The Parliament of the Dead

by T. A. Donnelly

  Father Thomas stood up. “This is all wrong. That girl was shot tonight. Weshot her. Whatever we are doing cannot be worth risking human lives!”

  His leader smiled indulgently at his assistant. “My dear young Father, what is right and what is wrong does not depend on our fallible feelings. What is right and what is wrong depends on what the Holy Church tells us is right and wrong. The Church was right to set up the Inquisition. When politics made it impossible to openly search out lost souls who were alive, it was rightthat that the Inquisition continued to seek the souls of the dead and the fallen.”

  “But the girl was alive.” Father Thomas slumped back down. “Surely life is sacred,”he added weakly.

  “We are just bringing their souls closer to God their Maker. By force if necessary.”

  Father Thomas shook his head, but said nothing. He covered his eyes with his hand to hide the tears that were beginning to flow once more.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Lady

  with the Lamp

  The ghosts carried Iona and Tiggy along the North Bank of the Thames, up over the Strand, to their flat on Fleet Street.

  As soon as they arrived Tiggy wanted to look at Iona’s wound. Iona slumped into the sofa while her mother crouched beside her. Tiggy took one of Iona’s arms out of her T-shirt so she could see it clearly. There was quite a lot of blood, but the bleeding had slowed. Some of the pellets from the shotgun had penetrated her shoulder.

  “Oh darling, we really must get you to a hospital.” She continued to inspect Iona’s shoulder, “and then we must go to the Police. This isn’t right, they can’t be allowed to get away with shooting children!”

  “Mum,”Iona replied with irritation in her voice, the limited amount of patience she usually possessed was crushed by the pain in her shoulder,“one of the Houses of Parliament has been vandalized, and we were on the scene. Who do you think is going to get into trouble here?”

  As they talked the ghosts who had carried them started to take visible form and drift around Iona’s living room.

  Arthur touched Tiggy on the shoulder. “Your daughter is correct. The Police will believe the word of a delegation of priests and monks before they believe a reporter and her teenage daughter.” Arthur looked sadly at Tiggy’s stunned face. “However, you are right about one thing: your daughter does need medical attention.”

  The small room was rapidly filling with the survivors of the Parliament. Arthur looked into the swirling and chattering cloud of spirits and called to a lady in a black dress holding an old-fashioned hurricane lamp.

  Arthur called the ghost over and asked her to inspect Iona’s injury. The ghost was clearly delighted to be needed and smiled broadly as she drifted over to have a look.

  “With all this bleeding…”the ghost’s voice was that of an educated woman,“…there will be no need for leeches.”

  Iona and her mother looked at each other.

  “Cut the sideshow spook act. Leeches were long out of fashion in your day,”said Arthur sternly. “Can you help her?”

  “Of course I can,” replied the spirit, holding her lamp next to the wound to get a better view.

  Iona felt a deep and painful chill as the nurse’s fingers moved through the flesh of her shoulder, and one by one picked out the pellets that had been embedded there.

  “Be gentle!”cried Tiggy.

  Iona reached over and took her mother’s hand. “I’m OK.”

  “You’d be better sooner if you’d sit still!” Grumbled the ghostly nurse.

  Chapter Forty

  Dead and Despairing

  Morag floated through the streets of London in a daze.

  “The Parliament of the Dead was supposed to save us: organise our revenge,”she mumbled to herself.

  “Harold’s gone, Gibbs has gone, the Parliament has gone...”she looked through her ghostly hand,“...and even I have gone.”

  She started to weep.

  She felt the presence beside her before she saw it. It was the Grey Monk, still covering his head with a leather bag, and nervously looking up to the sky.

  “Dear lady,”he said softly,“don’t despair. It’s not over yet. Those who survived are gathering in the home of that living child in Fleet Street.”

  Morag said nothing, but she stopped sobbing.

  “Revenge is not something I really approve of...”the Monk continued,“...but we must do something about these breathers with guns.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  A hope in Hell

  Iona’s house was full to overflowing with the remnants of the Parliament, who had seemed to sense each other’s presence and had gravitated to the flat.

  “We really must go to the Police,”Tiggy was insisting to Iona as a group of ghosts gathered to listen to the discussion.

  Iona was not impressed. “But they won’t believe that we‘just happened’to be in the House of Lords at midnight when it was trashed by angry vicars!”

  Tiggy bit her lip, “If only I hadn’t dropped my bag, we could use the film for evidence.” Then she sat up. “Of course the Police will find the bag and watch the tape; they’ll see what really happened.”

  “Mum?” Iona looked puzzled,“What tape? What bag? What are you talking about?”

  “I brought my hidden camera to the Parliament. It was in the bag I was carrying. If only I hadn’t dropped it!”

  The ghost of a portly monk in grey who had just arrived, spoke up, “Excuse me, do you mean this?” He held up Tiggy’s soggy leather bag.

  With a whoop Tiggy leapt up and snatched the bag. She tried to kiss the Grey Monk, but fell through him awkwardly.

  “Em thanks!”she muttered uncomfortably as she got back to her feet.

  Everyone watched as she took the disk from the camera, placed it in the drive of her computer, and switched it on.

  The video was badly distorted.

  “I never show up on video,”muttered one ghost, pointing to the screen,“unlike that show-off.” The ghost was indicating a figure dressed in a brightly-coloured medieval costume who had wandered in front of the camera.

  The image kept breaking up every few seconds: the presence of so many ghosts seemed to have affected the camera. When the smoke bomb was set off and sprinklers began to work it was almost impossible to decipher the jumbled images. However, when the exorcists entered the chamber their images were captured perfectly. It was clear they were firing weapons, even if what they were firing at was not obvious.

  Then, just before the camera was dropped, appeared the snatched image of Iona being shot.

  “Bingo!”whispered Tiggy. “This is what we’ll take to the Police!”

  “But you must protect the Parliament of the Dead; you cannot let any other breathers know of our existence!” It was Judge Henry Hawkins; he too had escaped.

  “You could edit it.” Iona suggested, “so that it only shows the priests going mental. Just cut out the beginning with all the blurry shots of ghosts, the rest is kind of weird, but it won’t give away any secrets.”

  “We need to make a start, the longer we wait before going to the Police, the more suspicious it will seem.” Tiggy rubbed her neck as she sat down in front of her computer. “And I’ll have to cut it so that it doesn’t look edited…”

  Judge Hawkins continued to argue for a few minutes, but when he could see that he was getting nowhere he vanished through the floor wittering to himself.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Sympathy for the Devil

  All eyes turned to Father Pious when his mobile phone rang. (The ringtone was an obscure song by the Rolling Stones.)

  “Yes…”

  “I see…”

  “Yes…”

  “Magnificent!”

  Father Pious ended his call and looked around the room in triumph. “The ghosts have reassembled at the house of that girl. This could be our chance to finish them off.”

  Father Thomas stifled a sob. The others looked weary, but determined to complete t
he job they had started.

  “But it is not all good news, we have to move now,”added the leader,“they have a video-recording of our attack; our existence must remain secret; the recording has to be retrieved or destroyed.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Something Wicked

  this way Comes

  After some time Tiggy Ward completed her editing of the digital recording of events at the House of Lords. She stored the footage on the hard drive of her computer, and made a copy onto a disk. She labelled it:“Church and State,”with a journalistic flourish, and sat back in her chair. Looking around her she saw the air in her small flat swim with ghosts.

  Just the day before she had thought that her daughter’s obsession with the undead had been unhealthy and foolish. Reflecting on the events of the last few hours she realised that it may be unhealthy (after all Iona had been shot in the shoulder) but it certainly was not foolish.

  * * *

  While Tiggy had been hard at work on the disk, Sweeney Todd had joined the gathering in her house. He soon focussed the ghosts’discussions onto the subject of revenge.

  “I killed one, we can kill the rest of them. This is war.”

  The Grey Monk disagreed. “They exorcised half of the Parliament: over a hundred of us. We cannot hope to defeat them. We must rely on the living lady’s evidence to bring us justice.”

  When his body had been damaged by the exorcists the mummy, Nubkheperra, had found some old bandages to animate. They in turn had been destroyed in the attack on the Parliament, so now he created the shape of a mummy with pink toilet-paper from Iona’s bathroom. His appearance attracted some strange looks even from the bizarre company of the dead. Seeming oblivious to the stir he was causing, Nubkheperra spoke:“I do not understand this evidence on disks and cameras, but I do understand war. Surely in a war of the dead against the living, the dead will always win in the end.”

  “War it is!”cried Judge Hawkins, floating back up through the floor. “We must make plans. Let us reconvene the Parliament here and now. We will need to regroup and regain our strength, many of us were weakened by the attack.”

  Arthur took to his feet. His form was still blurred and he looked grey. “How long have you all been in existence?” He asked the ghosts around him. “How long? And what have you learned in that time? None of us here led good lives.”

  Judge Hawkins tried to disagree, but Arthur spoke over his objections, “None of us, HangingJudge Hawkins. That’s why we came back. To learn the lesson in death that we could not learn in life. To go to war against the living is like going to war against children. They are the same as us, only younger.”

  Iona moved to stand next to Arthur. “Listen, this disk will get these priests into so much trouble they will never be able to exorcise anyone again. Let’s take it to the Police. There’s no need for war.”

  * * *

  The discussion was cut short by a knock at the door.

  “None of us would knock!”said Arthur looking towards the stairs that led down to the front door.

  “I had noticed,” murmured Tiggy quietly to herself.

  “It’s almost three in the morning,”said Iona,“it’s got to be the Police. If it is, you lot vanish.”

  She left the flat and walked down the hallway to the top of the stairs. Suddenly the front door was smashed off its hinges. To her horror Iona recognised the face of Father Pious as he looked straight at her. The priest’s face was twisted with anger as he pointed a pistol at Iona and fired. She could hear the bullet as it passed by her ear. She spun on the spot and sprinted back towards the internal door which she slammed shut and bolted behind her.

  “Everybody out! This door won’t hold them for long.”

  Some of the ghosts had been so affected by the previous attack that they were barely hanging onto their existence. Several of them could only move slowly.

  “I’ll look after the disk.” Judge Hawkins scooped it up as he moved towards the back of the house.

  Iona hesitated; she looked around for Arthur and saw him standing by the door.

  “You go,” insisted Arthur, “I’ll hold them off.”

  “But you can’t,”Iona was trembling as she spoke,“they’ll kill you!”

  Something heavy smashed against the door. The wood cracked, but remained intact.

  “My dear child, I need to give you and the others a chance to escape,”Arthur smiled,“besides, I owe you.”

  “Don’t be a prat,” Iona was still panting, but she was beginning to control her shaking, “you don’t owe me anything.”

  The door was struck again, more cracks appeared and the wood began to splinter.

  “I killed your ancestor, remember. I shot Tom King.”

  “Oh please!”shouted Iona,“get over it! We need you. Your dead friends need you.”

  “You know I wasted my life, I was a brutal robber. Then I wasted my afterlife trying to make myself a legend, a hero. Let me do this last noble deed,”Arthur coughed,“my firstnoble deed. Now go!”

  The ghosts were already drifting out through the back wall. Tiggy grabbed Iona by the arm,“The fire escape,”she pointed towards the back window,“let’s go!”

  Iona broke free from her mother and gave Arthur a hug. She could feel that he wasn’t quite solid. “Goodbye Arthur, and good luck.”

  Iona and Tiggy flung open the window, clambered onto the fire escape, and slammed the window shut behind them.

  The door of the flat broke apart and priests and monks flooded into the room. Arthur stood in the middle of the carpet and held up his hands in a gesture that could have been one of surrender or welcome.

  Father Pious spat onto the floor, and nodded his head towards Arthur:“Get rid of it.”

  Two of his priests levelled their shotguns at Arthur and took aim.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Arthur’s End

  “Wait!” Arthur spoke with such authority that the Exorcists paused to hear what he had to say. “I have some information for you.”

  Father Pious looked at Arthur with contempt. “You are a creature of lies; what you have to say is of no interest to us.”

  “I can tell you where to find dozens of ghosts.”

  Father Pious shook his head, “You offer too little too late. We already have a most useful informer.”

  As the priest was speaking the window opened again and Judge Hawkins floated back into the room carrying the disk.

  “This is what you want, Fathers, and there is another copy in this machine.” He indicated Tiggy’s computer.

  Father Pious took a shotgun from one of his companions, checked that it was loaded and then emptied both barrels into the computer’s hard drive.

  Arthur ignored the destruction of the computer; he was still looking at the Judge in disbelief. “You have been helping these people?”

  “Yes Arthur,”replied Judge Hawkins,“I have. How else do you think they knew the time and location of the Parliament?”

  “But all that talk about war just now…”

  “…Was just to keep you all here long enough for the Exorcists to arrive.”

  “Why are you helping them?” Arthur could not understand it.“You of all people. You were always so dedicated to the rules. Have you made a deal that they will spare you at the end of all this?”

  “I’m helping them because what they are doing is right, Arthur.” The Judge sounded frustrated and tired,“We deserve to be exorcised. Our very beingbreaks the rules of life and death. And, as you say, I am very much dedicated to the rules. You see, I don’t want to be spared, I want to be put to rest.”

  “But those who are ready for it look for their end: they complete their unfinished business, learn their lessons, and move on.” Arthur surprised himself as he spoke. He had not spent his afterlife thinking deep thoughts. He had simply tried to turn himself into a famous figure. Looking back over his life and death it all seemed to make sense for the first time. “You need to allow people to find their own way
, make their own choice. I don’t know where these ghosts go when your friends exorcise them. It might even be a better place. But they should get to choose.”

  Father Pious had been listening to the conversation with one eyebrow raised. “Fascinating,”he said,“but Arthur, or Dick Turpin, or whoever you are, it really is time to face your Maker.”

  The monks once again pointed their guns at Arthur.

  “Wait!”he shouted again,“I really do have something important to tell you.” Arthur was calculating how far he thought Iona would have run in the time he had kept the Exorcists talking.

  “Talk!”ordered Father Pious.

  “Well, I lived for over thirty years, and then I have been a ghost for over two hundred and fifty years.”

  “Get to the point!” snarled the priest.

  “Well when I was alive I was a bad man. And since I have been dead I have met the ghosts of thieves, murderers, cutthroats, and all of the very worst that humankind has to offer.” Arthur looked at the people surrounding him, poised to shoot him in an instant. “And among all these dregs of humanity, the warped and twisted souls that can find no rest…”Arthur paused for effect“…among the spirits of the lost and the damned, I have never met, I have never encountered such hatred and evil as I see in your hearts, you pathetic, narrow minded, empty-headed bigots!”

  Father Thomas winced.

  “Right, that’s it!”snapped Father Pious. “Finish him”.

  But before the priest could finish speaking Arthur looked down at his body, which was dissolving into a cloud of dust, while a light seemed to glow from inside him, and it grew brighter as his body became more indistinct.

  “My God, you can’t exorcise me!” He spoke with amazement in his voice, which was beginning to sound distant, “I’m going of my own free will. I have found my rest.”