Three Stories About Ghosts

by Matthew Marchitto

  THREE STORIES

  ABOUT GHOSTS

  By Matthew Marchitto, Martin Hall and Ali Nouraei

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  abaddon@rebellion.co.uk

  First published in 2018 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Publishing Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Editors: David Thomas Moore, Michael Rowley and Kate Coe

  Marketing and PR: Remy Njambi

  Design: Sam Gretton, Oz Osborne and Gemma Sheldrake

  All stories copyright © 2019 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Publishing Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-249-4

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Introduction

  IT CAN'T BE especially controversial to suggest that ghost stories are the oldest genre there is. Homer’s Odyssey has Odysseus descending into the underworld to confront the dead; the Old Testament First Book of Samuel has Saul calling on the Witch of Endor to raise the spirit of the prophet. Go further back than that: archaeologists are forever identifying the oldest artifacts of civilisation as sites of burial, of ritual propitiation and communion, and if our earliest ancestors built places to deal with spirits, it’s certain they told stories about spirits.

  Ghost stories can do so much. Ghosts remind us of our own mortality; they tie us to our history; they show us a bleak reflection of ourselves. M. R. James’ ghosts chilled us; Charles Dickens’ ghosts warned us of our own moral failings (and the sure punishment that awaited us if we did not correct them). Poe’s Red Death visited righteous punishment on the unworthy, while Irving’s headless Hessian proves to be nothing more supernatural than a ruse by a lover, seeking to better his rival. The ghost is the ultimate McGuffin, a device that can serve whatever purpose—instructive, moralising, surprising, horrifying, reflective, nostalgic or anything else—the writer needs them to.

  In Matthew Marchitto’s The Boneman, ghosts stand for loss and longing; the dead linger because of their bonds to the living, and the living linger over their love of the dead. The horrifying in-betweener is a vivid lesson of the inadvisibility of clinging too hard, dragging the dead across the line, to tragic ends.

  For Martin Hall, ghosts are the burden of history. The noble families in his Unmasked are held back by centuries-old feuds, by the crushing weight of tradition, and by ghosts who literally possess the bodies of their descendents, forcing them to relive old glories. It is only by rejecting the past that the young can live their own lives.

  And in Ali Nouraei’s Magistra Trevelyan, the titular ghost is a reminder of promises made, and ultimately a symbol of hope for the future. What starts as an investigation into a murder leads to the verge of war, and to revelations that will alter the hidden world of magic forever.

  Three stories about ghosts, in different ways and to different ends. Take comfort in them.

  David Thomas Moore

  Oxford

  July 2019

  THE BONEMAN

  By Matthew Marchitto

  Chapter One

  The Deal

  MARTY’S SPINE CRACKED as his back arched and his ribs distended like splaying fingers.

  You promised. The voice, lecherous and grainy, spoke through a film of congealed sweat. Get him for me.

  In the corner of Marty’s room stood a figure of flayed flesh. A skeletal jaw contorted into a permanent grin, lidless eyes glared with bloodshot fury. Bones hanging from its neck rattled from an unseen wind.

  Marty’s eyes bolted open and he clutched his bedsheets, writhing in a damp pool of sweat. In the corner of his room, where the streetlight touched, was nothing.

  He let out a breath, trying to calm the hammering in his chest.

  He grabbed his phone: 4:45 A.M., way too early. Marty rolled over, shifting his blankets around to find a dry spot, and closed his eyes. But sleep wouldn’t come. As hard as he tried he couldn’t drive out the image of the Boneman.

  FOUR DAYS EARLIER—noon, he’d been on his way to Chester’s, a mom-and-pop restaurant where he washed dishes. Walking down St. Catherine like he always did, watching university students saunter along. He stopped to get a latte at Second Cup; he didn’t really have a reason why he avoided Starbucks and Tim Hortons—maybe a little part of him wanted to stick it to The Man or whatever. It was there, at the point where the three franchise coffee shops stared each other down, that he saw Abbi. She looked uncomfortable, one arm held around herself in a tight hug, skin a pallid transparent gray, wheeling her innards around on a rusty cart.

  Abbi looked at Marty, and from across the street he could see something was wrong. He walked to her, ignoring the car honking at him for crossing in the middle of the street.

  “Abbi?”

  “Shit, Marty. Just, shit, man.”

  “Did something happen?” Marty tried to bury his worry. It couldn’t be that bad: Abbi was already dead. How much worse could it get?

  “Someone’s looking for you, Marty.”

  Marty tilted his head, the cogs of his brain whirring. No one looked for him. He went to his job, went home, and sometimes hung out with Abbi and Carla. No one looked for him.

  “It’s—” Abbi swallowed, whatever word she had been about to say left a bad taste in her mouth. “You’re one of the few. So, I guess, I mean”—she ran her hand over her forehead to wipe away sweat that wasn’t there—“it had to happen eventually.”

  “I’m lost, Abbi.”

  “You can see and touch us. It makes sense that eventually somebody would come looking for you. I just”—she let out a long and slow sigh—“I just didn’t think it would be someone so deep.”

  Marty sipped his coffee. He tried to ignore the people walking around him, giving him the side-eye for talking to himself.

  “You say he’s ‘deep,’ what’s that mean?”

  “Like, deep, man. Me and the others”—she gestured to the other ghosts meandering through the streets—“we’re shallow. Get it? Him, though, he’s deep. From a darker, meaner place. Somewhere none of us want to get near.”

  Marty ran his hand through his hair, fingers combing through his short curls. Marty had gotten used to seeing ghosts, but a long-buried fear was creeping up on him.

  “Okay, alright, well, what’s this guy want?”

  “Don’t know, Marty. But trust me, it can’t be anything good.”

  MARTY ROLLED OVER in his bed, kicking away the damp sheets. Abbi had been right, and he was a dumbass for not listening to her.

  Marty should never have made a deal with the Boneman.

  SOAP UP, SWISH-SWISH, rinse.

  Six hours of mind-numbing repetition.

  Rush hour was the worst. The dishes piled up beside Marty’s sink, and his eye would catch onto a bit of gruel dripping down the side of a glass, or a plate with crusted sauce that he knew he’d have to scrape away.

  Joe—the busboy—thrust another stack of dishes onto Marty’s station. They chimed and clinke
d and a few threatened to break.

  Soap up, swish-swish, rinse.

  Marty hated being a dishwasher, and he hated hating it. Everyone in the kitchen was nice enough. Marty told himself he should be happy to have a decent job, even if he spent all day scrubbing at other people’s spit stains. But there was always that niggling voice in the back of his head: You going to do this dead-end crap for the rest of your life?

  Soap up. Marty was pushing six years working the dishes. Swish-swish. A university dropout with no measurable talent, he was going nowhere fast. Rinse, repeat. Yeah, dead end alright.

  Steph—one of the waiters—sauntered in and exchanged a long string of French with Alhad, the chef. Another reason Marty was the perpetual dishwasher; his French had become so weak he could barely understand anything faster than baby talk.

  “Hey Marty,” Steph said, in English with a thick Québécois accent.

  “Hey.”

  “You look perturbed.”

  Marty shrugged.

  She bumped her shoulder into his. “C’mon man, what’s up?”

  Hell spawn is on my ass, and if I don’t do what it wants I might end up in eternal torment. Oh, you too? “Nothing, just tired.”

  “Sure, sure.” Steph ran her hand through her golden blonde hair, exposing black roots. “You up to see a movie? Everyone else is coming.”

  “Think I’ll pass.”

  FOUR DAYS EARLIER—evening, Marty was on his way home. He took a shortcut through the small concrete plot to his tiny Ville-Émard apartment. His apartment was one of four in a squat building wedged between duplexes. On one side, just under the landlady, was a boarded-up store with a crusty dépanneur sign.

  He put his key into the lock and held the knob in place to keep it from wiggling around in its loose casing. The door unlocked with a grinding chunk and opened on hissing hinges. Marty clomped up to the second floor, the stairs groaning with each step.

  Standing in front of Mrs. Hubbard’s door was Wallace. Wallace huffed, raised his hand to knock—paused—lowered his hand and shook his head.

  “Hey, Wallace.”

  The old ghost turned his crinkled features to Marty. “Hiya, kid.”

  “How’s Mrs. Hubbard?”

  “Fine, fine. Don’t want to disturb her is all.” Wallace ran his hand over his balding pate. “Listen, Marty, maybe you should head out for a bit. See the city a little.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “But”—Wallace tensed, his eyes darting to Marty’s door and then away—“you’ve been staying in a lot. It’d do you good.”

  Marty slid his key into the lock. “I’ll think about it.”

  Wallace’s hands balled up into fists.

  “Everything alright, Wallace?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” Wallace marched away.

  Weird. He’s usually not so uptight.

  Marty walked into his dim hallway, popped off his shoes, dropped his bag in the corner, and trudged into one of his apartment’s two rooms.

  He froze, heart pounding. A silhouetted figure stood in his living room, eyes burning coals. Marty’s hand thrust out and flicked the light switch on, and he swallowed a dollop of bile. A man of flayed flesh, bones hanging from his body, stared at Marty.

  “Hello, Marty,” the Boneman said.

  Marty was too terrified to move, eyes pinned to the Boneman’s fire-red eyes.

  “You see us,” the Boneman said. “One of a few who can. I’ve chosen you, Marty. You have a task, and you will complete it.

  “There is a ghost who is not a ghost. Trapped in-between, refusing to die, yet not alive. And they can do something horrible, Marty. They can hurt your friends in a way you can’t understand.” The Boneman extended one hand, long skeletal fingers creaking as they uncurled.

  Marty’s eyes followed the motion, and there was a length of parchment on his coffee table that hadn’t been there before.

  “A contract,” the Boneman said. “Signed with a drop of blood, and then you will be able to help me put away this danger. That will be a favour paid.”

  “I…” Marty’s mouth felt dry, his throat hoarse. The contract’s words were unreadable, written in symbols he didn’t recognize. The paper—was it leather? He didn’t want to know what animal it’d come from.

  When he looked back up, the Boneman was gone.

  “Fuck me.”

  MARTY STARED AT the blinking cursor in the browser’s search bar. How am I supposed to find this in-between person? Abbi’s cart squealed as she paced in a circle around his coffee table.

  “I don’t think typing in ‘ghost monster’ is going to work,” Marty said.

  “No, probably not.” Abbi’s eyebrows knitted together in agitation. “You should’ve burned the contract, or something.”

  She was probably right. “That’d only piss him off.”

  “Better that than this.”

  The blinking cursor seared itself into Marty’s retina. He exhaled, and typed in disturbing sightings. It was a start.

  THREE DAYS EARLIER—evening, Marty sat on the second floor of the Second Cup near Peel. He was pressed into the corner, pretending to talk into a headset. Abbi sat beside him, one foot mindlessly rocking her gut-cart, and Carla sat across from him.

  “He said what?” Carla’s too-loud tone made Marty’s ears ring. “The nerve!” Carla puffed up her cheeks and huffed angrily, her bundle of white hair shaking from the motion. She hunched lower, speaking in a still-too-loud conspiratorial tone. “You should ask for some kind of deal of your own. If he’s going to pester you, you might as well get something out of it.”

  “Carla!” Abbi said. “He shouldn’t make any deals with anyone. I say you burn the contract and be done with it.”

  Marty sipped his latte while watching people walk by on the street below. Among them were ghosts, pallid like Abbi and Carla, acting like their lives had barely been interrupted by death.

  “He said this in-between person can hurt you,” Marty said. “I don’t know how, but if I can help stop him, then shouldn’t I?”

  “Marty, it’s not your job to stop anything,” Abbi said. “There are other people who deal with this kind of scary shit. That’s what this is, scary. Walk away, trust me.”

  “You said this person can hurt us?” Carla asked. “I heard some of the other old ladies nattering about something. I assumed they were blowing hot air, but maybe they weren’t.” Carla sipped her tea, which she’d gotten from the barista with a charred face working beside the warm bodies.

  “What did they say?” Marty asked.

  “It sounded ugly, but if it might be real…” Carla sighed. “Well, apparently old Jean saw this weird-looking guy, all shambly and muttering and so on, and there was another lady—a ghost—walking toward the shambler. And then, he just touched her, and she started to turn into something. Like a sack of meat that made slopping and burbling noises. Jean ran away after that. Supposedly; you know Jean used to travel all over looking for Bigfoot? Every year, from Nova Scotia all the way to B.C., and he’s convinced that if he had a few more years he would’ve found the feller. He’s lucky he made it to ninety-four. I take his opinions with a grain of salt.”

  “Wait, this shambling guy, was he a ghost?” Marty asked.

  “I assum so.”

  Marty rubbed his chin, his stubble coarse against his palm. If all this in-betweener had to do was touch a ghost to hurt them—or transform them?—then he was more dangerous than Marty had thought. It didn’t help that this guy sounded unstable.

  “Marty, I don’t like that pensive shit.” Abbi jabbed him in the shoulder with a finger.

  MARTY’S EYES WERE starting to hurt from staring at his laptop screen. There were no stories about ghostly monstrosities. He supposed that would’ve been too convenient.

  “Have you tried social media?” Abbi said from the couch. She was lying on her back, twirling a length of intestine between her fingers.

  “What am I going to find on social media?”

 
; “I don’t know, do a search for ‘weird shit’ or something. What would people use if they saw something ghostly but didn’t know?”

  That wasn’t a bad idea. Marty typed in weird shit and groaned at the page of results. It was going to take a while for him to search through.

  TWO DAYS EARLIER—midnight, Marty couldn’t sleep. He’d tried ignoring the contract, but it kept pulling his eyes like a spider on the wall. He started to pace, moving in an agitated circle around his coffee table.

  Why shouldn’t he sign? He could help his friends, put this in-between guy away to keep them safe. Whatever Carla’s friend Jean had seen, it sounded nasty. What if he ignored this and then it happened to his friends?

  He sat on his couch, the contract staring him down. Marty wasn’t getting much out of this deal, but the Boneman didn’t seem like the kind of person that negotiated. And what would happen if Marty refused? Ghosts could touch him, which meant the Boneman could touch him.

  Marty shivered.

  But what did this contract say? Marty couldn’t read the symbols. Was he selling his soul to a nightmare creature?

  Marty picked up the parchment: it felt like smooth leather. At the bottom was a dotted line, and beside it a needle-like pin pointed up from the scroll. Signed with a single drop of blood.

  “Fuck it.” Marty pricked his finger.

  A bead of blood balanced on the tip of the pin, teetering before sliding down the smooth metal and onto the parchment. The bead of blood traced a path along the dotted line, swirling and curving, until Marty’s name was spelled out in bright red.