Touched

by A. J. Aalto

  Mrs. Davis teetered face-first out of her chair; Harry changed directions mid-stride. With eye-blurring speed he swooped her up and whisked her out the front door, where ambulances were starting to noisily arrive.

  Dunnachie hissed, “Witch,” at me, and crossed himself.

  “You can roast me later, if you think that'll make your version of God happy,” I said distractedly, not taking my eyes off the ghoul. Dunnachie made a strangled noise.

  Hood choked on the stench as the thing wafted past him, “Tell us what you need us to do, here, Baranuik.”

  I'd stepped up to bat. Sometimes I'm stupid like that. One half of my brain said, fuck this noise, and tried to convince me to run for it. I really wanted to listen to that part. The other half said calmly, “This is not a zombie. This is a ghoul. It doesn't want to be here any more than we want it. It is enslaved by a demon.”

  “So what can we do?” Hood demanded.

  “No sudden movements.” I jerked my head in the direction of the front door. “Nice and easy, get the fuck out of here. And tell those EMS guys to stay out. Treat it like a fire: don't send a bunch of extra bodies rushing in.”

  Dunnachie was drawing down on it with a massive horse of a gun, some kind I'd never seen but definitely a force to contend with, while his mouth moved silently. I was betting he was reciting the Lord's Prayer. Fat lot of good the prayer or the gun would do him, tonight. The ghoul itself was under the direct control of a lesser demon, and she didn't want Dunnachie. The ghoul didn't notice anyone now but me. Yay me!

  While Beethoven for beginners played in the next room, the young girl who would never play again gave my ruined jacket a long sniff and then writhed along the floor in my direction, her shoulders undulating slowly like a puma in a cage at the zoo, padding with otherworldly precision. So much for music soothing the savage breast. The smell she shed in her wake was a rank heavy wave; my stomach lurched as bile stung and churned high in the back of my throat.

  Hold it together, Marnie, I thought as I stepped backward inch by inch, nodding. “That's right, sweetheart. This way.” I kept my voice steady, pointing at Dunnachie and Hood. “Mark, clunk Curly and Larry's heads together and get them the fuck out of here, so we can deal.”

  Batten wrested several long, sharpened stakes out of elasticized slots in his kit.

  “Mark… are you listening? That shit isn't gonna help,” I said, shedding my high heels in case I had to bolt in my stocking feet. I abruptly ran out of space again in a corner. I didn't think another spell to lift me through limbo-space was such a brilliant idea, since I was getting angry red hives all up the inside of my arms from the not-so-white magic.

  The ghoul stopped for a minute and shuddered long and hard like it was preparing to vomit. Batten was creeping up behind it, the preternatural incarnation of the Crocodile Hunter.

  “Hey dicksmack,” I barked. “Try listening!”

  Sightless, the ghoul nonetheless stalked me as I sidled right. I tried a feint left, and it matched me easily. Her muscles tensed like a cat getting ready to leap. I went for the Beretta, knowing it was pointless, wanting it anyways… and found it missing. Fuckanut. I heard Chapel to my left check his clip and cock his gun.

  Out of reasonable options, I bellowed: “Harry?”

  The revenant returned too fast for human eyes to track, blowing past them in a blur of billowing coat and pale flesh. Dunnachie fired off two rounds in rapid succession, hitting Harry in the back. Flesh and cloth flew from his wound.

  Harry grunted, “Father, shield her!” and cast his hand at Chapel.

  Harry's coat fluttered over him like a descending murder of crows on an abandoned dirt road. Too shocked, what I cried out wasn't a word. Chapel made a short, horrified bellow of agony, doubling over. Batten shouted something I couldn't make out. The ghoul ignored it all, encroached on my personal space another stalking, creeping step.

  “Restless spirit, I implore you!” I cried. “I do not have anything else for you! Harry? Harry, answer me! Mark, help him!”

  The ghoul reared up, bent fingers scrabbling at the terrible stitches all around the bloat in its delicate yellowing throat. Fat goblets of bruise-blue and greenish flesh rained down from the chin as it shook her head madly, gurgling. Something that looked like bloody snot poured out of its nose. Half of its scalp slid forward, auburn hair a sticky mat.

  Harry writhed, relentlessly pressing forward across the stained Berber despite an inhuman howl brewing in the back of his throat. He held up a warding hand as Batten circled with a stake. How he knew that Batten was fixed on the ghoul and not on finally staking a wounded adversary, I didn't know, but Harry rasped with full confidence, “She will turn on you. Please do be careful, lad.”

  Batten said, “Hope you mean the ghoul.”

  Hood regained the ability to speak. “Baranuik, how do we kill it?”

  “Fire,” I answered. “Shoot it a hundred times, or cut it in a million pieces, it will just keep coming. Only fire, or the one who raised it, can end this.”

  “So what do I do?” Batten snapped, knuckles white on the stakes. “Get a fuckin’ flamethrower?”

  I heard Harry's wry, muffled, “Shruff and cinders.”

  “You let me deal with it, for fuck's sake,” I snapped, balling my fists. Under my breath, I called to her. “Kristin. Krissie.”

  The ghoul came around to face me again, and this time Chapel fired, two pops that sounded fake, but which took a piece of Dead Kristin's shoulder off in a spray of bone chips. She ignored it, lifting parched lips off pale gums to snarl at me, flashing plaque-packed metal braces. As she gnashed her teeth together, enamel snapped and she spit the bits. I slid as far as possible into the corner, pressing my back into the wall hard. Her skin had slipped off some more and now half of her face was just so much raw meat. One socket, crammed with the clear fleshy shred of a ruined eye like a pile of scrambled egg white, attempted to blink at me. The other cavity just goggled, raw and open, waiting.

  “Krissie, I didn't know it was your eye, I swear,” I breathed. “I don't have the other one with me.” I showed the sightless creature my shaking hands. “See?” Of course it doesn't see, stupid. Does it? “I don't have it. Look!”

  I focused hard on my palms, an idea forming. It was crazy, but even as I thought that, my fingertips spread and cupped to form a wide bowl.

  Drawing down the moon was a long shot, but as my lips started to move, nascent light immediately shimmered to life between my fingertips. It grew quickly, flashing in roping lines across the skin of my palms. There, written on my flesh, was the promise of the Goddess. When I doubted, She did not, and it was time to trust Her opinion.

  It got heavy all of the sudden and I nearly dropped it. The muscles in my forearms snapped to attention to hold it still in exactly the position it began, and my fingers curled into near-claws to contain the power spilling through me into the bowl of my palms.

  “By the count of one, the spell's begun,” Last chance to opt out. If I cocked it up, I'd call the full heat of the sun, which could only end in a massive Marnie-kafoomf. I'd lose my eyebrows. Again.

  “By the count of two, my blessing's due/ By the count of three, suffer my need/ By the count of four, Dark Lady's lore,” My voice thickened and I had to shove it out. “By the count of five, the spell's alive/ By the count of six, my force be fix'd/ By the count of seven, so lightly given/ By the count of eight…”

  That's when I drew a blank. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Harry jerk like I'd slapped him. Forgetting his promise to restrain himself, he lunged up.

  “Harry, no!” I commanded, but he would not hear. He was a visual blur, a crow drawn in black finger-paint streaks, as he stole Dunnachie's baton from his utility belt, whipping it around overhead and coming at the ghoul. The ghoul reached for him. Harry swung the baton up and under her arm, flipping her around in a submissive hold that twisted her to one knee. Bullet wounds or not, with superhuman strength, the two undead creatures set against one another
, straining with set grimaces. Dead Kristin's joints cracked. Harry officially crossed legal lines with a determined, fangs-out hiss, putting his preternatural weight behind his clinch. The ghoul's shoulder joint buckled outward with a wet, warning pop. I had to stop him.

  The moon's gentle glow filled my hands as Hecate's power raced in to reclaim the ground She had lost to my dabbling with limbo-space. It flickered like a candle near-snuffed by a draft and I shouted: “By the count of eight, the divine awaits/ By the count of nine, Her light be mine!”

  As the glow swelled, I rushed forward, swinging it at the ghoul's face. A taut sphere of the divine captured in a witch's blessed hands. It bubbled up against the poker-hot black sludge of the demon's handle on Dead Kristin's ghoul. One touch was enough.

  The ghoul swiped at me with its free arm, hitting me just the wrong way, fist connecting with my cheekbone and pelting me over hard. With a throaty grind the ghouls’ head rocked back, knocking Harry's chin and breaking the revenant's hold. Whipping to her feet, Dead Kristin launched across her own shattered casket, pouring liquid-smooth through the air, surprisingly agile for a decomposing slab of meat. The ghoul landed like a jungle cat on all fours on the other side, limbs rebounding flexibly despite their injuries. Harry spun after her in a soaring arc of cold, savage energy. Batten tore through the space with a stake raised, and his approach was accepted by the wide-wing outstretch of the ghoul's embrace. She flung wide her arms to catch him like a child caught by a father playing toss-the-baby.

  The stake sank in between her ribs and snapped in his hand but the response was lightning quick. She whipped him through the room like he was made of balled paper, then shoved past a horrified Rob Hood, flailing him aside.

  Harry made a dismayed snarl and sprang back to his feet despite the bullets imbedded in his ribs, rocketing towards the ghoul. At the same time Harry's baton rose again to strike. Kristin Davis’ badly spoiled cadaver fell under Harry's swoop, disappearing into a back room, clattering furniture down and shrieking as she went, leaving behind a trail of hot sick.

  Harry and Chapel went after it like a shot. Dunnachie lowered his gun and looked to me for an explanation, eyebrows puckered in a twist. Hood was wiping, wiping, wiping his arm with his hand, his pasty face quickly greening to match the tone of the quivering gunk stuck to him.

  “You shot him,” I accused Dunnachie, who looked genuinely baffled. “You humungous asshole. You shot Harry.”

  Dunnachie's mouth worked impotently, then said, “I thought…”

  Batten dropped to a knee beside me. “Marnie, your stitches. Are you all right?”

  I thought about it. There was putrefied ghoul sludge on my cheek and hands. It smelled like someone had dumped a rancid box of meat in an old cheese factory.

  “Excuse me,” I gulped, bolting. I used my elbows to bang open the bathroom doors and shove the faucets on. Running water over the jiggling feculent goo didn't cut it. I pumped soap madly from the dispenser with my bare hands. The Blue Sense flared into unexpected vivid reaction. As nausea blared in my gut. I tried to force up a psychic wall to block it, but caught the faintest whiff of a sordid mind, a trace of black magic on the soap pump. I slammed my eyelids shut and tried to block it. Images squeezed into my brain like cold fingers nonetheless—need want hunger rage—and I scrubbed harder between my fingers until the vision began to lift.

  Carefully breathing through my mouth, I checked my hands front and back to see if they were clean. An experimental sniff told me they were definitely not. I washed them again. And again. After the fifth wash I found a paper-thin strip of overripe tissue stuck under my fingernails that wouldn't come out.

  I didn't know whether to cry or barf. So I did both.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Explain to me,” Batten said from the front seat of their SUV, “why you had Davis’ eyeball in a Ziploc bag in your pocket?”

  “I thought it belonged to a newt.” I sniffed at my fingernails. They smelled vile, so bad I couldn't believe it and had to check again.

  Batten inhaled deeply through his nostrils, exhaling nice and slow. One of his hands stroked his forehead. “Tell me.”

  “I saw these filmy things in my jar, which should have only contained eyes of newt. I suppose the fact that I had fifteen should have tipped me off, or size of them, right? But they were broken, and I didn't really inspect them. I assumed.” I sighed. “And you know what they say when you assume.”

  “You make an ass of you and me, and accidentally raise a ghoul at her own funeral?” Batten finished with unexpected grim humor.

  Beside me, Harry reached for my hand, noticed me sniffing it, and changed his mind. His nose scrunched as he searched his pockets for his monogrammed handkerchief.

  “How did Kristin Davis’ eye get in your jar?” Batten asked.

  “All in favor of going another round with the Demented Mailman theory?”

  “Don't toy with me, MJ,” he said.

  I froze with alarm. Harry abruptly stopped rubbing the gunshot wounds in his back against the seat like a cat against its master's legs. He craned sideways at me ever so slightly, his neck stiffening with displeasure.

  “Only Harry calls me MJ, Agent Batten,” I said quickly. “You may call me Snickerdoodle.”

  Batten whipped around in his seat and blinked at me in disbelief.

  “What? I like Snickerdoodles.”

  Batten repeated unhappily, “How did Kristin Davis’ eyeballs get into a jar in your home?”

  “Actually, I have a theory about that,” I told him. He didn't seem impressed. He should have been; I so rarely have workable theories. “A ghoul isn't raised by accident, and it isn't easy. Someone was planning it, but I don't think they intended it to rise during the funeral. That part was accidental. I think the plan was to conjure Davis in ghoul form after the funeral, using the eyes at my house as a lure to attack us.”

  For a moment, I imagined the ghoul rummaging through my bedroom looking for her eye while I slept, and had to re-launch my heart by giving my chest a thump. “Unfortunately I took one of the eyes out of the jar, planning on mailing it back for a refund. I got too close to the casket with it and jump-started the spell.” And now, the reanimation of Davis’ head in the mailbox made a whole lot more sense. I'd had a broken eye in my pocket.

  “So this was witchcraft?”

  “Black witchcraft. Flesh magic. The spell used was exothermic, belching out heat from an internal, infernal source, and sloughing off her skin as the heat was liberated.”

  “All that bloating,” Batten agreed. “There shouldn't have been gases like that in an embalmed body.”

  I wrinkled my nose, and hugged myself. “Thank the Dark Lady it wasn't summer or she'd be covered in flies.”

  “Do we think this was Danika Sherlock?” Batten asked.

  “Danika's a fucking lunatic,” I reminded him. “Question is, would she have the mental resources to do this?”

  “I am inclined to suppose this business requires the wherewithal of a far more stable mind, an organized psyche,” Harry said, almost to himself. “Ms. Sherlock's iniquitous attack at the Ten Springs Motor Inn was possessed and near-mortal, but out of control.”

  “She must have control, if she's doing complex magic,” I said.

  Harry shook his head. “Upon no account should I like to think Ms. Sherlock capable of turning out complex magic. Why, only yesterday you said the barmy fraud was not a witch at all, that she was all gall and wormwood; barking mad and due Skeffington's gyves, granted, but not in the least keen with a bolline.”

  Batten looked around as though he'd tripped through a portal into an alien land. I estimated Mark understood about thirty percent of what Harry said at the best of times, and this was not one of those times.

  “Yes Harry,” I said wryly. “Word for word, that's exactly what I said.”

  “Was it English?” Batten asked.

  Harry pursed his lips. “Do not furnish me with your cheek, young man. I'm sure you will ag
ree, Ms. Sherlock may be red in tooth and claw but when it comes to multifarious conjurations of a malevolent manner, she is hardly worth a tinker's cuss.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” Batten's shoulders shook with silent laughter. “Maybe you just don't know what she's capable of?”

  “Oh, lad.” Harry gave a scolding cluck of his tongue. “I am a four hundred thirty-five-year-old man. It is safe for you to suppose I have more than a basic working knowledge of both the normal and abnormal psychology of mortal homo sapiens and all of which they should ever be capable.”

  Chapel broke his silence. “Let's get back to the subject.”

  “Gotta sort the data,” I suggested. Lost without a No. 2 and Moleskine, I used my fingers to list off facts. “Kristin was raised a ghoul, not a zombie, so we're looking at black witchcraft, not Haitian Vodou.”

  “Explain,” Batten ordered.

  I complied, fishing out my Shalimar purse spray and dousing my fingertips, rubbing the dribbles directly up under my nails. Now they smelled like velvety Oriental vanilla ghoul scum. Not exactly the improvement I was hoping for.

  “A zombie is raised as a servant by a bokor,” I said. “A Haitian necromancer. Zombies are mindless slaves to the bokor. Without direct orders they merely shamble about looking for yummy snacks.”

  Batten looked reluctant to even say the word out loud. “Brains.”

  “A popular misconception,” I told him, leaning my tired head against the rear driver's side door and closing my eyes. “Any chewy bits will do: tongues, livers, gall bladders, spleens. A nice, mushy heart. Zombies’ jaw joints tend to give them trouble, and most of the time they lose teeth when their gums retract after death. They're slow like morbid constipation and not overly bright. But the bokor's magic combined with the byproduct of yersinia sarcophaginae, their active bacterial infection, gives them incredible strength. They'll rip doors off hinges, bash through ribcages, crack your skull open like a shell to get to the nibbly parts.”