by Edward Lee
Her father shrugged. “Then I’ll charter a goddamn helicopter and fly her out here.”
She managed a giggle. “You would. I’ll be fine. I just need to go to sleep.”
“Okay. You call me if you need anything.”
“I’ll be fine,” she repeated. “Sorry to be such a pain in the butt.”
“Yeah, but you’re my pain in the butt. Remember that.”
“I will. Go back and watch your game. I know how much you love to bitch about Leon Flanders or whatever his name is.”
The comment instantly set him off. “That lazy, no-effort, non-football-playing son of a bitch! He missed twelve tackles in the first half!” He walked out of the room and back down the hall, his complaints fading. “Jesus Christ, I’m a fat old man and I could tackle better than that talentless bum!”
Well, Cassie thought. At least he’s back to normal.
She rubbed her eyes.
But what about me?
She dawdled about in her room, exhausted yet wiry with fret. She turned off the lights, stripped and donned a short nightgown, and next she was walking out the French doors onto the gable-sided terrace. Night-sounds pulsated—crickets, peepers—and then a warm wind stirred. She looked out over the moonlit landscape and saw no smoking, luminous city. Just open land and forests which extended to the crisply edged mountains.
What did you expect?
Sighing, she walked back in and went to bed.
Sleep pulled her down like muggers sneaking up from behind. She felt stuffed in a black ravine as nightmares hulked overhead.
First, as always:
Lissa’s face, twisted into a mask of insane hatred.
And the death-rattle voice. “My own sister ... How could you do this to me?”
Then the gunshot and the hot blood splattering into Cassie’s eyes.
No, please....
More fragments of nightmare plodded over her. Yes, she lay immobile in a ravine—or an open grave.
Her mouth felt sealed shut.
She could smell malodorous smoke, could hear muffled cracklings of a roaring fire. Again, she saw the city under the scarlet sky.
The city seemed endless.
Distant screams careened to and fro, like sirens miles away. But with each frantic beat of her heart, the visions lurched closer....
The city raged before the infernal terrascape, a firmament of inversions whose highest edifice winked at its peak like a beacon of luminous blood. Cassie’s vision trailed away on stinking, hot winds, shooting through abyssal avenues and abhorrent boulevards as though it were a scream itself. In one avenue, a troop of man-like things with chisel-slits for eyes shouldered into a crowd of haggard people, and with inhuman three-fingered hands, these same things began to select victims for whatever purpose there was on this horrid night. Faces were dragged by fingers hooked into eyes. Wan mouths opened to scream ejecting innards and blasts of blood. Heads were prized apart, raw brains rowed through by the fat taloned fingers. One man was being seared with prods of white-hot iron, another was eviscerated with one fast swipe of a talon. The guts were then summarily shoved into the victim’s mouth as he was being forced to eat. Women faired worse, stripped to emaciated nakedness and plundered for sexual possibilities that defied all human imagination.
Dark chuckles fluttered as the endless workings of this place ground on and on.
Horrid as the images were, Cassie received the notion that these were things she was supposed to see.
The eye of the nightmare blinked, then focused more closely on the details of this evil street. Screams were exploding now; Cassie thought of famine-riots in some collapsing Calcutta-like city in the Third World. The vaguely-human wardens plodded on in their nameless duties, tearing into the crowd. One woman was singled out, hauled forward by the hair and thrown into the street. Her clothes were torn off, and as she was being raped en masse, two more three-fingered hands vised her head and twisted it round and round and round until it came off. Decapitation did not seem to dissuade the woman’s queue of rapists in the least. In guttering glee, then, one of the wardens stuck the severed head atop a street sign for all to see.
The street sign read: CITY MUTILATION ZONE
The severed head was Cassie’s.
Silence.
Darkness, like death.
Then—voices, sibilant whisperings:
“See how blue? I told you.”
“Cool.”
“You can even ... touch her.”
Hands felt her body. She was blind. One hand seemed to tremble as it touched her face. Another opened flat between her breasts.
“I can feel it! I can feel her heart!”
Fingers seemed to diddle with the locket on her chest. “I can even feel this. I can hold it ...”
“You were right.”
Cassie’s eyelids opened. She could not move. She lay like a corpse that somehow continued to see.
The nightmare of the city and its systematic butchery was gone, replaced by this. It’s still a dream, she thought. It has to be.
“You were right. She’s an Etheress.”
“My God ...”
A pause.
“Let’s go,” one of the figures said. “I think she’s about to wake—”
—up, her back arched severely as the paralysis of nightmare broke and she lurched upright in bed. Her eyes bulged. Her mouth was propped open and she was screaming but the scream came only as a long barely audible hiss from the back of her parched throat. The faintest light of dawn etched orange around the tasseled front drapes. She felt mutely terrified, the way one might feel upon wakening to realize that an intruder lurked somewhere in the room.
Her gaze jerked left.
Was it her imagination or did she glimpse a shape moving quickly away from the doorway?
She jerked again in bed, snapping on the lamp on the nightstand as if the light would drive away her panic. She waited for her heartbeat to recede but it didn’t. Her nightgown felt like tissue paper stuck to her skin by sweat, and when she looked at her locket, she wasn’t sure but its burnished silver finish seemed blotched by fingerprint smears.
I am SO screwed up in the head....
She thought of calling out for her father, but what good would that do? She had but one option and she knew it.
She swallowed the rest of her fear and left the bedroom, her bare feet quickening down the hall, to the landing, and then up the next stairwell and the stairwell after that.
This is it, she thought.
Without pause, she ascended into the oculus room.
Three figures sat in a row on one of the mattresses: a girl, a guy, and another girl whom she instantly recognized as Via.
“Hi, Cassie,” Via said. “We knew you’d come up to see us eventually.”
Chapter Four
(I)
Via smiled cheerily from her seat on the mattress. The other two seemed to have expressions of awe on their faces.
Cassie just froze.
“This is Xeke and Hush. This is Cassie. She lives here with her father.”
Cassie didn’t even move her head to look back at them; only her eyes darted. Via remained dressed in the leather pants, boots, and jacket that she’d been wearing previously. Xeke, the male, was dressed similarly: late -’70s British Punk and appropriate buttons and patches (BRING BACK SID! and Do You Get The KILLING JOKE? and the like). Were it not for her shock, Cassie would’ve been struck by how handsome he was—lean, toned, dark intense eyes on a face like an Italian male model’s. Small pewter bats dangled from his earlobes, and his long jet-black hair had been pulled back into a masculine ponytail. Xeke’s eyes appraised her as though she were iconic, and the same went for the third squatter, the other girl. What did she say her name was? Cassie thought. Hush?
“Hush can’t talk,” Via said, “but she’s cool.”
Cassie felt far away as she listened; she felt detached from herself. Her throat clicked as she tried to speak. “Yesterday ... on the tr
ail. You said you were dead.”
“We are,” Xeke replied matter-of-factly.
“We can guess what a shock it is to you,” Via continued. “It’ll take you some time to get used to.”
“All three of us are dead,” Xeke said, “and when we died, we went to Hell.”
People living in my house, Cassie thought numbly. Dead people.
She didn’t contemplate any of it now. It was either true, or she was insane. Period. Instead, she followed Via, Xeke, and Hush down the stairs.
“We’ll just prove it to you now,” Via said, “and get it over with.”
“Then we can really talk about things,” Xeke added.
Hush looked back over her shoulder and smiled.
Yeah. I’m following dead people down the stairs.
“Blackwell Hall is the strongest Deadpass in this part of the Outer Sector,” Via was explaining.
“Deadpass,” Cassie stated.
“It’s because of Fenton Blackwell—”
“The guy who built this section of the house, in the ’20s,” Cassie latched onto the familiarity. “The Satanist who ... sacrificed babies.”
“Uh-hmm,” Via verified.
Xeke laughed when they got to the next landing, his mirthful eyes on Cassie. “Jeez, you must think you’re losing your mind about now.”
“Uh, yeah,” Cassie said. “The thought has occurred to me more than once.”
“Just be patient. Follow us.”
When they went down the next flight of steps, Via advised, “Don’t make an idiot of yourself, Cassie. Remember, you can see us and hear us—but they can’t.”
Cassie wasn’t sure what they meant until the four of them marched into one of the dens, where Mrs. Conner was busily waxing some antique table tops.
Cassie stood there, looking at her.
The older woman glanced up. When her eyes met Cassie’s, there was no way that she couldn’t have seen Via, Xeke, and Hush standing alongside of her.
“ ’Mornin’, Miss Cassie.”
“Huh—hi, Mrs. Conner.”
“Hope you’re feelin’ better. Your pa said you had a spell yesterday.”
Via laughed. “Your pa! Jesus, what a hayseed!”
Mrs. Conner didn’t hear the comment.
“Uh, yes, I’m feeling a lot better,” she replied.
“She’s got the hots for your father,” Via added.
The remark startled Cassie. “What?”
Mrs. Conner looked back up. “Pardon, Miss?”
“Uh, er, nothing,” Cassie said fast. “Have a good day, Mrs. Conner.”
“You too.”
“Your father’s got the hots for her too,” Xeke said through a grin.
“That’s ridiculous,” Cassie replied.
Mrs. Conner looked up again, a bit more oddly. “What’s that, Miss Cassie?”
Instantly, Cassie felt idiotic. “Just, uh, er—nothing.” My father, she wondered, has a thing for Mrs. Conner? The notion was absurd, but then—
So was the notion of dead punk rockers occupying her house.
“I told you to be careful.” Via chuckled, leading on. “Oh, and watch your step around her kid—”
“Yeah,” Xeke said. “That Jethro Bodine-looking Jervis. He’s a peeper.”
“A—”
But Cassie was shushed when Via brought a finger to her lips. “Don’t take showers with your door open anymore. That fat redneck’s always looking in on you.”
Cassie was mortified. Yeck! But her thoughts trickled on. Hadn’t Roy mentioned something similar, that Jervis had been put in jail for being a Peeping Tom?
“Something smells good,” Xeke said.
It did. Via was leading them into the kitchen, and when the four of them entered, Cassie saw her father puttering at the range, clumsily wielding a metal spatula. When he glanced—and noticed the sheer, short nightgown—he cast her a fatherly frown. “You trying out for Victoria’s Secret?”
“Relax, Dad. No one’s going to see me,” she replied.
“No one except us,” Xeke piped in. “Your daughter’s got some smokin’ hot bod, huh, Dad?”
He and Via laughed out loud.
Cassie’s father clearly didn’t hear them, or see them.
“You feeling better?”
“Fine, Dad. I was just out in the sun too long yesterday,” she tried to placate him.
“Well, good, ’cos you’re just in time for a Cajun catfish omelette.”
“Sounds a little too heavy for me,” Cassie said.
“Hey, Dad, look!” Via exclaimed. She walked right up to him, hoisted her black t-shirt, and flashed her breasts.
Bill Heydon didn’t see it.
“So what are you going to do today, honey?” he asked, searching for the pepper grinder.
Xeke chuckled. “Yeah, honey?”
Shut up, Cassie thought. “I don’t know. Probably wander around.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Via chided. “She’s gonna wander around with the dead people living in your house.”
“Well, remember. Not too long in the sun this time,” her father tried to sound authoritative.
“I won’t.”
“Still don’t believe us?” Via asked her.
“I guess I do,” Cassie answered, then immediately thought Damn!
More laughter from her cohorts.
Her father looked at her. “You guess you do what?”
“Sorry. I was thinking out loud.”
“That’s a sign of senility, you know.” Now her father was dropping pieces of catfish into the fry pan. “You’re too young to be senile. Me? That’s another story.”
“Hush?” Via said. “Show her.”
The short mute girl in black drifted across the kitchen. She grabbed Cassie’s bare arm and squeezed, to verify it to Cassie. Then she grabbed her father’s arm but—
Hush’s small hand seemed to disappear into Mr. Heydon’s solid flesh and bone.
“All the way now,” Via instructed.
Hush stepped into Bill Heydon’s body—and all but disappeared.
He suddenly shivered. “Damn! Did you feel that cold draft?”
“Uh, yeah,” Cassie said as an afterthought. Her fascination gripped her as she watched Hush step back out of her father’s body.
“If you don’t believe us now,” Via said, “then you’ve really got a problem.”
“Tell me about it,” Cassie said.
Another funky look from her father. “Tell you about what, honey?”
Damn! Did it again!
More laughter.
“Come on, honey,” Xeke said. “Let’s get out of here before your father thinks you’ve completely lost it.”
Good idea. This was getting way too confusing. “See ya later, Dad,” she bid.
“Sure.” He gave her another look, shrugged, then returned to his cooking.
She followed them out, back toward the atrium-sized living room. Hush smiled at her and took her hand, as if to say Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.
Cassie had no idea where they were taking her. By the stairs, Via said, “Hey look. Here comes Goober Pyle.”
Jervis Conner was bringing some moving boxes down the steps. When he noticed Cassie’s scanty nightgown, he tried to hide his gawp. “Howdy, Miss Cassie.”
“Hi—”
“Hey, Goober!” Xeke yelled. “Where’s Gomer, ya big redneck putz?”
Via stood right in front of him. “I’ll bet you wipe your ass with corncobs.”
“He’s always sneaking up to our room to beat off,” Xeke told Cassie.
Via laughed. “He thinks no one’s watching. Boy, if he only knew!”
“After seeing you in that nightgown, I’ll bet he’ll do it five times today.”
Cassie blushed.
“Give Shorty a break!” Xeke yelled at Jervis.
Cassie laughed, unable to help herself.
“What’s, uh, what’s so funny, Miss Cassie?”
This is too m
uch! “Nothing, Jervis. Have a good day!”
“Enough monkeying around,” Via said. She led the way down the hall, past the odd statues and oil paintings. Her leather boots thunked loudly on the carpet, but by now, Cassie realized that only she could hear it.
“Where are we going?” she asked when out of Jervis’ earshot.
“Someplace where we can talk,” Xeke told her, his long black ponytail swaying behind his head.
“Back up to the oculus room?”
“Someplace better,” Via said. “The basement.”
(II)
“So,” Cassie deduced. “You’re ghosts.”
“Nope.” Xeke sat on the cold stone floor, lounging back against the basement’s long wall of tabby bricks. “Nothing like that at all. We’re living souls. We’re physical beings.”
Hush sat beside Cassie on a row of moving boxes; she leaned her head against Cassie’s shoulder as if tired, her black hair veiling her face. Via remained standing, walking back and forth.
“How can you be living souls,” Cassie asked, “if you’re dead?”
Via answered, “What he means is that we’re living souls in our world. We’re physical beings in our world. In your world, though, we’re subcorporeal.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that we exist ... but we don’t.”
“But we’re not ghosts,” Xeke said. “Ghosts are soulless projections. They’re just images leftover. No consciousness, no sentience.”
Cassie considered this. “So the man who built this house—Fenton Blackwell—he really does haunt this place?”
“Sure,” Via said. “But it’s just his image lingering, walking up and down the stairs. It’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m sure you’ll see him every now and again.”
Cassie hoped she didn’t. “All right, so much for him. What about you?”
Via took off her punky leather jacket and dropped it in Xeke’s lap. By her attitude and gestures, it was clear that she was the leader of this little group. She began to diddle with the safety pins holding the tears in her t-shirt together. “It’s a long story, but here goes. First, you gotta understand that there are Rules. We weren’t really bad people in life, but we were fucked up. We couldn’t hack it. So we killed ourselves. That’s one of the Rules.”