A Study in Spirits

by Byrd Nash

  “That’s just rude!” Emma retorted.

  In response, the púca strolled over to the couch, where it dug claws into the corner of the furniture. It started to scratch, looking over its shoulder at her with defiance.

  Celia shouted, “no!” and clapped her hands. The True Beast gave the naiad a look of disdain before directing its words back to Em, “Cough up what you know. We all need to share information at this point. Things have progressed to a critical stage.”

  Em was irritated. Was nothing private around these fae? And who was this newcomer? Why was he here? And why should she trust him?

  Celia beckoned her to the small table they used for meals. She set down a muffin and a cup of tea for her roommate.

  “You don’t have to tell us anything personal, Em. We just want to know more about what we are up against. More about the creature in the library. If you’ve discovered something that would help us tackle the situation, I’d appreciate it.”

  Celia poured out a bowl of milk for Jib. She set it on the floor in hopes of distracting the púca from doing more damage to her sofa.

  “Tackle it?” exclaimed Emma. They were crazy! “We need to go to the administration and warn them! Things could go nuclear in a heartbeat.”

  “What do you mean?” The question was from the new guy, the stranger Celia had named Paul. He was an average looking man in his early thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, with a nondescript build. It was hard to imagine that he was a dragon.

  “Who’s he?”

  “A representative of the administration,” purred the cat. “If you tell us what you know, be reassured that you are talking to one with the highest authority.”

  Em didn’t know about that. He didn’t look like anybody important. Did LOTTOS hire dragons? Indeed, she couldn’t take him seriously while he wore a wet towel around his hips.

  She picked up the muffin and talked around it while she ate. “Last night, I used Obake to search out any hooks the malware left behind on my computer.”

  “Hooks? Malware?” asked Jib. “Explain. Use simple language.”

  “I’m just calling it malware, but that isn’t what it is. It just acts like it.” She took a sip of tea to wash down her muffin.

  “Malware has a malicious purpose — thus the name. It operates like other computer software. It performs similar functions, but malware’s intent is to harm stuff. It messes things up, records, reports, emails, docs — anything stored via a computer system — like credit card numbers.”

  “The key problem is that a virus replicates itself. It spreads, impacting the standard operations of your computer. If connected to a group of computers, it can contaminate an entire network.”

  “But this wasn’t a machine you saw, right?” asked Celia, looking at the cat and the stranger.

  “No,” said the guy. “It had the form of a human. And was using a human’s name. It called itself Aristarchus.”

  Em shrugged. They had asked for her thoughts; she had given them.

  “I don’t know what you saw. I can only tell you about the machine part of it that I tracked during the two times I encountered it. It jumped into my laptop when I was searching through the database. It left 248 hooks in my system. Luckily, Obake destroyed them because all the code I was throwing at it was useless.”

  “Hooks?” asked Paul. “What are those?”

  Emma looked around, wondering where that ringing bell sound was coming from, before answering.

  “Think of them as seeds. The virus goes through your computer, leaving time bombs behind. These remain hidden, undetected, until boom! They aren’t anymore.”

  “That doesn’t sound good at all,” said Celia.

  The tsukumogami spoke again: “The library is on the Internet. Your virus has not yet learned how to leave the confines of the building, but it will soon.”

  “We must take down the Internet in the library immediately.”

  Everyone stared at the administration’s representative. Emma started to laugh, pushing her glasses back up on her nose.

  “Sure, sure.” Em scoffed, stuffing the last bit of muffin into her mouth. “Do you think it’s as easy as pulling a plug? You’ve watched too many movies. Think again. From the patterns I tracked, we’re lucky that our beastie hasn’t jumped outside already. Once it figures it can transfer into a student’s laptop hooked into the school’s WiFi, it will jump out of there.”

  “Tracking? You stalked it?” asked Jib. The cat’s stare was focused on Emma or her earring. The girl wasn’t sure which.

  “Here, it’s easier if I show you.” She took her laptop out of her bag, popped up the lid, and started the machine.

  “After my first encounter with what I thought was a virus, I figured I’d run some tests on it — figure out how it worked. Especially as I was blamed for what it did.”

  “What?” demanded the stranger. Celia quickly hushed him.

  “What I noticed was the records,” Emma was pointing at her laptop screen. Celia and Paul came up behind her to see what she was indicating.

  “Each book is filed in the library’s database. A database entry is composed of several fields. For example, you might have the name of the book in one field, the author in another, the copyright date in another.”

  “Got it,” said Paul. “Continue.”

  “When I saw the data fields, they were all empty except for the first marker. But last night, I went deeper into the database and set my computer to sort through it. I found something very interesting.”

  Emma pulled up a map of the library’s layout on her computer.

  “The earliest indication of deleted books was in June of this year. It began in a hap-hazarded manner. For example, if a book had twelve fields, only four would be deleted, and not always the same four. The damage probably appeared as random at first to any librarian seeing it. Records do get corrupted when the hardware starts to fail after all.”

  Em’s fingers flew over the keyboard, bringing up a schematic of the library. It had marks of red, orange, and blue. She laid the dots over the first diagram.

  “The damage was contained to this area of the library. That is, until the week of the grand opening party held by the chancellor. Afterward, it started spreading throughout the library at a more rapid pace.”

  Emma tapped the touchpad and the diagram became animated.

  “If it continues, this will be the rate of destruction in the next thirty days.”

  They all looked silently at the screen now covered with red.

  “It could eat its way through the library by next month, if not sooner. Or if it discovers the WiFi and how it works, could vanish, to who knows where. Doing damage anywhere and everywhere.”

  Paul spoke first.

  “If pulling the plug isn’t enough, what do we do?”

  “Obake and I have an idea about that,” said Emma.

  Labyrinth

  Who knew that dragons could move so quickly?

  “Why not tell the Chancellor? Let him deal with this,” said Celia. She was trotting after Paul, who was storming down the street, and trying to keep up with him.

  Behind her came Jib and Em. And the tsukumogami. Celia kept forgetting about the little creature.

  Paul wasn’t listening. Instead, he was reciting a list of what he planned to stop the creature. “Get to the library. Prevent it from leaving. Isolate and destroy.”

  They gained some odd looks from others, but Celia figured it was probably due to the outfit Paul was wearing rather than knowing that a wyvern was in Geheimetür. Celia’s Glamour could not provide clothing, so he wore garments contributed by the two girls. Celia’s blouse had flowers and fluttery sleeves. Emma’s shorts were tight, showing a lot of thigh.

  “We shall break in. We must do it before the creature becomes alarmed and harms anyone or anything.”

  “Nice!” said Em.

  Jib concurred, “Cat burglary stuff! My kind excels at that. They even named it after me!”

  “No
t you,” Celia told the cat. “You need to find Brigit and let her know what’s happening. Update her about all of this.”

  Jib yowled a protest. “Why do I have to be the messenger? I want to be a cat burglar! How can you do a cat burglary without a cat!? It’s not fair!”

  “Off with you, púca. Get a move on! Do you have a way to find Brigit?”

  “I always know where the princess is,” said the cat loftily. As if sensing something outside of itself, it squinted its orange eyes. “Ha! It looks like we will meet-up at the library after all. She’s inside the building.”

  “No!” Celia cried out, alarmed.

  “See you soon.”

  With that, the black cat winked out.

  Paul didn’t blink at the púca’s disappearance, which would have given him away if Em hadn’t already figured out he also fae.

  “We don’t have time for this,” snapped Paul. His features were stern, showing a maturity of purpose at odds with the young of his features. “If the dryad alerts or maddens this creature, we don’t know what it could do to the books.”

  “The books?” Celia said, growing angry. “Look what it did to you! If it could strip you of your power to disguise, what would it do to a defenseless dryad!?”

  Paul gave her a leveling look, his eyes opaque. What he thought no one could tell. Eventually, he conceded. “Fine. I take your point. Here, take my hand,” he commanded. Celia immediately complied. However, Em hung back, her hand going up to touch the tsukumogami, riding her shoulder.

  Paul frowned at Emma before giving the girl a sideways smirk.

  “Did you know that there is a honeycomb of ancient catacombs under the abbey? Secret tunnels that no one, other than myself, has been in for at least 100 years. A secret labyrinth that I know like the back of my hand. Only I can enter, and, of course, those whom I invite.”

  Em grabbed his hand.

  The wyvern created a travel portal through the Perilous Realm, and with a flicker, the four vanished off the streets of Geheimetür.

  Emma felt like she was running, running hard, with her lungs being squeezed. At the same time, it was only a moment before she stepped across a threshold to enter a new world.

  “Don’t touch anything. I’m going to change.”

  At Paul’s words, Em felt the spinning stop and the ground firmly under the soles of her boots. She tentatively opened her eyes, taking a moment for them to adjust to the dim light of the candlelit cave.

  She was surrounded by stone, in a circular chamber. In crevices in the stone walls were thick pillar candles. Their flames were the only light. It must be the catacombs that Paul had promised to show them.

  “How do you feel? Okay?” asked Celia. The naiad chafed Em’s hands as she carefully examined the girl’s face.

  “I’m fine. I think.” Em lifted her hand to her shoulder. The flying squirrel climbed onto her fingers.

  “That felt like gliding from a very tall tree.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it.” Celia smiled at Obake. “Traveling the Perilous Realm can affect beings from the human lands differently. If you start feeling dizzy or lightheaded, let me know.”

  After Emma assured Celia she would, the two girls looked about them, curious. The area was about fifteen feet in diameter. It held a bed, bookshelves, and a dresser. Em noticed there was only one exit. She assumed that was where Paul had gone.

  “This is nice, Paul,” Celia called. “Is this where you live — or work?”

  From down the tunnel, Paul’s voice floated back to them, “Don’t touch anything.”

  Exchanging looks with Emma, Celia covered her mouth to suppress a giggle. She waved Em to follow her. They tiptoed around the bed to the bookshelves, their hands clasped behind their back, to examine everything.

  Em could see what made Celia laugh. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she saw a strange compilation of objects all around them. Paul’s bedchamber was a bachelor’s home with a smell of leather and cloves. However, the memorabilia made it appear part junk, part antique shop. You might find a treasure, but you’d have to dig through the personal clutter to find them.

  For example, there were movie and theater posters, mostly from old shows with stars that Emma thought her grandma might have recognized. The surface of a vintage dressing table, probably from the 1930s, was smothered with a white silk opera scarf, a top hat, a pair of men’s dress gloves, ticket stubs to an event that took place over eighty years ago, small binoculars, and a deck of worn playing cards. Polo clubs and tennis rackets leaned against the dresser.

  Moving away from the dresser, Em came to a standing coat rack, its hooks holding various garments: a 17th-century greatcoat, a military green trench-coat, and a winter puffer coat that was so big it almost swallowed the entire stand.

  When Emma got closer, the black cane walking stick slowly turned to face her. Its brass lion’s head, ruby-red eyes winking, hissed, caused Em to jump back, colliding into Celia.

  “It looks like Paul likes to read,” Celia commented. “All historical non-fiction, except a DIY plumbing book.”

  Em whispered back. “I’ve always seen candles lit in movies like this. I don’t understand why they don’t gutter out or burn everything down?”

  She didn’t tell Celia that the movies were usually about psycho killers.

  “They have a film crew that manages all that,” began Celia, but Paul, who had silently returned, interrupted her tersely, “Time loop. Each candle has a time eddy around it. They repeat the same five minutes that the original spell captured.”

  “Oh.” Em wondered what type of fae Paul was as that sounded rather complicated. It didn’t seem to be the time to ask.

  “Paul, what is this?”

  “Don’t touch, Celia. You could disrupt that time experiment and release its prisoner.” Paul removed the metal cylinder from the naiad’s hands, setting it gingerly back down on the table.

  “Now, if you two have stopped prying into my personal life, can we get started on vanquishing a memory-monster that could wreak havoc throughout the human lands if not stopped?”

  “We were just waiting on you,” said Celia sweetly. Her comment received a silent stare from Paul before he turned and asked them to follow.

  Paul wasn’t kidding when he said the catacombs were like a labyrinth. Emma quickly lost her sense of direction. She doubted she could find her way back unassisted.

  She was trotting after Paul, Celia at her side.

  “How did the catacombs come to be here?”

  “There were some natural caves down here,” Paul’s voice echoed in the cave. “Carved out of the limestone by groundwater. But when the abbey was constructed, the area was expanded by man.”

  No longer was he wearing Celia’s blouse or Em’s shorts. Instead, he wore a dark green turtleneck sweater, and a pair of khaki pants. On his feet were loafers. He looked very ordinary and it made Em wonder how someone like him could do the type of magic all around them?

  For even Em, a human, could feel it: the vibration, the humming, the tickling of something on her skin. It was exciting and dangerous, like being on a roller-coaster.

  Obake pulled at her ear lobe and whispered, “Be careful.”

  This was not an ordinary place. What was walking fast in front of them was nothing human. She would demand that Celia fill her in on the details about Paul later.

  “What’re all these shelves for?” Em had noticed the ledges sculpted into the walls.

  “To lay the corpses upon. The catacombs housed the dead. A handy crypt. A common idea, used throughout Europe.”

  This ghoulishness didn’t trouble Em. She wasn’t the type that found such things disgusting.

  “I don’t see any bodies or skeletons.”

  “Of course, you don’t.” Paul’s echoing laugh was not pleasant. “During the Protestant Reformation, the abbey was cleared of its monks both inside and out. The old dead, and the recently murdered, were shoveled into a mass grave. After the turf was laid on top, the city f
athers quickly forgot the atrocity. Why do you think ghostly monks walk the campus of Leopold-Ottos-Universität Geheimetür?”

  “Protestant Reformation? What was that?”

  “Martin Luther,” interjected Celia.

  “What does a black American have to do with this?”

  “Weren’t you taught any history in school?” demanded Paul. He stopped, facing them.

  “Not much,” replied Em, hostile. “They didn’t bother putting the girl from a working-class family into the college fast track classes. Those courses were given to the intelligentsia.”

  Celia was more patient with Em.

  “The Protestant Reformation happened in 1521. It’s when Martin Luther, a German monk, broke from the Catholic Church. Countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland — they all rebelled against the Pope. In pulling away, property that once belonged to the church was seized, the monks and nuns removed.”

  “I guess murder and a mass grave, removed them, huh?” Em said sardonically.

  “Have you ever been caught in a riot?” said Paul in a voice that vibrated with emotion. “I’ve experienced it. You may not understand, but people in the 1500s feared for their souls when the government interfered with their god. At the same time, they were angry at what the Pope was doing. Panic and hatred are heady mixes during turbulent times.”

  Paul didn’t wait for them to reply but abruptly turned away. In a few paces, he brought them to another room. Electric lights lit this area. Seeing the wall of high tech electronics, Em gasped in joy.

  “Whaaaaaa—” she said tongue-tied. Finally, regaining her voice, Em said reverently, “I have indeed come to the Bat Cave.”

  “Yes, I thought you’d like it,” said Paul smugly. “I don’t have much use for these toys. When the library vault was installed, the chancellor insisted I outfit myself below with just as much splendor as above. He’s a stickler for everything being exactly correct.”

  Paul’s words might as well have been left unspoken. Emma was too entranced to pay him much mind. She was examining the monitors, the computers, crouching to peer under the table, and investigating how everything was connected.