Unholy Ghosts

by Stacia Kane

  Even if none of the Church management were asleep, Banishing the entire City back would be difficult. There was a reason why the Festival was so controlled, why only a set number of ghosts were freed each night. It was too dangerous to have them all out at once. Not to mention how terrifying it would be, how people would lose all faith in the Church if there was a mass breakout in the City just as they’d lost all faith in the old religions during Haunted Week. People were fickle. “And the Lamaru can take over.”

  “Shit. Ain’t figure on that as a good thing. Figure they really can? Ain’t people notice, say aught?”

  “That’s the problem, though. Nobody would know. It would just look like a mass breakout in the City that the Church couldn’t control. So the Lamaru steps in and handles it, and there you go. No more Church.” She shivered. Those bastards. The Church was her home, the only one she’d ever had. Those utter and complete shithead bastards.

  “You want me take you back to the Church? Tell them?”

  “I can’t. I still don’t know who’s involved in it, you know? If the plot goes as high as Goody Tremmell, it could be anyone.”

  “So we handle it, aye? Send the thief back where he come from, an it all ends?”

  “Yeah. I hope so, anyway.”

  “Still think we got time to check all out, your place? Like to ask your neighbors there. Oughta not take the chance we miss ought, dig, something snap back at us later. If them Lamaru’s the ones break in, could be they nearby watching.”

  “We can’t do the ritual until it’s full dark at least, anyway. We might as well.”

  The evening stretched before her like an obstacle course. So many things still to do, so much to prepare … And later still the ritual. The ritual that would either kill her or save her, would either defeat the Dreamthief or defeat her.

  For a moment she considered Terrible’s suggestion again. It would be easy to head back to the Church. It might even be easy to bypass Goody Tremmell and head straight for the Grand Elder.

  But even if she did, and he listened, what would happen? He hadn’t taken Bruce’s concerns very seriously, and she’d heard his thoughts on the Lamaru before, his utter confidence that they were little more than a band of amateurish thugs.

  He might be willing to help, eventually. She might even be able to think of a good reason why she’d been out at Chester Airport to begin with, why she’d found Slipknot’s body.

  But in the meantime … while she waited for him to come around, while she waited for help, her soul would still be food. She had enough monkeys on her back, didn’t she? Enough memories to suck all the joy out of her life and crush her under their weight.

  Her addiction she shouldered willingly, even eagerly. She refused to do the same with the Dreamthief.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Remember, you’re not a Church employee—some spells will simply be beyond your reach. That’s okay! There are still lots of fun rituals to do in the privacy of your own home, and the results will amaze you.”

  —You Can Do This! A Guide for Beginners, by Molly Brooks-Cahill

  Chess followed Terrible up the rickety stairs of the building across the street from hers. Perhaps it was a wasted trip at this point, but if there was a chance someone had seen something, they might as well get the information.

  Lex had called again, twice, but she let the voice mail get it. Hadn’t he understood when she said she was with Terrible? Didn’t he understand how important all this was?

  They reached the dingy landing, lit by one weak naked bulb hanging on a wire. A rat huddled in a corner, its bare skinny tail whipping the air. Chess shuddered as Terrible knocked on the door of number five.

  They waited, then he knocked again, and again, until finally the locks clicked and the door opened a crack.

  “Ain’t got no dealings with Bump,” said a husky voice. Chess couldn’t see the speaker’s face.

  “Ain’t about Bump,” Terrible replied. “About the apartment across the street. The old church, aye? Your windows look in there?”

  “That Churchwitch? I see her sometime. She wander around in there like a ghost, all by herself. Ain’t right for a woman to be alone like that. She in trouble?”

  “You see anything there this morning, before sunup? Last night, maybe?”

  “Seen some dude in there t’other night. With her. Looking like he trying to make some moves.”

  Chess’s face felt hot. Must have been Doyle, when he’d come back and taken care of her hand.

  “Last night, I’m saying. You see anything last night, this morning?”

  Pause. “Could be I do. What’s it to you?”

  Terrible reached in his pocket and pulled out a folded bill. “You see, or not?”

  “Aye. Aye, I see. Two guys, dig? Didn’t see no faces, not good. Pale guys. Dark hair. One snuck back into her bedroom, carrying something I don’t know. T’other poking around her main room there. Look like he take something, but left something else. From he pocket.”

  “How long they in there?”

  A hand slipped through the crack, palm up, and waited. Terrible slapped the bill into it.

  “Half hour, maybe. Could be longer. I ain’t watching. I got my own shit, aye? But I see them.”

  “Where he leave the thing? You see where he put it?”

  “She mighty sweet, Terrible. Sometime she hang around in just little underwears.”

  Chess made a mental note never to open her curtains again. She’d thought with the smudgy filth covering every window in Downside she wouldn’t have to worry during the day. She also never attempted to look in her neighbors’ windows. Obviously they had none of the same disinterest.

  “Just answer. Where he put it?”

  “On the shelf somewheres. Near the top.”

  Terrible nodded. “Aye.”

  “Cool, then.” The door started to close. Terrible put one hand out and stopped it.

  “What? You need more? Ain’t know more, that’s all I see.”

  “You see too much, dig? Keep them eyes away from her windows. I find out you peeping in her windows, I come back.”

  “Shit. Stealing all a man’s fun.” The door closed.

  Chess bit her lip as she followed Terrible back down the stairs and across the street. Something left in her apartment. A charm, maybe? Some sort of curse? Or something worse than that, a camera or recording device to keep tabs on her.

  It was both.

  Precious minutes disappeared while they hunted for it, flipping through books and dropping them on the floor. Chess was starting to wonder if she shouldn’t just leave them there. The top shelf yielded nothing, not even when she slid her fingers over the bottom of it and probed the space between it and the wall. She was thinking of giving up when Terrible picked up the small silver wolf she’d bought a few years back.

  “No, that’s mine,” she said.

  “Aye? What’s the little mouth hole for?”

  She took it from his hand. “Shit. This one isn’t mine.”

  The drill hole was so minute she couldn’t imagine how anyone had even managed to find a bit that small. Further inspection revealed they hadn’t. The wolf was molded around the camera. Masterful. Masterful, and almost certainly created by a Church supplier. Several companies did special contract work creating just this sort of thing, useful in especially difficult cases.

  “These things can take weeks to make,” she said. “Unless someone pays extra to put a rush, or has some real juice.”

  “Figure that—” He grabbed the wolf from her and strode into the kitchen with it, then tossed it into the fridge, closing the door on it with a thud. “That Goody you mention got some right, ain’t she?”

  “Yeah, but they would have made this in, like, two days. I don’t think any of our contractors can work that fast.”

  “Why two days?”

  “The first break-in was only two days ago.”

  Terrible shrugged. “Who said that was the first?”

&
nbsp; Suddenly she was very tired. Terrible watched as she slumped down onto the couch and dug a battered pack of cigarettes from between the cushions. Empty. He lit one of his and handed it to her.

  “Bump only asked me to investigate the airport on, what, Friday? Yeah, Friday. And I got the Morton case the next day. That’s not even a week.”

  “But your friend across the street there says something planted here this morning. So they left the camera first, aye, then come back today, drop off Brain and leave something else.”

  “I don’t see anything on the shelves, though, and he said they put something on the shelf.”

  “Maybe he only checking the camera. Don’t mean nothing else got left, today or before. What’s the last time you gave the place a lookover?”

  She would have felt it, wouldn’t she have, if something magical had been left in here? Like she’d felt the power sneak up her legs when she walked over that spot by the runways.

  She hadn’t felt anything different here, or rather, she hadn’t felt anything she didn’t attribute simply to the general creepiness of having strangers in her home. But if it had only been planted in the last couple of days, and she’d spent hardly any time here at all …

  Terrible’s dark gaze followed her as she stood up and started pacing the room, keeping her eyes half-closed. It wouldn’t be by the bookcases. She’d stood there and felt nothing. But the rest of the room, the rest of the apartment, she’d barely touched.

  They wouldn’t have put it under the bed, which was the most obvious place to put a curse bag or anything of that nature. They wouldn’t put it there because it would be too easily discovered when she changed the mattress. It wasn’t under the couch, because she would have felt it when she sat down. So where else did she go all the time, where else would she be in close proximity but not close enough to immediately sense it?

  She got her answer when she stepped close to the old armchair. The minute her foot brushed the heavy brown corduroy valance, her stomach did a flip.

  “Terrible. Grab me my bag, okay?”

  She heard him moving but didn’t turn her head. The warped lines of the chair merged and spread as she stared at it, an optical illusion she couldn’t seem to look away from. Whatever they’d hid, it was powerful. Powerful enough that her heart rate sped up and she had to force herself to stay still or she would run away.

  Terrible placed the bag in her hand and she fumbled in it, finding by feel her gloves and slipping the left one on. Her knees creaked as she crouched beside the chair and lifted the cushion with her right hand so she could poke around beneath it with her left. That was a mistake.

  The ache in her palm, a constant low presence since the day she’d cut herself on the amulet, turned into a screaming, searing burn. With a cry she dropped the cushion, and rocked back so hard she almost fell over. Her hand throbbed, the stinging pain shooting up her arm to her shoulder and down her side.

  “Chess? Maybe you ought not—”

  “I’m fine.” She grabbed her other glove and forced her hand into it, trying not to touch her palm but failing. Sweat beaded on her brow.

  “Whyn’t you let me—”

  “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t speak again. She felt him close to her, the warmth of his body on her bare arms, and after a minute she took a deep breath and tried again.

  The ache in her hand strengthened when she touched the cushion, but it did not slice through her with razor-sharp blades as it had a moment ago. Her left hand slid along the fabric covering the seat base, into the crack down the left side, along the back … and brushed against something with the semi solid consistency of rotting fruit. An itch like thousands of tiny demons holding pokers inside her skin started in her hand, worked its way up her arm, across her body. Chess gritted her teeth to keep her stomach from revolting and yanked the curse from its hiding place.

  Instantly the itching worsened. Her right palm caught fire again and went damp inside her glove, whether from sweat or blood she did not know, and she was afraid to look. That fear pissed her off and she did look, turning her hand to see through the whitish latex of her glove.

  It took her horrified brain a minute to realize exactly what image it was receiving. The glove, pinkish now with blood but still white in the center, a dirty white like curdled milk … squirming movement … that maddening itch, deep in her bones …

  Something fell from the top edge of the glove onto the floor, writhing feebly. A worm. The worms were back. Oh shit the worms were back, and she was screaming, trying to tear the glove off as worms poured from the wound in her hand and made the glove bulge out, as they crawled out of the glove and pattered to the floor like obscene, bloody pearls from a broken antique necklace.

  The glove finally left her hand with a snap. The curse bag lay on the floor, surrounded by worms, with her blood slowly seeping toward it. Instinctively she reached for it with her right hand, pushing it away, but when her skin touched the bag, agony tore her apart. A new gush of filthy life vomited from her skin, from the gaping red wound that looked like a vicious mouth.

  Hard hands grabbed her and lifted her, just enough so Terrible could slide his arm under her legs and scoop her up like a child. Into the kitchen he carried her, heedless of the worms falling from her hand onto his bare skin. He set her on the countertop next to her cracked sink and turned on the water, holding her hand beneath it while he flipped on the disposal switch.

  “Cool, Chess … Don’t look at it, just look at the wall across, aye? Stare at it real hard. Keep starin.”

  His footsteps sped across the room, then back to her. Her head started to clear as the pain receded, but her stomach almost lost the battle when she looked down into the sink and saw it filled with nasty brownish-red water, saw whitish bits of flesh still wriggling as they drifted into the whirl pool at the drain and were sucked down. Her drain never had worked very well. She swallowed and stared back at the wall, trying to erase the image of those hundreds of horrible little bodies, squirming their blind way out of her skin as if her own soul had become filth.

  Or rather, as if the filth in her soul had become flesh.

  Terrible returned a moment later. “Looks to be about finished,” he said, grabbing her hand and turning it, prodding it with one big gentle finger before sticking it under the faucet. “I moved yon bag away from the blood, aye?”

  She nodded. “Th-thanks.”

  “Cool.” His eyes met hers for a second, barely the amount of time needed for her to acknowledge it had happened at all, before he turned away and grabbed some paper towels to dry her hand.

  “What you figure? This need bandaging, or leave it open in case they comes back?”

  “Clean it and close it, for good. Those things … the wound created them, the wound and the curse. At least I assume, because the wound’s been clean.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Close it, though … close it good’s gonna hurt, Chess. Leave a fuck of a scar.”

  She nodded.

  “Right.” He disappeared for a minute, coming back with her bag. “I’d fetch you some pills, were I you, and give me them lockpicks you use. They steel, aye?”

  She told him they were and watched as he lit the burner on her stove. Her hand itched as she clumsily dug out the picks and her pillbox, and crunched three Cepts between her teeth. She’d taken two only a couple of hours before. Nothing was going to make this painless, but hopefully it might make a difference, even if taking pills for actual physical pain felt like such a waste.

  Terrible examined the lockpicks with a practiced eye, then selected the largest one, which she hardly ever used. Her ears started ringing when he held it over the blue gas flames of her stove.

  “Maybe you oughta sit on the floor. Ain’t want you falling off.”

  She slid onto the cracked linoleum and waited, watching him heat the pick until it glowed.

  “You sure you wanna do this?”

  She nodded and held out her hand, bracing her elbow on her knees to
keep it steady. She could still back out, she could tell him she’d changed her mind, he wouldn’t think any worse of her if she did …

  Too late. His left hand grabbed her fingers, squeezing them together with bruising strength, and he pressed the bright red steel into the wound on her palm.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “Do not be fooled into thinking penitence is possible through any means but those designated and performed by the Church. Pain itself does not cleanse.”

  —The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 82

  Her entire body convulsed. Her arm tried to jerk away—she didn’t move it, it was pure reflex—but Terrible held it fast. Tears poured from her eyes. She lunged forward, hoping to surprise him into releasing his grip, but he simply twisted his upper body, capturing her arm between his biceps and chest with enough force to cut off her circulation.

  Her throat was raw from screaming. Her head ached. With her free hand she hit him, beating his broad back, and when that didn’t work she leaned over and bit him like an animal caught in a trap. She shook, she forgot her name, forgot where she was. All she knew was pain, unlike anything she’d ever felt, pain which lessened for a few seconds at a time while he reached up to reheat the pick, then exploded again when he applied it to her skin.

  Nothing had ever sounded sweeter than the clattering of the pick as he dropped it onto the floor. Chess rested her head against him, breathing in the comforting scents of smoke and pomade and soap, wretched sobs erupting from her throat. She didn’t think she’d have the strength to lift her head. She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to stand.

  Terrible did. Disentangling himself gently from her grasping arms, he got up and opened her freezer. She watched through blurry eyes as he wrapped ice cubes in some paper towels and came back, pressing them into her hand. It felt wonderful. Adrenaline rushed through her body in a tidal wave, leaving her with the inexplicable desire to laugh. She did laugh, weakly, a hysterical giggle that sounded nothing like her, and tasted blood on her lips. Not her blood; her lips felt fine. His.