impossibly long legs like liquid fingers with a mind to drag him down; he trudged forward regardless, a powerhouse with brontosaurian shoulders, unstoppable as a tank through the mud. Lights flashed on either side of us, deep under the water, drawing the eye.
I shouted through the wind, “Eyes front and center!” But he waved back at me to tell me he knew better; he hadn’t forgotten his run-in with the hypnotizing lights at Lock One, and wasn’t likely to let it cloud his mind again.
The pond frothed up, drenching us; the ice that had formed on the water churned and wobbled as it began to break up beneath Schenk’s weight. The poltergeist began greedily drawing heat from the water, sucking, sucking, and we could see her, a looming shadow at our side, keeping pace, reaching limbs growing like a cancerous cloud up and over us, blotting the sky. I doubted that she cared if her thermal suckitude was reinforcing my fragile ice bridge from beneath, and I hurried in Schenk’s wake with the baggie clutched in my teeth. Despite that, the ice beneath Schenk gave way under both his feet mid-stride, and he plunged into the pond up to his knees; he lurched back to extend a hand to me. I clutched at his big forearm and held tight as he more or less heaved me from one side of the break to the other before clambering the rest of the way across. Unfortunately for me the ice was rotten enough to drop me through it as well, soaking me to above my knees before we could both scramble ashore.
“You okay? Gonna make it?” he shouted in the direction of my ear. I nodded rapidly. He took the bag from my teeth and zipped it open, flapping the map open, and sticking the bag back in my face. Without thinking I took it back between my teeth. He did a double-take, but left it for later comme
nt. Vision blotted by snow, he read the map then oriented himself. He pointed at the ground about ten feet off shore and yelled over the shrieking wind, “Elizabeth Briggs-Adsit was close to the fence, last one buried, plot ended up next to a farmer’s fence. Handwriting here says ‘stone knocked down by cow, 1918.’”
“Show me how far out.”
“The Briggs-Adsit plot should be there. Really hard to tell exactly. So much has changed.” He pointed at a spot on the map which was blurring because of the water, and then pointed about seven feet to his left. “Now what?”
The sky darkened as Mama-Captain grew furiously above us, sucking heat from every available source. We’d be next. Why we weren’t first, I’ll never know, but will be forever grateful to the mechanics of ghostly manifestation. I took the bag out of my mouth.
“Ignore her,” I yelled back, bringing the bag forward and shaking the skull chunks. “First, we return John’s skull to his body.” I paused to pinch my lips shut and hug the bag into the shelter of my body as a massive wave hit me, threatening to spill me on my ass. I threw my shoulders into it and managed to stay upright, then shook the water out of my hair and shouted, “We need to find the rest of their bones.”
With the ghostly fingers tearing at the map, Schenk shook his head. “Impossible. There could be ten feet of silt and mud and rocks to dig through.”
I showed him my bare hands. “This part’s my job.”
“You’ll have to go under,” he said, his brow furrowing deeply. “Under the dead people water.”
I flapped my hair out of my face and yelled through the wind, “You said it wasn’t dead people water!”
Before he could answer the wind blasted down at the water, throwing sheets of icy spray off the pond. “I was trying to make you feel better.”
“Convection microburst!” I yelled, holding onto his sturdy arm to brace myself against the wind shear. “Get away from the tree.”