by Mark Teppo
And Kim? He wasn’t sure about her. Perhaps she was only the victim in all of this, but he’d had sisters himself, the doctor had, and he’d seen how they could nettle each other, how they knew each other’s every weak point. He suspected Ellie had been meant to find out about Liam.
Charlotte watched him sort through his satchel, extracting lumps of blue and phosphorescent yellow chalk, and waxed string wound on a brown bobbin that shimmered due to the minute bits of glass adhering to the string, and a great blue bottle, its stopper a combination of cork and green marble. Her eyes were hazed with some strong emotion; she licked her lips frequently, to the point where they seemed fuller, riper, readier. At the sight of the bottle, she made a choked noise of disappointment.
"You are to set it out so Kim’s ghost may flee into it," he said. "If she does, you are to stopper it and bring it to me. Do you understand?"
"But Ellie?" she breathed.
He sorted through the chalk. "We will remove her."
She held the blue bottle to her, twined her arms around it. "How long?"
"I have sent the family and staff away for the afternoon," he said. "They will not return until evenfall. Plenty of time."
She helped him chalk symbols on the walls, on the floors. Helped him unwind the string to form glittering paths. Between them, the symbols and string would drive the ghosts along a certain path, corner them in the room the Doctor had chosen, the mirror of the fire-destroyed eastern wing, its counterpart to the west. Together he and Charlotte rearranged the furniture there until it matched the description of the twins’ room that Efora had given him. He double-checked it all while Charlotte set up cones of incense in the bedroom and the blue bottle on the mantelpiece.
Standing in the center of the building, the great dining room, its shadowy confines echoing the basso of his voice, he chanted, the old chants that he had been taught as an apprentice, the ones he knew so well he could sing them in his sleep, had even woken up with them on his lips, familiar as a kiss, the old and wonderful words that called the ghosts from wherever they were lurking, made them manifest in the center of his string and chalk only to go scurrying like mice, fleeing wildly along the pathways, to the room where Charlotte waited.
He followed, still chanting, treading up the stairway to the western room. Technically, it wasn’t still necessary, the chanting, but it helped drown out the sounds from the room where Charlotte waited for the ghosts, drown out the dreadful gobbling sounds, the voracious laugh, the satiated noise that was somehow the worst of all?
He saw at a glance when he came in that Kim had not managed to make it to the bottle. He would have given her even odds, and there was always the chance Charlotte would not play fair, either.
Charlotte herself sat on the bed, smiling off into space. She looked stretched, almost distended, as though her body held more than it should. That would pass off within a day or so, but he would have to be careful of her for a little while.
But for all that she weighed no more than a handful of feathers.
He carried her to her room, and went to open the building’s main doors. Efora and the others stood there.
"The exorcism is over," he said. "I regret to say both ghosts chose to pass on."
Efora held herself taller, as though the shock had pulled her upright. Behind her, the others simply looked relieved.
"My companion’s weak constitution has suffered during the rigors of the ceremony," he said. "I will care for her tonight, but in the morning, if you will pay for a pedal-cab, we will move to the inn we have chosen." He would swaddle her in blankets, pass off her appearance as illness. Then they could begin to look around for more ways to make money quickly, problems like this one to be solved, before they moved on.
For they could not linger, could not settle, much as he longed to. Sooner or later another ghost handler would see them, would know Charlotte for what she was.
That night she lay unmoving beside him in the narrow bed. Far away the night watch called the half-hour as the patrol passed on its way down the terraces before taking the Great Tram back up to the top and starting anew.
Two ghosts in a single night would sustain her for at least a fortnight, although she would grow irritable long before the end of that.
She was not sleeping. She never slept.
"Charlotte?" he said into the dark.
"Yes?" Her voice was alert, polite.
"What do you want, my dear?"
Silence. Then, "I don’t know what you mean."
"They say ghosts would prefer to pass on to the afterlife, to pursue their own journeys."
"Rather than be eaten, you mean?"
"That. Or . . ."Here he paused, the pause as delicate as a butterfly. "Or forced to wander this earth as companion to a failing man."
"Ah, that." She turned. Her face glowed, the faintest of lights, as though to emphasize her words. "Bring me ghosts, failing man, and as long as that is done, I will wander this earth with you."
He watched her face, his own still troubled. But in the end, he laid back on his pillow, and reached his hand out to twine it with hers, falling asleep as she lay beside him, awake in the darkness, with her glow fading away.
The Soldier Who Swung at the End of a Thread
— M. David Blake
Ossuera was a good soldier. She followed orders. She spent a compulsory term as medic, returned as infantry, survived field promotions, returned as a hero, and accepted reenlistment to demonstrate loyalty under the new regime. She served in the next justifiable conflict. And the next. It was a good life, and there were many wars.
Then the wars ended.
When she was awoken by the old man in olive drab, Ossuera was frightened. She knew the uniform well. It was a style favored by the winning side from a score of years previous, and bore reminders of every war across the span of human memory. The man’s face was contorted by a series of subcutaneous threads, the dark laces of which peeked from the edges of each orifice, and broke through the deep fissures that lined his visage.
He was too familiar. Ossuera thought she might have been tortured—or perhaps rescued—by this man during some previous conflict in which both had served.
The two sat in silent contemplation of their respective roles. Ossuera bleakly thought of herself as a wounded animal, not quite ready to die. She regarded the old man as an unanticipated predator, belly full yet trying to decide upon the strength of an appetite.
"Hungry?" asked the old man.
Ossuera blinked and nodded, and sneezed.
The old man crooked an eyebrow, and reached a hand to feel Ossuera’s forehead. Ossuera weakly grabbed the man’s arm.
"Easy, soldier," grunted the old man. "You need a medic."
Ossuera saw no need for a response. There were no more medics, and soon there would be no more Ossuera. Let the man frighten some other soldier, if he could find one.
"Roll over," said the man, with a lift and a shove.
Ossuera didn’t bother to fight. It would just be a different way to die.
"There," he muttered, as he ripped the last of Ossuera’s tattered attire from her shoulders, and then "We’ll just get this on you," as he lowered something onto her back.
It was warm, and wet, and then spreading. Ossuera barely had the strength to be frightened as she felt fire rolling down her spine, across her clavicle, around her ribs. Warmth poured through her limbs, infused her tongue, and wrapped itself around her slack form.
As one convulsive act, the thing constricted. The surface against her skin separated into an infinity of sharpened threads, which shot into her flesh. Every thread tip sought—and found—part of a nerve, and then, as one, they unleashed all the fury of the last portable energy source on Earth.
The last war had seen monumental upheaval in the structure of combat. No bullets flew. No missiles fell. Men and women went about their lives much as they had always done in times of peace.
Ossuera was at loose ends, unaccustomed to peace.
/> She went through her days unsure of even the most innocuous encounter. Was her butcher an operative of the enemy, or the milkmaid a friend?
As the last war ground to a halt, Ossuera was even less sure of who had won. One side or the other, or possibly even one of a hundred splinter facets of sides that once had been, had pulled a trigger, or pressed a button, or thrown a switch. Without any warning or claim of responsibility, the butcher and the milkmaid and another four billion souls were suddenly, swiftly, silenced.
Society’s reaction was swift as well. Those who died were all, to one degree or another, operatives of an enemy. As soldiers any one of them might have pulled a similar lever or thrown an identical switch, had their side prevailed. Their houses were burned to the ground, their possessions thrown into the pyre, and every person who survived supervised his neighbor so that none might come upon any weapon alone, and resurrect the war.
Ossuera’s house was burned with the rest. She had been out, and felt terror in the milkmaid’s grip as the girl collapsed, convinced Ossuera was the one who killed her.
For the first night in longer than she could possibly remember, Ossuera shed tears for the dead.
"Feeling better?" asked the old man.
"Some," answered Ossuera.
"A lot," corrected the old man. "You’re wearing a suit now."
It was true. The worn and wasted parts of Ossuera’s body were being repaired. A multitude of threads ran under every millimeter of her skin, lacing themselves through muscle, bone, sinew, and nerve with indiscriminately thorough determination.
"It will keep getting better. Tomorrow you will be stronger. The next day, more so. You’ve never worn a suit before, have you?"
"No," answered Ossuera. She had been a good soldier. If ordered, she would have taken one. She had never been ordered to do so, because she had managed to do everything expected of her without the suit.
"You wouldn’t have put that on by choice, would you?"
Ossuera didn’t respond, because they both already knew the answer.
"You can still take it off, if you’d like," he continued. "Ought to be another eleven hours before it sets."
Ossuera sat still.
"But then," picked up the old man, "you were about ready to die. And if you let go that easily, I win."
"You win?"
"You might still win yourself, you know," he said, and chuckled. "It has to be you or me, because we’re the last ones left."
"Which side are you?" asked Ossuera.
"As of a year ago," responded the old man, "mine. No one else had the stomach to do it."
"Do it?"
"Yes."
The word hung between them for a long moment.
"Our weapon should only have gotten the other side," he continued. "The worst ones. It wasn’t designed to go as far as it did, but it got all of the others. Yours. Mine. All the sides."
"Then I’m the only one left," said Ossuera.
"I thought I was too," answered the old soldier.
The old man led Ossuera from room to room.
"A lot of these places weren’t hidden very well. Not much use after a few thousand flaming corpses were poured into ‘em, anyway. If the survivors had known about this place they’d have done the same to me—burned me alive." He cackled.
By the light of glass shafts extending to the surface, Ossuera saw wonders that filled the vaulted ceilings. Machines piled high. Computers lined a series of corridors in progression from those that filled an entire room down to specimens that might fit under a fingernail, in perverse inversion of their computational capacity. The wars had gone on for a long, long time.
All of that glittering power stood silent.
"Useless crap. No juice up here." He glanced at Ossuera. "You got the last of it, with the suit. No way to fire another one, even if I had another one."
"Then why put me in it?" asked Ossuera.
"Because I’m not a monster," he said. "And neither are you."
"I’m not so sure."
"I am," said the old man. "I’ve started a lot of wars. And when I didn’t start them, I’ve generally been the one who sent the first response."
"You sound like a monster."
"Or a beloved leader, depending on who you ask," he responded.
With a shudder, Ossuera realized who he was. She would have known his face well, without the scarring imposed by the suits.
At one point she would have called his "the worst side." At another she would have followed any order he gave.
"You don’t appear very eager to finish me off," said the old man.
"The war is over. You already won," said Ossuera.
"Semantics," he answered. "I have maybe a week left. I’ve been in a suit long enough that I don’t have the luxury of tapering off and getting out."
"And what do I have?" asked Ossuera.
"You have enough power to let the suit heal you, and wean yourself when you’re strong enough to get out of it." The old man’s eyes fixed on his patient.
Ossuera let out a short cough. Her chest rattled. "Nothing out there for me. I’ll take it off now."
"Sure about that, soldier? You’ve also got something else."
"What?" Ossuera asked.
"Seven days to win the war. After that I go out on top, and anything that remembers humanity hates you forever because you were part of it all."
"And if I kill you first?" whispered Ossuera.
"I won’t make it easy," said the old man. "I’ve been at this a long time, and I was always good at it. Kill me, and you liberate whatever is left of this sorry world."
They spent the evening in the fortress, two old soldiers sharing a meal.
"You don’t kill an adversary in his home," said the old man. "Or in your own, for that matter."
"No," answered Ossuera.
The old man ceremonially poured wine, and lifted his glass. "To the end of the war." It was the toast he had spoken in countless iterations, sometimes to applause, and sometimes to tears. "To the end of this wretched mess."
"What will you do?" asked Ossuera. The unfamiliar glow of the wine warmed her head.
"Finish it," said the old man. "Our weapon was never supposed to go as far as it did. Now it has to go the rest of the way."
"No juice," answered Ossuera, draining her glass.
"Not for suits, there isn’t." The old man’s fingers on the glass looked odd, threads crawling out from under his fingernails and trying to wrap themselves around the stem.
"What then?" asked Ossuera. She wondered how long it would be until her own threads began to show.
"We powered the thing from here. Burned out every relay in the process, and all the wiring in this place is fried."
Candles, reflected Ossuera, had become commonplace. She had not thought of wires or relays in a long time.
"The core is still in good shape, though. Enough power to finish it, and then some. We had no idea how much we’d need, so we overshot." The old man laughed, wiping tears from his eyes. "God, we overshot!"
Ossuera rested her palms on the table. "So you have power for your suit. No need to finish anything."
"Too much raw power for a suit," said the old man, regaining his composure. "It’s too much for anything. If I try to draw just enough juice to milk another few weeks of life out of this one, the core will fry every thread in an instant, and me along with it."
"Wouldn’t that be an end?" asked Ossuera.
"Not an end I can use, damn it," said the old man. "Not one you can let me take, either. You have to win, or you might as well help me finish the rest of them. The world is scared, and they’re never getting better unless they know someone has beaten the monster that did this."
"You said we aren’t monsters," quoted Ossuera.
"To anyone who wasn’t a soldier, we were."
Ossuera thought of the butcher and the milkmaid. To them, she had been a monster.
"War has to serve a purpose," continued the old man. "I’ve
fought to liberate, and to conquer, and for ideals and doctrines."
"I know," said Ossuera.
"We’re going to war again, you and I." There were no more tears in the old man’s eyes. "The whole world can’t lose a war, but the state they’re in now, that might as well be what happened. They’re like a switch that’s only halfway on, and the bulb is flickering. Got to go one way or the other, or they’ll slowly burn out."
"What purpose will a new war serve?" asked Ossuera.
"One of us will win," answered the old man. "And then the world will either be gone, or they’ll be able to lift their faces again."
"If I kill you now, who will know?" Ossuera’s voice sounded very far from her own ears. Her pulse sounded close.
"No one would know, and I almost wish you would," answered the old man. "But you can’t. You are a good soldier, and you need to win as much as they need you to win. If the world doesn’t know, then everything you ever fought for has no purpose."
Ossuera had fought for many reasons. She always believed she fought for the right ones.
Looking down at her hands on the table, Ossuera knew the old man was correct. The threads that had broken through her fingertips were waiting to fulfill their purpose.
"Take whatever you can use," he said. "I won’t be back here until I’m ready to finish it."
"I can’t kill you here."
"You damn well can. This isn’t my home anymore. Or yours, for that matter. In a few hours, it’ll all be fair game."
"We can’t use these," said Ossuera, scanning racks of powered weapons.
"Anything that large would drain the juice too fast. Suit’d be able to power anything small, if you can find it." The old man continued his packing.
Ossuera examined the sidearm she’d carried when the old man found her. It was unpowered.
"That?" snorted the old man. "Jesus. Haven’t seen ammo for those in a long time."
Ossuera held the gun close.
"Don’t take it so hard, soldier. You’d have had to come after me with rocks and sharp sticks, if I hadn’t put you in my last suit." The old man looked up, and barked a short laugh. "Or you wouldn’t. I’d have gone quietly senile, having become death and destroyed the world, while dysentery and malnutrition would have solved your problems. Leave that behind."