The Ghosting of Gods

by Cricket Baker

  “Where was I?” he asks, brushing cracker crumbs from his lips. “Oh, yes. The topic is crystals. I suppose you should know that there are those who are judged unworthy to retain their identity upon resurrection. But that’s the business of asylums. No more talk of tunnelers! I wish them all, crystal balls or no, a merry exodus from Memento Mori. I declare to you I would delight in it.”

  “Hear, hear,” Bethany says, chinking her teacup against George’s. She turns to Ava. “Let us talk of William. He is most clever, and skilled in the art of acquiring valuable items. If anyone, it will be he who finds the Holy Ghost. Who else can get you home? If you gain audience with the Presence, be sure to take along an offering.”

  “What kind of offering?” I ask, startled. “You don’t mean like a goat, do you?”

  She scrunches her nose. “What a disgusting idea. No. However, I cannot say what the offering should be. Nobody knows.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  George intervenes. “No one knows what offering the Holy Ghost accepts. Have you not listened? No one knows where the Presence is hiding. Who, then, could have made the offering? Try to use logic, as I do.” He taps his head. “Not that I would hold out much hope. Ghostly law states that death is required for passage to another world, but Memento Mori is much more strict. Here, the world is not left by even death.” He offers me another wedge of cheese. “But who knows? Maybe in your case an exception will be made, so by all means, take along an offering.”

  I rub my eyes, then glance at Ava and Poe through bleary eyes. “We need the witch’s broom if the Holy Ghost is going to help us get home.”

  “What nonsense,” Bethany says. She’s lacing up again. She’s got some sort of fetish with her boots. “What would the Holy Ghost want with the broom of a coven scientist? I don’t even think they have brooms. They live like animals in the wilderness. Their hair is unruly.”

  Okay. I turn to George. “Do you know where the City of Sacristies is? Could we have a map of that too?”

  “Of course not.”

  I use George logic. “But you know so many things. How do your clocks get to William’s store?”

  “William’s servant traveled back and forth between the two of us, transporting the clocks.”

  “The problem,” interrupts Bethany, taking the edge of the loveseat, “is that William’s servant has mysteriously vanished. The last visit he paid here was well over three years ago. I’m afraid something hideous befell him out in the Memento Mori wilds. Something dreadful.”

  Bethany glows with excitement until George taps his foot impatiently.

  “But I know my brother lives,” George says, a twinge of emotion in his voice. “I would be grateful if you give him the message that I require payment, in the unlikely event you live to find him. His place of business is called The Mansion of Clocks.”

  “Mansion,” Bethany repeats with glassy eyes. “William is very successful.”

  “Of course he is,” George snaps. “He’s selling my clocks, is he not? Let us only hope that when he returns, he knocks on the door rather than digging in my back garden.”

  “Darling, you know the wealthy are a trifle eccentric. It’s to be expected.”

  “He wants to cheat me! Did he think he could craft the clocks himself if he had the antiqued wood? My garden was the only one ransacked, otherwise I would suspect tunneler activity. I know it was William. I never should have mentioned that the secret of my clocks lay buried.That very night the garden was ruined. He took what I said literally!”

  Bethany nods thoughtfully. “He is clever…”

  “He is insane. Where did he get the idea I may be in possession of the clock of the Holy Ghost? His thinly veiled insinuation that I must have had divine inspiration for my clock design…that I could not have done it on my own…I am offended. He meant to insult me!”

  Thunder rolls outside. I will my eyes to stay open. Bethany watches me with a strange smile on her face.

  I don’t like that smile. “Bethany, the spiritual prodigy you spoke of…” my voice trails off. I can’t think what I was going to ask.

  Ava’s slumped against the sofa, her eyes bloodshot.

  Poe is asleep, folded in half in his little chair.

  George gazes at us evenly. I recognize the same smile tug at his mouth that I’d seen on Bethany. I try, but I can’t hold my eyes open a second longer.

  “Something’s wrong,” I mumble to Ava.

  20

  personality disorder

  It’s dark. Loud with wind and rain against a window. I smell garlic.

  My arms are crossed over my chest.

  I’m lying on a bed, I assume in the guest bedchamber of George’s house, but I have absolutely no memory of how I got here. The last thing I remember is George and Bethany smiling strangely. My mind works slowly, as sluggish as my body, but I figure it out.

  George and Bethany drugged my tea.

  I need to get up. But I’m so sleepy.

  Emmy runs to me across the playground with open arms and hugs me. Her breath smells like strawberries, and her mouth is stained red. She places her small hand in mine and leads me to where a group of girls about her age, about eleven years old, are playing. Emmy skips awkwardly, unable to get the rhythm right with her legs. The girls laugh at her. It hurts my heart. Emmy changes direction, leading me down a path. The park is suddenly gone and I don’t know where we are. Darkness plunges around us. Emmy kneels and holds out her hands over a burning bush. “I know you’ll find me, Jesse,” she says. “Give up the ghost.” Her voice is clear and knowing, and I back away. Emmy doesn’t talk like that.

  I reawaken to flickering light and Poe shaking my arm. Cold makes me stiff. Uncrossing my arms, I sit up. Several cloves of garlic roll off my chest and onto the wooden floor.

  The dream disturbs me. I focus on Poe to ground myself in waking reality. “I thought I smelled garlic,” I say. Poe is kneading around on my neck like a cat, and I knock his hands away.

  “I’m checking for puncture wounds,” he explains.

  “You’re what?”

  “Checking to see if you’ve been bitten. I heard flapping last night at the window. I think it might have been vampires. No, you’re okay. I guess the garlic worked.”

  I throw off a yellowed and musty quilt, coughing in the dust I unsettle. I’m on a narrow four poster bed that stands several feet off the floor. “That’s where I slept, underneath,” Poe says, pointing under the bed. “It probably was the safest place. I’m grateful George put me there.”

  Ava stands peeking out the bedroom window. “I’ve locked the door,” she tells me. Coming to me, she touches my face. “How do you feel?”

  “Drugged.”

  She nods. “I woke up in a closet, George’s idea of a guest room, I guess. God, he’s a mental case. The closet was full of little stuffed dogs. Taxidermy. We’re getting out of here.” Her voice catches. “People like this may have Leesel.”

  “I think leaving is a bad idea,” Poe says, his eyes on the floor. “They can keep us safe. Help us find Leesel.”

  I pull on my coat. Still feeling the effects of the drugged tea, I have trouble getting my arms in the sleeves. “Poe. Are you serious? They drugged us, for godsakes. We’re going.” I throw his coat at him.

  “It’s still dark outside,” Ava says. She pulls back the curtain for me to see.

  Bethany’s heart-shaped face is pressed to the grimy glass. Her robe cowl is fallen, her hair soaked.

  “Oh my God,” Ava cries out. “They’re watching us, they’re not going to let us go!”

  Even Poe looks apprehensive at the sight of Bethany as she steps back and lifts a long metal rod of some kind into the air. She wedges the flat end of the tool into the frame at the bottom corner of the window. Spitting rainwater, she raises her elbows and bears down on the tool. I hear her grunting with the effort.

  “The window is sealed,” Ava says. “I think…I think she’s trying to pry it open.”

&n
bsp; There’s a bump in the cottage. A cough. Shuffling outside our door. George is awake.

  The tool slips, scrapes the glass.

  “Good morning?” George says outside the door. “Young Ava, is that you? Jesse? Shame! I’m surprised you wakened so early. Would you like a steaming cup of tea? I will only be a moment. Shall we meet in the sitting room? By the fire, yes?”

  Bethany’s tool slips once more. Losing her balance, she cracks her forehead into the window.

  “What was that noise?” George asks, his voice sharp.

  I gesture at the bedroom door and mouth George at Bethany. She nods and goes back to work, this time carefully positioning the tool at the bottom center of the window. Leaning into it, screwing up her face, she yelps with victory when the seal cracks.

  She winks at me.

  George beats on the door. “Open at once,” he demands. After a pause, “I’m concerned for your safety.”

  “Just a minute,” I call out. “We’re getting our shoes on.”

  In response, George kicks the door.

  I heave at the window to get it up.

  George kicks harder.

  “Come,” Bethany says.

  Ava climbs through, and I shove Poe out after her. George busts through the door as I escape.

  “Follow me, quickly,” Bethany orders.

  A cat hisses at us from the hedge of brambles concealing George’s home. We slip out onto the path leading back into town. Bethany is a dark blur racing away in the rain, but her blonde curls stand out in the darkness, helping me to keep her in sight.

  George calls our names. His woeful voice recedes behind us, wailing.

  “BEWARE…BEWARE…BEWARE…”

  Ghostly white faces appear in windows of the cottages we pass by. Bethany jigs left down an alley, never slowing. I wonder how she’s going so fast in her heeled boots when I notice that it’s her bare feet slapping against cobblestones as she runs. At last she slows, falling into a casual walk.

  I’m struck by the stale reek of ash from dozens of filthy chimneys.

  George hasn’t come after us.

  Having left behind the winding paths of the cottage district, we’re now on a muddied road with buildings I guess serve as stores, judging by the stenciled signs dropping from bulky chains. Misshapen garlands of garlic hang over the doors, attached with hefty nails that look more like spikes.

  A tall figure stands in the road, clutching a bright lantern, soaking up rain. Bethany doesn’t evade him, but greets him by silently strangling her neck.

  “Beware,” he says in a weak, tinny voice. He pushes back his cowl, and though I expect to see an elderly person, I’m surprised by a young man. Piercing eyes, a long straight nose, a square chin, muscular neck—the man resembles a Greek Olympian. Hanging from a leather cord over his robe is a heavy ring bearing dozens of oversized keys. Seeing me look at it, he tucks the keys inside his robe.

  “Sheep without a shepherd,” he says in his strange elderly voice, and clucks. Glancing over us, his eyes stop on Bethany. He bends forward, staring intently, his face only inches from hers.

  She allows it.

  “I know you,” he says.

  Her face lights up. “You shall accept my invitation?”

  “Soon. For now I am busy. Treason is afoot.”

  “Do not worry too much. Come to me, and we shall talk. I wish only to be enlightened by your knowledge.”

  He acknowledges her compliment with a slight bow. “I shan’t be dropping any keys,” he says to the rest of us with a scowl on his face. “There is no hope of freeing prisoners. Do you plot spiritual revolution against the Holy Ghost?”

  “Absolutely not, sir,” Poe answers quickly.

  “Perhaps you could explain your purpose sneaking about the streets so early in the morning.”

  “We’ve lost a little girl and have to find her,” I offer.

  He nods, unsurprised or concerned. “Ah. Well, not to worry,” he says. “I’m certain she’s tucked safely away with the coven to the north.” He pulls an envelope out of his robe. “Deliver this message to the sisters. It’s an important matter.”

  I take the envelope.

  He taps his finger against my chest. “Your presence disturbs me. Why?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.” Nervously, I shrug my shoulders. “Sorry.”

  He backs away from me. “Do you know the Holy Ghost?”

  “What?”

  “He d-dissolves,” the man stutters, eyes wide. “He h-h-hides.”

  I back away, pulling Poe and Ava with me.

  Bethany reaches for the man, but he ducks his head. Flees.

  “God, that was weird,” Ava says, hugging herself to me. She slaps Poe’s hands. “Put away your prayer beads.”

  “This way to the gate,” Bethany says, distracted. I get the idea she wants to chase after the age-anonymous man. She watches until he disappears around the corner.

  “Are you okay?” Poe asks her.

  She sighs. “I’m fine. Do you still have the map I drew for you? Good. Go now, before dawn fully breaks. You’ll find Leesel with the coven.” She stares directly at me. Her eyes go soft. “You’ll find what you seek.”

  She seemed to be saying these last words to me only.

  I must have imagined it. But a bit of faith stirs inside me anyway, even if it doesn’t make sense. I’m either faithful or naïve. I believe I must be here for a reason. I want to believe it. A spiritual prodigy…

  Not a soul crosses our path on the way to the gate. We leave town without incident and head north, away from the river, walking in silence and darkness. Morning breaks, reviving the sickly white sun. The storm is past. The hills are barren of trees, with only dead grasses blowing in the wind. It’s a stark landscape.

  I check the map and point. “We should come across the river again if we keep with this direction. It comes back this way, farther north, see?”

  Ava’s crying. Poe reaches out a hand to her and she slaps it away. “I’m afraid, frustrated,” she says. “We don’t even know if this map is right. Maybe she’s sending us away from Leesel. Maybe Leesel is in the town.”

  I’d already thought the same thing. “I don’t trust Bethany, either,” I confess. “She’s got a personality disorder or something.” I grit my teeth. Think. “If Leesel is trapped in the town, we need outside help. Maybe not everyone in Memento Mori is crazy like the people in that town. When I first saw it, I wondered if they’d been locked up. It’s possible they’ve been banished there. Exiled.”

  Ava starts to argue, but then nods. She smears away her tears and looks with determination at the map. Relief washes over me.

  I want to find the coven.

  “I still don’t think George wanted to hurt us,” Poe says. “Those townspeople aren’t crazy—they’re just scared, and hiding.” He looks at his feet. “I don’t think I like Bethany, though. That man with the keys kinda scared me too.”

  The letter. I take it from my pocket. Before I can think better of it, I break the seal.

  LET IT BE KNOWN TREASON IN THE FORM OF SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION IS PLOTTED. THEFT OF CRYSTAL CONCERNS ALL MEMENTO MORI INHABITANTS, REGARDLESS OF

  DISTRICT, DOCTRINE, OR DEGREE OF DECAY. EMBRACE

  THE SKELETAL RESURRECTION SO KINDLY BESTOWED UPON MEMENTO MORI AND KEEP IT HERE! THE HOLY

  GHOST INCARNATE LIVES. WHETHER HIDDEN OR NOT,

  MATTERS NOT. FEAR!

  take note: make ten copies of this letter and pass on or suffer the consequences of my doubt.

  Saint Thomas

  “Hell,” Ava says. “It’s a chain letter.”

  Poe’s lips move silently in prayer.

  My head hurts. It’s not easy to keep coming back to the idea that we’ve passed into another world. After everything I’ve seen, I believe it, and yet I don’t.

  We don’t know what we’re doing, or where we’re going, or what can happen to us.

  Not that it matters.

  Leesel’s gone, and we have to
find her.

  21

  hungry ghosts

  My coat’s not heavy enough to cut the relentless wind. The sun slides sideways over a herd of wooly sheep that huddles for warmth, or maybe safety, in the grasses. There’s no shepherd to guide them.

  A leaf, carried on the wind, tumbles across my path. Its sickly yellow surface has been charred black along one side.

  Another leaf, and another, finds its way to me. The burned leaves stick to my shoes and clothes, catch on my face just long enough for me to smell the smoke on them. Chills run along the back of my neck and down my body. Poe stops. He’s looking at me, and at the leaves.

  The phenomena accelerates. The leaves are coming to me. Not just blowing on the wind, but coming to me. It’s a deranged thought, I know it, but there it is.

  A sketchy path of scorched leaves lies before me, leading off to the left and disappearing into the forest not far ahead.

  Ava comes up beside me, panting, her hands on her hips. She sees the fluttering path of leaves and frowns. “Haunted leaves, Poe?” she asks. “From a haunted forest?” She bends over, picks up a leaf, tosses it into the wind. Swirling, it begins to blow away, then stops in mid-air. It falls suddenly and heavily, like a brick, exactly where it had been before. Ava repeats this experiment several times, walking ahead of me and Poe.

  She never looks at me suspiciously. She doesn’t connect the strange burned leaf phenomenon to me at all.

  I’m relieved. Disappointed. I don’t want her to know there’s something weird about me. Or special.

  Poe is watching me. I shake off my feelings, try to look normal.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Ava says. She looks in all directions. “Maybe there’s nothing in this entire world but George’s town. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about Bethany. I think…she knew where Leesel is. We’re doing the right thing, following this map, aren’t we?” She holds out the map, looks desperate.

  “I think we have to at least try the map,” I reply. “It’s a better option than asking for help in the town where everyone was in hiding or drugging us with tea.”

  Ava takes a deep breath. Squares her shoulders. “Okay, then. We follow the haunted path.” She studies the map. “It leads in the direction we’re going.”