Baker's Dozen

by Cutter, Leah

  Susan seemed content to just study me, not saying anything more.

  “What do you want?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle and all unearthly tones out of it.

  “Sorry!” Susan said. Her fair skin colored easily. I wondered what shade of pink I would have called it if I’d been alive. “You look a lot like your photos of when you were younger. With G2.”

  “G2?” I vaguely remembered that name, but it had been a while.

  “Great-grandpa. Your brother. The pair of you dancing at Tom’s—my brother’s—wedding.”

  I remembered the wedding, the muggy Minnesota day, how we all sweated like pigs standing for hours in the ancient church that smelled of incense and moldy books, the frigid reception hall at a generic country club afterward, how green the grass of the course had looked, how awful the food had been. I’d danced with Tom, with Billy, with a cute young thing whose name I now couldn’t recall but who may have led to my second divorce. She’d been worth it.

  “What do you want?” I asked again, adding a bit of a ghostly growl, enough to unsettle the living.

  Interestingly enough, that didn’t cause Susan to pale.

  “I want to help you.”

  “What makes you think I need any help?”

  Susan let her eyes take a slow tour of my room, pausing at the desk that was merely a door on top of cinder blocks, the threadbare bed resting on a rusting iron bedframe, the walls stained with mildew and dirt. Then she returned her gaze to me, a single eyebrow raised.

  I shrugged. It wasn’t much, but it was home, and better than the crypts in Ghosttown. Why anyone except some Goth-vampire wannabe would sleep in a coffin was beyond me. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I want to help you because you were kind to me as a child. Plus, you’re family, and it’s almost Christmas.”

  I blinked and counted the days. Christmas was only four days away. It wasn’t as if I’d forgotten it was coming—who could with the frenetic ads and aggressive good cheer of the living? But Christmas was just another day for the dead. “Really?” I asked, skeptical.

  “You’re right. It isn’t just you I want to help. Tell me, why are you a ghost? Why haven’t you passed Beyond?”

  “The usual,” I told her cautiously. Almost all ghosts stayed on Earth for the same reason: The portal to the Beyond showed them Hell. Every ghost had their own individual version of Hell, but it was still Hell to them.

  “Your Hell, then. What’s it like?”

  “Why are you here?” I wasn’t about to share that vision with such a tenuous relation, let alone anyone else.

  “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” Susan said smugly.

  “What? The living can’t see Hell.”

  “Not through the portals, no. Do you remember what I do for a living?”

  I shook my head. I vaguely remembered some kind of doctoral celebration, but that was it.

  “I’m an atomic physicist. Back in 2011 there were some discoveries about how atoms communicated on a subatomic level, which was the start of my line of research. Chicks in the same batch would hatch at the same rate despite one group of eggs being kept colder than the other for a while.” She looked expectantly at me, as if I’d recall having read the same physics journal.

  “I don’t understand,” I told her honestly.

  “See, if chicks can communicate, why not ghosts? Across the Beyond?”

  “Not possible.” I’d heard about ghosts who’d set themselves up as psychics, claiming they could talk with other beings through the portals. Charlatans, all of them, but the living wanted to believe.

  “Let me show you what I’ve built. Bring your camera to photograph it. It’s an electronic portal to the Beyond. And it’s programmable.”

  “So?” A trickle of disquiet went down my spine.

  “I can easily enough show you Heaven as well as Hell.”

  “Wait, you can generate a portal to the Beyond?”

  “Yes. But not to just any place, not to a random Heaven or Hell. I can show you your own Heaven. Or if you have a friend you want to see again, you merely have to call them and I can show you where they are as well.”

  “So it isn’t a portal. I can merely see through it,” I said, disappointed despite not believing her.

  “No, you can go through,” Susan assured me. “I’ve sent artifacts through, seen them land and stay there, never appearing back here on Earth. Anything living I’ve put through has died.”

  I didn’t want to believe her. I knew I wouldn’t have the strength to turn away from my Heaven a second time. If it turned out not to be real, if I let my hopes get up only to be disappointed again, I might end up going through a portal anyway, Hell or not.

  “Please, you have to come,” Susan said. “I want to help you. All of you.” Her clear gray eyes shone.

  Susan wasn’t a snake oil salesman. No, she was something much worse: a true believer.

  * * *

  At Susan’s insistence, I brought my camera Betsy, though in the same breath Susan told me I couldn’t tell anyone else, emphasizing the confidential nature of her work. She still wanted me to take pictures, though. I wasn’t sure why.

  Susan’s laboratory turned out to be in the basement of her house. From the size and age of it, plus the location in Redmond, I assumed it had been built by a Microsoft millionaire back in the 90s, when they’d been young and cashed in their stock options.

  The house was more tasteful than some of the mansions I’d seen. It was a fake-Tudor-style ranch done in taupe and brown. Topiary carefully contained in the shapes of two unicorns rampant guarded the door. Porcelain figurines peeked out from the hedge: zombie garden gnomes, hobbits, and fairies.

  “I didn’t know atomic physicists got paid so well,” I told Susan as I snapped a photo of the terra-cotta fountain splashing in the center of the circular driveway, checking the resulting picture to make sure that only the normal level of spectral residue was hanging about.

  “It doesn’t,” Susan assured me. “I have some generous backers. Plus, this place was in foreclosure. It wasn’t that expensive.”

  “Your backers are ghosts,” I guessed. Long-term savings as well as compound interest took on a whole new meaning when you were already dead and not going anywhere for a long, long time.

  “And others,” Susan assured me. She gestured at the wedge of white rock with layers of figures and a castle at the top next to the house. “I haven’t done anything to the place—it’s pretty much how the former owners decorated it.”

  That explained the creepy bug-eyed thing that peeked over one of the unicorn’s shoulders, as well as the stained-glass window that made up the door: a light, airy castle with a river of blood boiling beneath it.

  “Why aren’t you showing your investors your portal?” I asked Susan as she cleared away the rowan branches she’d laid across the threshold. I didn’t bother to point out that while that myth might be true—the wood would stop the undead from crossing—just sealing a door didn’t stop a ghost from coming through the walls or window.

  “I have,” Susan said with a grin, gesturing for me to walk into the house. “Well, a prototype,” she admitted.

  I could barely pay attention to her explanation of delayed trials and needing more volunteers. A hum ran from the fake marble floors through the soles of my shoes and up my legs, a slight vibration that was subsonic and went bone deep.

  Except, as a ghost, I no longer had any bones. I’d never experienced anything like this. Ghosts felt very little physically. I wanted to lie down and spread my arms out, embrace the rare sensation.

  Susan didn’t seem to notice. She led me through the sunlit but empty living room, past a working medieval fireplace, around a grand staircase, and down an empty hallway where the hooks for many pictures still littered the walls, to a set of double doors that led downstairs.

  Opening the doors increased the vibration. I could now feel it in my chest. If I’d had a heart, it would have been bea
ting hard and fast.

  “Welcome to the new world,” Susan said with a grin as she descended.

  I clutched Betsy as I followed, wondering if Susan was Beatrice or Virgil, if she were my tour guide to Heaven or Hell.

  * * *

  The beast dominated what had once been the media room. The sunken circular row of seats had been pulled out, or eaten by it. Cables and vents growing out of its spine like spikes kept it tethered to the wall. To the other side, where there should have been a gigantic maw, stood an empty doorframe. It looked like the old metal detectors, the security gates you used to have to pass through at the airport, before the imaging technology was implemented.

  Didn’t make me feel any safer.

  Susan walked past the beast to a console I hadn’t seen. She had both a gesture pad and a keyboard. “I just have to start PETER up.”

  “PETER?”

  “Portal Enhancement Technology and Electronic Replicator. Peter is also the patron saint of bridge builders. Plus the guardian of the Pearly Gates.”

  “Really?” I looked at the hulking machine and knew I would never call it something as friendly as “PETER.” It was the beast, and would remain so.

  “Never bring an atomic physicist to a party. They’ll ask questions like, does a radioactive cat have eighteen half-lives?”

  I shook my head and snapped a few pictures. As I’d suspected, the beast appeared all black on the physical plane, but it had a weird, blue aura that I’d never seen before, lit up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

  The vibration under my feet changed pitch, then fell, almost disappearing. A new sensation replaced it: a beam of something—energy, life force, wind from Beyond—started pouring through the empty metal doorframe.

  I walked toward it slowly, fascinated despite the literal chills rolling down my back. White mist sprang up across the threshold, rising to the top of the frame, contained by the arch.

  “It’s ready,” Susan said quietly.

  I saw nothing, not Heaven nor Hell, just a cloud-filled gate.

  “Take a picture of it,” Susan suggested.

  I couldn’t hold back my gasp at the result. Normally, Betsy couldn’t capture anything in a portal. I’d tried a few times when I’d first gotten her back from the Fixer who’d made her, after I’d realized that, in addition to photos, she also could be used to measure the spectral residue left behind by ghosts or powerful artifacts. She’d never shown even a hint of a portal; all I had from that afternoon were a few nice pictures of trees beyond the graveyard.

  This time, Betsy had taken a picture of something else completely: my personal Hell. My stomach turned with the constantly rolling clouds, the raging flames.

  “I don’t—I can’t—” I stepped back from the portal, though I didn’t feel the compulsion to approach it like I did with a real portal. Also, I didn’t feel the heat of the flames. Only Betsy showed the truth of what lay there.

  “May I see?”

  Numbly, I showed her the picture.

  Susan’s breath caught, but she merely nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  I debated erasing the photo. It was irrational, but I hated for Betsy to be carrying around such a sight. Logically I knew it wouldn’t corrupt her. I still didn’t want it near her. I couldn’t e-mail it to myself: my encryption was good, but nothing was perfect. I ended up keeping it, planning to download it to a drive and lock it away until I decided to pass Beyond.

  “So, now that we have that calibration, let’s try something else.”

  I heard the pride in Susan’s voice. I could indulge her eagerness to show off her beast.

  “Do you know of a ghost who passed Beyond recently? Someone you felt close to?”

  Ghosts didn’t feel close to anyone or anything, but I didn’t point that out to her. I had known someone, though. “Beppe,” I told her. Giuseppe Hermino. I’d helped him pass Beyond, if by “help” you meant a kick in the pants when he didn’t want to go to his Heaven.

  “Think about Beppe,” Susan instructed as she returned to her console. “I know, I know, it sounds so unscientific and touchy-feely. But at a sub-atomic level, you’ll be able to reach through the portal to wherever he is. I’ll track your call and amplify it. Think of Beppe’s Heaven.”

  I looked sharply at her. “How did you know he’d gone to Heaven?”

  “You wouldn’t want to look up somebody in Hell.”

  I nodded. She was right. I thought of the blue skies of Yakima, splayed apple trees bursting with fruit, vines heavy with grapes. I remembered Beppe, who’d loved his life so much he’d become a ghost with wine-stained fingers. I thought of him whole and not faded with the deadly drug he’d been taking.

  “Get ready to take a picture…now,” Susan instructed.

  I hesitated, not wanting to contaminate Betsy with more of my Hell. But if it really was Beppe’s Heaven, his sister Toni would want to see. So I snapped two, three pictures before I dared to look.

  There were the rich fields I’d remembered. The view was from high on a hill, looking down on the valley. I saw more than one person picking grapes; zooming in, it was easy to find Beppe, smiling and whole.

  “Thank you,” I told Susan as I showed her the picture. I’d wanted to believe Beppe had found his Heaven and left behind the drugs—seeing it made it more real.

  “Here,” Susan said, sliding a half-screen across the beast’s portal doorway. A mesh hung loosely between its uprights. The setting had already reverted back to plain mist, nothing hidden behind it.

  “What’s that?”

  “A spectralgraph, like your camera,” Susan said. “I wanted you to see the portal on your own device first so you’d know it wasn’t a trick.” She paused, then asked quietly, “Want to try to find your Heaven?”

  “Yes,” I said immediately. “Please.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like begging. Probably with my third wife. I hadn’t begged for my life when I’d died. The doped-out kid who’d shot me hadn’t given me a chance. He’d just gunned me down and run away, leaving me with my life bleeding out into the alley, no second chance.

  “Think of what it might be like,” Susan told me. “It might be different than you imagine, though,” she warned.

  I didn’t need to imagine—I knew. With trepidation, I watched the rolling mist change into its terrifying form, my Hell springing across the screen before it drained away like fog, and then it was there.

  The view was still odd, high on a hill, but I could see everything: the city, the sounds, the libraries, and the quiet adventures that awaited me. I could easily imagine all the friends and friends-to-be walking the streets, having coffee, or maybe sneaking to an early happy hour. If I could have cried, I would have. My soul ached to be there, where I belonged, where I’d always belonged.

  I snapped at least half a dozen pictures with Betsy before the vision dissolved. It went through the same sequence in reverse, clouds covering the city like morning fog, changing into black hellfire, then cooling into mist again.

  “I can’t hold the portal open for very long,” Susan apologized. “It’s unstable on a quantum level. Or below. I’m still running tests.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I told her sternly. “It’s—what you’ve shown me—it’s a wonder.”

  “Then you’ll go through?” Susan asked, excited.

  “You need a volunteer,” I said slowly.

  “Yes. To show my sponsors my progress. And my success.”

  “You know pretty much any ghost would agree after a demonstration like that,” I pointed out.

  “But I want you,” Susan said warmly. “You were kind to me as a child. And you had your own way of verifying my results.”

  “How did you know about Betsy?” I asked, the disquiet I’d felt in my room coming back a little stronger.

  “Research,” Susan said with a grin. I didn’t like the glint in her eyes. “Your camera—Betsy, did you call her? She’s unique, you know.”

  I
hadn’t, actually. But I nodded as if I had and asked, “So you talked with the Fixer who made her?”

  Susan gave me that maniacal grin again. “Better. I have the notes from Mr. Potter.”

  Mr. Potter had been an investment banker who’d tried to get rid of me by sending me to Hell. Instead, I’d haunted him to death. “He had notes on Betsy?”

  “Yes, he did. He’d also speculated that she had a soul of her own, accidentally captured while your Fixer fumbled about between worlds.”

  I looked down at Betsy, who’d always seemed so warm to me. She glowed a soft red, brighter than anything else I could see with my grayed-out ghost vision. “A soul? Like a ghost?”

  Susan shrugged. “I’m not sure what I’ll find.”

  I frowned. Since when had I agreed to any sort of experiments on Betsy?

  “If you’ll leave her to me, that is,” Susan said, gesturing to the portal. “When you pass Beyond.”

  It struck me that I could now pass, go to that city. I hated the idea of Betsy strapped to a table and taken apart, though. “If I leave her to you, no dissection,” I said.

  Susan looked disturbed. “I wouldn’t do that to her! She’s too alive. No, I’d use her in my work. Maybe fine-tune her a bit—expand her spectral abilities.”

  “All right,” I said slowly, nodding.

  “So you’ll go through?” Susan asked, turning eagerly back to her console.

  “I need to get my affairs in order,” I told her.

  Susan sighed, but agreed. “Just remember, you can’t share this with any other ghosts. I just–I need my backers to see it first.”

  I agreed easily enough, never intending to keep the promise. Susan’s work was too important, and I had to show Toni that Beppe was okay.

  We left the basement and the empty mansion, driving back to the city. The twinkling lights seemed a poor imitation of the welcome I knew was waiting for me in my city, the one I’d be finally able to go to. Relief kept washing through me. I was finally through with this place, this land, this life or afterlife.

  I was going home.

  * * *

  I stared at the Closed sign, the words done in a sprawling, fancy script. Why was The Haunting Hour, the art gallery Toni Hermino owned, not open? It was just before midnight—normal operating hours for them.