“Dr. Pitcher removed any wards he had for his own reasons,” Ms. Tacy replied. “I have not had time to fully restore them. And even if I had, I’m not sure it would have helped with this entity. I had thought perhaps it was simply the leftovers of what this Ricky person had brought over, and that we might be able to easily deal with it, but if it can speak, if it was a match for Wood and Rowan, it is likely more dangerous.”
“You got that right,” Jane said. “So why the fuck are we standing here?” There was another crash, closer this time.
“We will stand here no longer,” Ms. Tacy replied. She stepped to the door and opened it. Blake watched her glare down the hallway for a moment before she stepped out of sight. He heard a door slam, and a moment later a burst of speech that made him feel sick despite the fact that it was muffled.
“Temperance, come,” Ms. Tacy snapped, coming back into view, and Blake was not the least surprised at the way the sullen woman quickly responded. He started toward the door himself, but Ms. Tacy stopped him with a gesture. “Stay here, and stay quiet, Dr. Blake,” she said. There was a crash from down the hall as Ms. Tacy and Jane left, then the door to the bedroom shut behind them.
***
J.T. followed Ms. Tacy down the hall, shooting a glance over her shoulder. The door Ms. Tacy had closed on the thing buckled as it was struck again.
“Come,” Ms. Tacy said, lumbering for another door, still carrying the case in one hand. As far as J.T. could remember, it was a door that hadn’t even been there when she was a kid, but given where it was it looked like someone had added another exterior door in the past few years. She realized with a jolt that she could have just walked right past Ricky’s room and out to her fucking truck. They had just reached the door when a splintering crash behind them told her that they didn’t have much time.
Ms. Tacy opened the door in front of them and stepped through, and J.T. followed. She shot another glance back the way they'd come to see the thing coming at them with a terrifyingly fast lurching motion, tearing up the carpet and scraping at the walls. She slammed the door, cutting off a burst of the Old Tongue.
Ms. Tacy strode out into the cold night air, and J.T. followed, feeling the chill hit her bare arms. Ms. Tacy was wearing no more than her baggy dress and some sort of house slippers, but J.T. figured it would be a while before the old walrus felt the cold. They were striding toward one of the farm’s outbuildings, and J.T. wondered if her plan was to make a run for it, lead the thing away. But there were no cars in the shed that J.T. could see. She had a brief picture of the two of them making a getaway on a tractor before Ms. Tacy stopped and turned.
“This was your grandmother’s,” she said, popping open the latches on the case and swinging it open. “You should take it.”
J.T. glanced back toward the house. “I appreciate the sentiment, Ms. Tacy, but maybe now ain’t the time for heirlooms.” She looked down at the case. “Oh,” she said.
Ms. Tacy turned and strode off. In a few seconds she stopped and turned toward the house, standing there like some kind of enormous gunslinger in the moonlight. J.T. knelt and set the case on the ground as crashing noises inside the house got louder.
It was only a few seconds later that the back door burst open and the Old One appeared. It glanced at J.T. for a moment, then swung back to Ms. Tacy as the old woman spat out an imperious burst of the Old Tongue.
“Dchatyac u’rlit hrgrat!” Ms. Tacy said, and J.T. thought the thing actually hesitated. Then it began to speak itself, its voice only slightly altered by the broken teeth. J.T. felt the breath driven from her lungs by the sound, but Ms. Tacy stood like a rock, and even managed to come back with another few words of her own before the Old One began bellowing again, moving slowly toward her.
J.T. watched for a moment through waves of nausea, considering. Her life would be a lot less complicated if Ms. Tacy got killed, and it would be a hell of a show.
“Ah, fuck,” she said, and opened fire.
She’d half-expected that her grandmother’s legacy wouldn’t work anyway, but it seemed Ms. Tacy knew how to take care of a Tommy gun. The first few rounds missed as the gun pulled J.T. to the right, and the Old One didn’t even seem to notice the danger, continuing its progress toward Ms. Tacy as J.T. walked the bullets to it, kicking up splatters of mud and grass until they began striking the massive gray body.
Only then did it turn toward J.T. and for several long seconds moved toward her, leaning into the stream of lead. It was hard to even look at the thing, hard not to just turn and run, for that matter, or at least back up. She was afraid she’d lose her bead if she tried to move, though, so she didn’t. It was speaking to her again, but what the hell—she couldn’t hear the voice over the clatter of the Tommy gun anyway. She wondered for a few moments if the damn thing was actually going to reach her, or if the magazine would run dry, but then she saw chunks of it begin to fly free, and finally it tipped over to one side and hit the ground with a thud.
J.T. continued to fire until she ran out of shells, then knelt next to the case, keeping an eye on the thing while she fished out the spare magazine. She was still trying to work out how to release the empty when Ms. Tacy walked up.
“You've a ways to go until you are as good with a chopper as your grandmother,” she said, “but that was quite creditable.”
“Glad you approve,” muttered J.T., finally freeing the empty magazine and dropping it in the case. “You were probably a holy terror with one of these in your day, huh?”
“Yes, but it is a young person’s weapon,” Ms. Tacy replied. “Too much for these old bones.” She looked down at the corpse. “I believe this thing is no longer a threat, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more.” The feeling the Old Ones brought on had faded away, J.T. realized. Ms. Tacy looked up to the now-silent house.
“We’d best see what we can do for Mr. Rowan and Mr. Wood, if anything,” she said. “Help should be arriving soon from Boston, but I may need to call upon further assistance.” She shook her head. “Mr. Rowan tries, but I fear he may not be cut out for what we do. It is so difficult, finding truly reliable help.”
J.T. picked up the case and followed her. “I’ll bet it is,” she said. “You know, this Tommy gun didn’t fire like something that’s been sitting around for seventy years.”
“I like to clean and maintain it now and again,” Ms. Tacy replied at they neared the door. “For sentimental reasons. Did you succeed in repairing the hot water heater?”
“Yeah,” J.T. replied after a moment of trying to remember what she was talking about. “It was just out of adjustment. For some reason.”
“Excellent,” Ms. Tacy said, pushing open the shattered remnants of the door. She turned. “I’d like to let you keep the Thompson’s,” she said. “But I don’t suppose it would be wise, given the way the Sheriff’s department keeps an eye on you.”
J.T. nodded.
“Nevertheless,” Ms. Tacy said. “I wonder if I might prevail upon you to stay for a few hours. Just until I can get further assistance here.” She smiled. “I would feel much safer, with someone I consider family nearby.”
J.T. looked down at her grandmother’s Tommy gun as she followed Ms. Tacy into the house, and sighed. “Sure,” she said.
AN UNQUIET SLUMBER
Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein
Greyson set the pliers down and leaned heavily against the table to stand. Every move brought a stiff jolt of pain to his ossified joints. He had to cut and squeeze to extract blood from his desiccating body, to get even a fingertip’s worth of that rust. Not good, no good at all. Only the dead don’t bleed. He had lived longer than most, true, as stones do, but he had no desire to flicker out after a mayfly’s lifespan. Short and worthless, like the rest of humanity.
He ran his fingers along his chin while he examined the day’s work on the doll. Stubble scratched under his dull nails. He needed to wash up and shave. No good to walk around unshaven and disgusting. He might have company, aft
er all.
Greyson hadn’t been in the washroom long before something out of the corner of his eye startled him. When he glanced back at the door, it was empty, just the dim hallway stretching out to the study. He turned back to the mirror. A silhouette stood behind him where there had been the wall’s reflection; a woman, her wet hair clinging to her face. Her features were obscured by shadow, but something about the tilt of her head and the lay of her hair was wrong. There was less substance there than there should have been, and a faint glistening. She was angry with him.
He put the razor down, leaned forward, and breathed on the glass. The ghost reached past his reflection.
You slept through our anniversary, she wrote, letter by painstaking letter. They faded as he watched. The whole room chilled. Ghosts, or at least Abigail, had scent. Not as a person did, not the distasteful pungency of the byproducts of living, but as a room long abandoned to the desert, a remembrance of her self. She was too old to have the fragrance of turned earth or the deep draught of the river Thames. He never had pegged her exact date of death, but it was long before he had been born. No, Abigail was the faint breath of old ink, the fragile grain of aging paper as it crumbled under touch. His dearest wife.
“Well, I believe we’ll have another next year,” Greyson said. “And it will be five times as grand. I doubt it matters if we miss one of one hundred ten.” In the cold room, his breath frosted the glass easily.
You slept for three days. Abigail retraced her earlier words. He had indeed slept. And dreamed. She’d been there. She’d danced with him.
Greyson picked the razor back up. She had every right to be mad at him. Certainly, were their positions reversed, he would be livid with her. “The dreams weren’t enough?” The memories faded like the words she traced on the mirror. Ghosts lived in dreams, insubstantial as they both were. “They were so lovely that I lost track of time. I wouldn’t mind wandering in those gardens forever with you, for… how did it go? ‘The moon never beams without bringing me dreams…’” Abigail didn’t respond. “With due respect, I need to finish shaving now, my dear.”
When she did not so much as stir, he went back to shaving.
The chill sharpened, made his bones ache. The cold distracted him, or his hand slipped, or something shoved him; ether way, the razor sliced through his skin, and deep. He swore and threw it into the sink. “Abigail!”
Her fingers pinched the wound on his cheek, drawing out his drying, silty blood. She smeared it across the mirror. The blood was too thick for her to get far.
Greyson clapped his hand over the cut. It stung. He met his own gaze in the mirror. He looked haggard and weary and half-shaven. His spectacles hid the worst of the shadows under his eyes. “It’s not our wedding anniversary, is it! No, just the anniversary of when we met. Did I deserve that? All right? Darling? I know it’s important to you. What are we all but creatures of habit? I’ll make it up to you. What would you like me to say? ‘I love you yet; you are in my soul.’” The line was a bit bastardized, perhaps, but he would recite the scene in full if she asked him to. They had both read her favorite book so many times, so often aloud. “If I could touch you, if you could come to me, then you would know.”
The silhouette lifted her head and smiled. Her visage was less ghastly than he had feared; she still had both her eyes. He touched her reflection’s cheek and she vanished, left him with his hand pressed to smooth, empty glass.
She was hungry again. She grew hungrier as she grew older. The hunger of a ghost that no longer had the volition to temper desires, the narrow-mindedness of a soul stripped to the emotions of her death throes. Not that it mattered; he wanted her all the same. They were both desperate.
Cruel irony to think that he might be the one trapped in a dying routine, a living fossil, slower to adapt than a ghost. How long until he couldn’t clear the dust collecting on the shelves of his own home? How long until the dust would settle on his own self? Living forever had turned out to be the falsely optimistic term for dying forever. It was bearable, as long as he had her.
Greyson finished shaving, splashed his face with stale water from the basin, and threw the razor into the bin next to it. Blades wore down fast, or perhaps it was just how cheaply they were manufactured now.
“I’m going back downstairs,” he said, all cheer, to the air. “To finish your gift, my dear. A few days late, but with you by my side, who would count the time?” No answer, save for the light brush of a breeze on the back of his neck. He touched the locket he wore. It was cool, but not cold. A memento, so Abigail could accompany him always. Her wedding ring was strung on the chain, and inside, instead of a portrait, nestled a folded page from her beloved book. Her focus and sole grounding tie to the living world, to his dismay; if only he were the tie, she wouldn’t speak so fondly of Heathcliff.
He closed the bathroom door and then reopened it as a door to the basement, his workshop, and stepped through. Upper floor to lower floor. Alchemy had myriad uses; in this case, a forged trinket wound in copper and embedded under his skin allowed a reroute from one room to another. Door to door, he could go anywhere he pleased. Around the world, even. But everything he cared about was in this manor.
Most of the doors in the house now opened to walls and mirrors and beds of nails and other such distractions. No one besides himself and spirits could navigate the maze.
The manor smelled of decay, the stifling must of a catacomb. Greyson flicked the light switch on and off until the lamp decided to cooperate and crackle into illumination. He took off his glasses and blinked until his vision adjusted, then replaced them and closed the door. A table and work tools took up this half of the room, his study. A large life-sized doll lay atop the table, fabric stretched across its wooden frame. Abigail’s body. An object to return to her the solidity he’d never known her to have.
He stepped over the smeared remains of two white chalk circles across the stone floor. The books stored here were shelved well away from the ground so that moisture wouldn’t warp their pages.
Books held no interest for him today, save for one. Wuthering Heights lay across the body Abigail would inhabit; the last remnant of her past life and the artifact that would be her future. Greyson leaned forward, kissed the book along the spine, inhaled the sharp scent of the leather cover, soft as human skin, and murmured Abigail’s name. She was there, the shadow of a breath on his cheek, a cool touch slipping under the collar of his shirt. Not in body, never in body, but in spirit. She never strayed far from his side. Even if he couldn’t see her, she was there. She would brush her fingers down his neck, a chill too cold and sudden to be a breeze in this windowless house.
Greyson picked up Wuthering Heights off of the doll’s chest and set it to the side. Pages fell out, the companions to those ripped out of their bindings, burned and scattered into the body to tie it to Abigail. He stacked them back on the desk.
Glass eyes stared up at the ceiling’s beams, clouded grey jewels in her porcelain face. He’d heard of puppets built of flesh, hand-stitched golems to do their master’s bidding, but the thought made him queasy. No doubt Abigail would have objections as well. No disgusting secondhand materials would comprise her earthly vessel. Except the hair; he had used human hair, of course. There was no substitute.
He ran his hand through the hair, soft and dark and curled, and laid his head on her chest, imagined back to when they had first met, when he could still see her and, after a fashion, touch her. A gift he’d squandered on immortality. Love for life; her love, to extend his life. Steps that, once danced, could never be undone.
No heartbeat, no breath stirred the doll’s frame, nor would it ever. He nestled his hand in the crook of its jaw and murmured sweet platitudes to its still lips: all the night-tide, he’d lay down by the side of his darling, his darling, his life and his bride. The doll couldn’t answer, of course. It was almost finished. Almost. All it lacked was the ghost to give it function and some way to give it a smoother semblance of life, more than t
he jerky, violent movements that she could manage with it now.
Greyson closed his eyes, and then said, quite aloud, “With all the smoke and mirrors I contrive to talk to you, my dear, it makes you wonder if I’ve simply gone mad, doesn’t it? All this to touch you.”
A twinge, and then a deeper pain in his neck, the locket’s chain digging into his collar. “I’m joking, darling,” Greyson said, his hand on the locket to keep it from trying to burrow its way deeper into his flesh. “Just words said in jest.”
Before her presence faded he got up and began work on the doll again, tweaking the fine jeweler’s wire that twined through her limbs, gold and copper to hold the energy that would animate her, silk and steel to hold the physical frame together. Magic and copper stitched together the seams, giving it movement, which was all very pretty and for naught if the wires snapped when it moved.
When he was satisfied with the doll’s state, Greyson slid his arms under the doll’s body and lifted it up, propped it against his chest and arranged its arms as if it were his partner in a waltz. He let the doll’s head loll against his shoulder, cold porcelain lips resting on his collar. The skirts rustled against his legs as he walked it gently to the middle of the room, over the necromancer’s array sketched onto the stone floor, and began to dance with it. He didn’t need music to keep time; this was only practice for when they could truly dance.
The doll would be finished soon, and they could go out and satiate Abigail’s hunger together, both of them, physically embodied. They would go out and feel; she would leave the house, really leave it, not just as a shade trailing the folded words in his locket. Travel wherever she pleased. Anywhere.
Even without him.
He swung the doll around, skirts twirling out. They were both reflected in the mirrors that lined the study’s walls, the reflections spiraling out on to eternity. If Abigail watched, she left no shadow. Was she just waiting for him to finish, so that she could travel in physical form without his aid?
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