Three Stories About Ghosts

by Matthew Marchitto

  “Fell on it pretty bad.”

  “But they kept you there?”

  “Yeah.” The BOA meathead had made it clear that Marty wasn’t supposed to tell anyone he’d been shot, and Marty wasn’t in the mood to start breaking rules.

  The owner leaned forward, hands clasped on top of the desk. “You know, my father built this place.” Technically his father bought it, but whatever, right? “And he trusted it to me, to take care of it. I’m following in his footsteps, see, and I can’t let him down.” His dad had been the chef and owner. Marty had never seen Mordecai so much as chop vegetables, but he was going to keep his mouth shut. “Now, I need the people working in this restaurant to respect it, to understand that they have responsibilities. It wasn’t just the hospital, Marty, you were missing time before then. I know Alhad likes you, but I can’t have someone who doesn’t respect my business.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you can’t come in on time and when you’re scheduled, then don’t come in at all.”

  “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  “I don’t take promises lightly,” Mordecai said. “And I want you to know that if Alhad didn’t have a soft spot for you, you’d be gone.”

  “I understand.”

  Mordecai turned his attention to his papers, dismissing Marty with a wave.

  Marty turned on a heel and left the cramped office.

  SOAP UP, SWISH-SWISH, rinse. Marty scrubbed and lathered and scrubbed some more. Alhad was uncharacteristically quiet, and he hadn’t said much to Marty since they’d pulled him out from under a pile of blisters. Joe stomped into the kitchen and thrust a pile of dishes onto Marty’s station so hard they threatened to crack. Marty gave him the stink eye: he wouldn’t forget how Joe had run, leaving Steph and Alhad behind.

  Soap up, swish-swish, rinse. It had been a little over a week, and now Marty had realigned into his place of nobody going nowhere. Like a planet orbiting the sun, this was Marty’s trajectory.

  Soap up. Things could be worse, he could be tormented in some unnamed hellscape by a flayed dude. Swish-swish. Washing dishes was pretty easy, though it messed up his back and he had to use embarrassing amounts of hand moisturizer. He felt okay. Not great, not bad, just okay. Rinse.

  Steph walked up to him, standing about a foot away, leaning on the countertop. He’d mustered a text that read I’m fine, don’t worry. Everything’s okay now. It seemed like she didn’t want to talk about what had happened.

  “We’re going to see a movie,” Steph said. “You should come.”

  Marty was tired; he wanted to go home and collapse into his bed. But Steph had an earnest, worried look. Like they shared a secret and she was afraid of being alone with it.

  “Yeah, sure. Sounds cool,” Marty said.

  MARTY WAS WAITING for the Peel Metro. It was just past midnight and there was still a decent-sized crowd waiting around. Ghosts walked among the living: one a beggar hollering at nobody, another an STM guy who acted like he was on guard duty. Amid the faces Marty glimpsed sunken eyes and a clean-shaven head, but only for a moment.

  He spent the train ride looking at his feet until he got off at Jolicoeur. On his way home he caught sight of a familiar-looking beefy dude lingering in front of a dépanneur: it was a BOA meathead.

  Great, they’re following me. This realization didn’t shake him to his core like he thought it should. He just wanted to get home and sleep.

  Movement in his periphery made his head snap around. Standing behind the window of a duplex was a flayed figure with a skeletal grin.

  And then it was gone.

  It’s the stress, Marty told himself. I just need time to calm down, get myself together.

  He walked home with his eyes pinned to the ground.

  MARTY UNLOCKED THE door to his building, holding the handle in place to keep it from wiggling. He trudged up the stairs, trying not to see the wet marks that stained them. As he approached his door, he stopped mid-step. Wallace was staring at Mrs. Hubbard’s door.

  “Wallace!”

  Wallace turned to Marty, his face haunted, impassive. His mouth moved, but no words came.

  “Wallace, are you alright?”

  Wallace’s rheumy eyes grew bleary, deep-set recognition trying to fight its way out. But he just turned back to staring at Mrs. Hubbard’s door.

  Unsettled, Marty went into his apartment, his mind occupied with thoughts of ghosthood and death as he kicked off his shoes.

  He flicked the light on, and a familiar figure sat in his favourite spot (which was the whole couch). Cavanagh.

  She thumbed through her phone, glanced up at him, and then back down to whatever business she was doing.

  Finally, Marty said, “You shot me.”

  “And I’d do it again.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  Cavanagh smiled at him, bitter and cynical. “You scared?”

  Marty didn’t answer.

  “No, I’m not here to shoot you,” she said. “I’m here to tell you a few things.” She counted them off on her fingers. “One, we know where you—and everybody that knows you—lives. Two, you’re going to stop partaking in any kind of vigilante business, even if it’s helping an old ghost lady cross the street, nothing. Three, you hear from the Boneman again you come straight to us. No detours, no handling it on your own, no trying to be a good guy. And four”—she reached into her jacket and took out the shark tooth dagger—“you get anything else like this? You bring it to us, right away. No questions, no stalling. Right. To. Us. Understood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give me a little more commitment, Marty.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” he said, a smidge louder.

  “I know guys like you, Marty. You want to be the hero, the tough guy, the big dick in the room.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Shut up and listen.” She pointed at the door. “Your friend outside, what’s his name?”

  “Wallace.”

  “You messed him up really bad. You know what happens when a ghost ‘dies’?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Neither do we. But I do know that they go somewhere deep and have to crawl their way back out, if they even can. Wallace isn’t going to be alright for a long time, maybe forever, and that’s on you.” She got up and walked toward the door. “Remember, the Boneman comes to you with literally anything, you bring it to us. Otherwise, your little guts-girl might be the next Wallace.”

  The door thudded behind her.

  Marty let out a breath.

  Epilogue

  The Deal

  BLACK WAIST HIGH grass touched the horizon. The sky burned red, and all around Marty were gnarled trees, their dead branches reaching up, splayed fingers of pleading hands. John McKinsey, the in-betweener, hung from them. His innards spilled onto the grass, blood gone black a long time ago.

  The Boneman loomed like a mountain, his body blocking the sun. The bones around his neck rattled like tree trunks in a tornado.

  “I’m done, I did what you asked. Deal’s over,” Marty said.

  “It is not over.”

  Marty felt tremors threatening to shake his body. “I got McKinsey, just like you wanted.”

  “A favour is paid. Another is owed.”

  “That’s not…”

  “You signed the contract, Marty. A favour you have paid, and another is owed.”

  Marty’s heart hammered in his chest. “And then that’s it, I’m free?”

  Marty woke with a gasp, his bedsheets damp with sweat. It’s not over.

  He was too tired to cry.

  Matthew Marchitto

  Matthew Marchitto lives in Montreal, where he spends his time creating fantasy worlds both bizarre and unsettling. His favourite stories are those that can convey a lot with a little. He has self-published two novellas, Moon Breaker and The Horned Scarab, and is currently working on an epic fantasy novel.

  UNMASKED

  By Martin Hall

  Chapte
r One

  I WAS SILENT and alone, dark against the morning sunlight. The smell of smoke clung to me, as it always does when I retreat to my deepest self.

  The dark-haired man strode through the door, hands in his pockets. He walked alone, and no stiff-limbed Cousins stumbled before him smelling of camphor or clove oil to announce his arrival. He came to see me, on his own, and knowing that I was not then myself. It was an act that went beyond daring, a foolhardy thing to do, and he knew it.

  It was almost Fifth Bell, when the Sun was at its highest, and I was at my grandfather’s old desk. The last of the morning’s letters lay at hand, the ink drying on the curls and loops of my grandfather’s signature. The pen still rested in my left hand. Looking up at the man in the doorway, my chest tightened. An unease not my own settled with a chill in the pit of my stomach. It was not, understand this, because the man was handsome—though he was—but because his face was bare. I gasped in a voice that was only in part mine, and my hand reached up to touch fingertips to the lacquered and carved dirgewood mask that sat firmly over my own face, leaving only my mouth and chin bare.

  “I hope I do not intrude,” he said, though the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth told me that he was not sincere. “I come with respect in my heart, and no sword at my hip.” Slowly, he held up his hands to show that no weapons were concealed in the tightly fitted sleeves of his tunic. With studied and deliberate formality he turned around, acutely aware of where he stood and how much his life depended on being able to show that he respected the Claimant’s office, and that he bore no threat or malice—either from himself or from his kin. He bowed deeply. “I represent myself at Sun’s height today, and not the Esteemed House of Verocci.”

  Numbly, my hands pushed the day’s correspondence aside. I steepled my fingers and tilted my chin to stare down my mask’s nose at the intruder. My jaw stiffened in contempt at his bare-faced presence. I was unable to escape the voice deep within the dirgewood that dug sharp, cold fingers into my soul.

  He is young, the voice hissed, and he is well-dressed. He has come with silks on his back and rings on his fingers, it whispered in my heart. His chosen colours are red and black, it said, rising like bile in my gorge.

  “Verocci,” he said out loud through my lips, the first word spoken since the man pushed open the door. The word was a revelation to him—he did not, could not recognise the man bare-faced. Elders rarely concerned themselves with anything beyond colours and masks.

  The man in the doorway bowed low to hide a grin. “Perro, of the Name.” He straightened his well-tailored jacket with mock solemnity. I let my hands drop to the table, maintaining an air of casual regard as I fought off the nauseating pulse of the Vetruvi Claimant’s rage roaring through my blood.

  Verocci, he hissed in my own voice-that-was-not-mine, have no place in the houses of the Vetruvi. His outrage pounded in my ears. I struggled against the urge to vomit. I reached up to adjust the silken straps that held the dirgewood mask tight against my skin.

  “Please,” the man said, holding up a hand, “no need to introduce yourself. I speak with Carra Vetruvi, and am honoured to be in her office.”

  A sharp pain stung the inside of my cheek and I tasted blood on my tongue.

  “Verocci dog! You would dare disrespect me so in my own place of business?” I spoke the words unbidden, the thought voiced not my own, as was the custom. I would not speak in the presence of my elders. The fact this Verocci came here, bare-faced, and dared to address me in his presence was insult enough for my family’s Claimant. He bid me stand, his hand that was mine hauling open the drawer of my desk that was his. “There is nothing I have to say to you or to your kind,” he snarled through my lips.

  With some satisfaction he picked out a pistol, easing back the flint as he levelled it at his visitor. Perro was unarmed, and kept his hands respectfully raised as I readied the vicious little weapon. “Leave now,” the mask said in my voice, “or I will inform your Advocates where they may find your body. Let them bury you on solid earth, and let what trees grow strive to gather what little wisdom can be found in your empty head.” He gave a dismissive snort. The taste of blood was sharp on my tongue, bitter and strong above the numbing distance of dirgewood.

  Perro Verocci stepped back. “Peace, honoured Elder. Peace. I came not to speak with you, and certainly not to challenge you. I respect the Vetruvi. I came to you at Sun’s height. There is no formal business I wish to conduct, and no challenge I can issue.” He looked down for a moment as if uncertain. “I simply came, in my own capacity, to speak with Carra. Please, Per’Secosa of the Vetruvi—I wish to talk to her as a citizen, not as a Claimant.” He held up a hand to frame his perfectly sculpted chin. “I wear no mask.”

  “Claimant.” I snorted, the scorn in his voice translating to an ache in my jaw. “As if any Verocci can lay honest claim to the Title.” He turned, and I watched from within as he shot a glare at the yellowing map that hung in a heavy frame from one wall. Visible within were the original boundaries of the Dukedom, criss-crossed with amendments and agreements and divisions and secondments.

  “As you say,” Perro said. “I am no Claimant—I am merely a man.”

  Young, his voice said inside me. Young and foolish and Untrusted. The last word stung: I was Untrusted myself, as were so many others of my family. I felt my skin itch beneath the smooth wood of the mask. I was still for a moment, mastering the anger I felt at his condemnation.

  Were he in any other room, Per’Secosa would not have hesitated to pull the trigger and have a detail of servants drag the body away. This office, however—at the Keystone of the Grand Canal, perched over the gates and high enough above the city to be stirred by only fresh breezes—was precious to him. The vases that might be disturbed by the dying man’s fall, brought by his ships from countries far beyond the Sun’s rising and setting. The carpet where Perro would bleed his last, that he himself had chosen and laid down when he had been courting his first wife, back when he still drew breath. The wallpaper on which the man’s blood might spray, exquisitely crafted at great expense to match that which hung on the walls in his own lifetime; he had demanded it be stripped away when its deep blue lustre had faded over the long years.

  Deep in the grain of the dirgewood, I could feel the regret and pride of the man who had been Secosa Vetruvi. Behind my eyes a headache gathered, storm-like in its fury. I began to formulate an excuse for getting a drink. Elders were frequently inattentive to the physical requirements of their hosts, and could only be roused from their own interests by a plea for food, water, or rest. Many of them resented their bearers’ physicality, scorning their endurance as weakness.

  “Per’Secosa.” My voice sounded reedy and thin in comparison to my voice as his, as uncertain as the steps of an invalid long confined to their sick-bed and learning to walk anew. He was silent, without and within, biding his time to hear my unwanted words. “Per’Secosa, you see he is unmasked. He is here to see me.” The sentiment was alien. It tasted peculiar on my tongue—or on the memory of my tongue, at least, for my words were seldom heard by any but the mask I wore.

  The Claimant sniffed. “You say you are here as a citizen?” He cocked my head to one side, looking through me down the length of the pistol at Perro.

  “Honoured Elder, I am.” His hands were spread wide. Habit kept them away from his hip, though he bore no sword. Per’Secosa took in the rings he wore—none large enough, nor bearing a sharp enough edge, to deliver a venomous scratch. The experience of centuries of assassinations—successful and unsuccessful, prosecuted and defended—had made the mask quick to see any threat. Yet those years had also made him willing to push at any opportunity.

  “So you have no Claim?” I could feel his thin hope that the young man, bereft of his elders’ guidance and dominion, would stumble into saying something foolish. Three hundred years separated my ancestor from his flesh—in all that time, neither Vetruvi nor Verocci had managed to mumble our way into forsaking the C
laim, at least in any way that the Advocates would support. There were less than five instances, in the entire span of the Dispute, of such a renunciation even being taken as far as Court.

  Calaviri, for one, had renounced the Vetruvi Claim in living memory—after he had spent twenty years unmasked in a lightless dungeon. No tree grew over Calaviri’s grave, for his kidnapping and the loss of Per’Letoro was seen as his own fault. The Verocci’s plot came to nothing, for even the most generously bribed Advocates viewed Calaviri’s kidnapping as coercion.

  Perro laughed. I was impressed, looking on, at how little he sweated, even with the pistol levelled between his eyes. “I would make no such statement on behalf of myself or my family, living or crafted. Today, honoured Elder, I attend your office to seek a meeting with Carra Vetruvi in her own person as a citizen. I would view it as a boon granted, and would be happy to discuss repayment through our Advocates.”

  I bridled at his last sentence—I was not some favour to be haggled over. My own anger brushed against that of Per’Secosa—though his was the centuries-deep indignation that a member of his enemy’s family would dare to set foot in his private chambers. My anger was immaterial to him, a lesser thing of little concern. My anger, at least, was my own, and felt for myself. I gritted my teeth, numbly aware of the tense ache of my jaw. “Carra is family,” he hissed in my voice. “She is not property. For that insult alone I should kill you.”

  Inwardly I laughed. Per’Secosa viewed me as he had viewed my father, and generations of Vetruvi-born before us: little more than a frame on which he could hang his enduring ambitions. I swallowed the thought before it could work its way into the grain of the mask. There were secrets we had from each other, of course—we were trained to the masks from infancy, schooled in sharing our worlds with another, far older soul. We learned to keep a little of ourselves back, or we would be like poor Naryana Vetruvi who was lost in the depths of the Elder’s memories and emotions. Naryana could tell nobody what day it was, and often called our family by their fathers’ names. She spent too much time among the Cousins, whispering secrets nobody else cared to know to those who simply listened mutely, bobbing their heads in a pantomime of agreement.