Three Stories About Ghosts

  It had taken John the space between the aviary tower and their living room to finally lock the spirit in a shackle spell, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold it. His stomach lurched and seemed to spin inside him, nearly sending him to the floor in vertigo.

  He cursed his body. Where had this weakness come from, all of a sudden? He tried to suppress his mind as it half shouted the answer back at him. He’d replaced sleep with scholin weed extract for nearly a month. His shoulders resumed their familiar ache, and his temples started to throb.

  He stood, paused a moment to let his mind stop spinning, and made his way across the living room to his drinks cabinet and took out a fresh bottle of scholin extract, his wand trailing behind his head as it pointed directly at the spirit and kept it trapped in place. He cracked the wax seal and downed the whole bottle in three gulps. He caught the warning label from the corner of his eyes as he put the bottle down.

  Don’t exceed two 500ml bottles per one calendar month.

  How many did this make it since Trish died? Two a day for twenty-seven days? Fifty-five bottles this calendar month. His mind steadied, and fresh currents of power rushed through his whole frame as the scholin’s core hit his gut. He drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let the aches and pain melt away from him.

  “Alright,” he whispered.

  He turned back to the spirit. The resemblance was incredible. With the strength the scholin weed had given him, he pushed down the wave of nausea he got from looking at her, but wasn’t able to check the fresh shudder that ran up his back. Whatever demon had sent this spirit was a master of imitation. Trish’s jet black hair sat unkempt over her shoulders, the ends split and the waves curling into frizzled locks. Stray strands of grey weaved their way through, framing her haggard face. It looked like she hadn’t slept any more than he had since she’d left. The bags under her eyes were black chasms, and the lines along her forehead and the corners of her mouth had deepened into trenches.

  Every inch of his being wanted to run over, grab her into an embrace and squeeze her against him till he could go back with her to whatever hell this imitation had crawled from, but with a fresh breath, he tried again to calm himself and study the situation.

  As he was about to check on Mrs. Murphy, something fresh caught his eye. The scratch on her cheek was there. A week or so before she’d left on her expedition, Lizzie had accidentally scratched her cheek as they play wrestled. The scar was there now. A demon knew to imitate that? How?

  He shook his head as he walked over to Mrs. Murphy. Her face was serene, standing at odds with the immense measure of power pouring from her every second. He didn’t know what he’d have done without her here.

  “Thank you,” he said, before turning back to the spirit.

  “Are the Wardens coming?” she asked, but a slight quaver in her voice seemed off.

  “My mother-in-law is,” he answered, turning back to look at her more closely. “How much power do you have left?”

  “Ten minutes,” she said, letting out a long, drawn breath between gritted teeth.

  That didn’t make any sense. “What?”

  “Budget cuts,” she answered before he’d finished the word. “We only hold half an hour’s warding.”

  John shook his head. Half an hour? What incompetent, heartless parasite would cut funding for children’s warding? Half an hour per school-witch was dangerously close; in the farthest communities from the Warden’s Tower, it may not even be enough to keep a child safe until the Wardens arrived. Damn.

  He skirted behind Mrs. Murphy and touched his hand to a white tile panel beside his drinks cabinet. He turned to tap his wand against the lock without thinking and remembered with a start that he still had the spirit lashed to his sofa. By the Sky Mother’s love, Agatha, where are you?

  He turned and manually entered his code into the lock mechanism, then stood back as it clicked, whirred, and swung open. The lockbox held a single canister of distilled mana from the main New England Ley Line. He carried it over to Mrs. Murphy and placed it down by her feet. She glanced down and double-taked, eyes widening. Her ward quavered for a moment.

  “This isn’t mass-market,” he said, “it’s distilled. Take small strips, let it absorb, and take in another.”

  “I—” Mrs. Murphy hesitated. “It’s too much, you can’t.” She paused again. “It’s more than I make in ten years.”

  John walked back to his recliner and tried to ignore the pool of vomit next to him as he eased back into it.

  “It’s for your ward, Mrs. Murphy. You’re keeping my daughter safe.”

  He relaxed a touch as he heard Mrs. Murphy draw slivers of the power into her wand, and looked back to the spirit. Her white buttoned shirt and beige khakis were marked with red clay, and her white boots were also covered in the stuff. He tried to ignore the form of his wife, following her familiar contours up, then screwed his eyes shut as he forced himself to meet her gaze again.

  Its eyes were quivering, as if it were about to cry. He tried to put himself in its shoes. Even as the thought formed, he heard the woosh and snap of someone materialising in his private apparture.

  “Listen,” Agatha shouted, stomping down the stairs behind them, “I need you to understand normal people don’t simply walk around with the power to travel by apparture, prick.” She brimmed with anger, but all he had to do was sit and wait for her to come down. “I had to borrow from the Tower,” she added, and John could feel the shame in her voice.

  “I’ll pay it,” he shouted back.

  “Oh, will you? Now, what was so important that you couldn’t wait for me to fly here, you selfish piece of—”

  Before he could turn to see her, he felt her release each of his bindings one by one and replace them with her own stronger Warden’s bonds. She tapped Mrs. Murphy’s shoulder as she passed, her eyes focused on the spirit, seeming to glide over the carpets in her long, flowing robes as she approached.

  The spirit’s back straightened and arched as Agatha’s bonds tightened around her, and it was all John could do to keep himself composed as he saw the form of his wife writhe under the pressure. It wasn’t right. What hell-spawned demon would do this to them?

  “Did you take a reading?” Agatha asked in a calm, level voice.

  “No,” John answered as he struggled up to his feet. “All I could do was lash her down as Mrs. Murphy raised her ward and put Lizzie to sleep.”

  Agatha nodded.

  “Approach from its right, recall your wand and hold it two feet above her head. Tell me what’s reverberating there.”

  John stood, sighed out hard as he stretched out his neck, and tried to keep his step steady as he approached the form of his wife. The imitation was perfect. He did as Agatha asked, but couldn’t feel anything.

  “Only its heartbeat,” he said. “It’s a reverberation of its heartbeat. Your bonds are hurting it.”

  Agatha shook her head. “Look deeper. It’s not a fel, and it’s not a succubus; what is it, John?”

  “I don’t know,” he half muttered as he tried to peer deeper into the spell that spawned the spirit. “It doesn’t feel enslaved or even summoned.”

  Agatha hissed in frustration. “What does it feel like, then?” Her calm tone started to fray.

  “It feels like Trish.” John closed his eyes and let his heart shudder as his wife’s life force filled him. From the first moment he’d seen the spirit, something hadn’t felt right. Now that he was this close and peering into it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was his wife.

  But that was impossible.

  “Don’t be daft,” Agatha snapped.

  “Look.” He turned and beckoned. “It’s even got the mark on her cheek from when Lizzie scratched her by accident. I know it’s an imitation, but I can feel her now. Something’s wrong.”

  “Oh, listen to yourself,” Agatha said as she approached.

  In two hundred millennia under the Star Mother, there hadn’t been a single r
ecorded event of Her bringing someone back. Sure, there had been accounts, rumours, but nothing proven, nothing recorded as fact. As he stared down into the life essence of the being bound to his sofa, he couldn’t think of a single explanation.

  He tried again, attuning his wand to the demonic channels that course through this world, to the winds of magic on which the djinn surf around the world’s skies, looking for prey. He even tried to feel for the resonance of an extra-terrestrial power-well, manifesting here, looking for a victim, but all he could feel was the warmth and strength of the Sky Mother’s power and his wife’s life force.

  Was this the scholin weed clouding his mind? He shook his head to clear it and looked again, and a sharp spike seemed to ram through his heart as his mind started to settle on the idea that maybe—as he had begged since her death—the Star Mother had brought her home to him.

  He turned to look at Agatha, and his heart skipped a beat. Fire and terror rose from his gut in waves. Agatha held a blood vial in her left hand, and as the spirit’s life force reverberated above her in tune to the beat of its heart, the blood vial responded in flashes of light.

  “Is”—John hesitated and swallowed hard—“is that Trish’s?”

  Agatha nodded, and John’s world turned upside down. Trish’s blood vial flashed in time with the spirit’s heartbeat. That couldn’t be. He took half a step back and looked closer as Agatha loosened the tightest of her bonds.

  “Ah,” he half muttered as his thoughts scattered, “Trish?”

  THE SECONDS CLICKED on the grandfather clock outside in the hallway, seeming to hammer John’s nerves with every strike. He sat on a stool across the kitchen table from Agatha and Trish. Mrs. Murphy kept Lizzie asleep and paced back and forth near the window overlooking the estate grounds, keeping her bound to her chest with a mild charm and covering her with her black robes. She stroked her hair as Trish stared on.

  “Only for a minute. I need to hold her,” Trish said. Her voice was hers. Her eyes were hers. This was Trish, materialising in her own flesh and blood, but it was still too much to ask to let her near his child.

  “No,” Trish said to herself before John could answer. She dropped her head into her hands, her voice edged in a desperate tone. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

  She crossed her arms across the table and leaned forward to bury her head in them. Her hair stood up, frayed and jagged, and Agatha put her hand over her head, stroking it, even as she kept the last of her Warden’s bonds in place at Trish’s waist.

  “You are a spirit,” Agatha said, her voice devoid of any of its natural flair and confidence. She was sure that this was her daughter, but even she couldn’t bring herself to let a spirit close to Lizzie.

  “What’re you going to tell her?” Trish asked, her voice muffled as her head remained buried in her arms.

  “It was all a dream,” Mrs. Murphy answered. She stopped pacing and looked back at them. “I can tell that only the Star Mother’s power lives here, same as you all, but a child—even one like Lizzie—wouldn’t understand what’s happening.” She paused and scoffed. “I mean, none of us do.”

  They sat in silence for a moment as John’s head swayed, and his nerves screamed with every tick of the clock outside. He sighed out hard and rested his left temple on his fist as he leaned forward on the table. He idly sipped from his ginger tea, but it did nothing to settle him. He pushed the cup away and leaned back on the stool.

  “Can you remember anything before here?” he asked.

  Trish looked up. Agatha moved her hand from her head down to her shoulder and pulled her closer. Trish leaned into her mother and shook her head.

  “Only a feeling,” Trish said.

  Agatha looked down at her, silently urging her to go on.

  “Like”—she hesitated—“a billion voices speaking together, but one voice speaking out. It—” She paused again and squeezed her temples. “The feeling was inhuman.”

  Agatha nodded. “And the clay on your clothes. We sensed your life force ending, but nothing else. Do you know where you are?” She shook her head. “Where your corporeal remains are?”

  Trish was lost for a moment; she looked over to John and shook her head. His heart fell. He didn’t know why she had been brought back, but he had hoped it had something to do with bringing her killers to justice.

  “Nothing at all?” John asked, unable to keep the desperation from his voice.

  “No.”

  Agatha nodded again, trying to get some of her exterior composure back in place. John had to stifle a scoff.

  “What was the last thing you recall?” Agatha asked, her voice a touch calmer.

  “Preston College, the woods, packing some crate, and”—she paused and screwed her eyes shut, tilting her head to the side—“and nothing. I remember my life, what we had for dinner the night before I left, putting Lizzie to bed, my last night with John, and that’s it. I don’t remember waking up the next morning.”

  John found he couldn’t sit anymore. He stood and walked over to the fridge, opened it, closed it again, and walked over to the kitchen’s central island and leaned over the marble worktop. He shuddered as he tried to force the memory of his last night with Trish from his mind. The memory of her embrace shot straight from his chest to every last inch of him, and he fought with everything he had to keep his eyes dry.

  “Trish,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “the Wardens found nothing in your e-mails, diary, phone. It looked like your expedition simply didn’t exist. You don’t know why?”

  Trish shook her head.

  “You don’t remember Kate or the professor?” he asked

  She shook her head again but paused midway.

  “I do remember them, in the days before leaving, but nothing of the expedition itself. It’s—” She started slapping the palm of her hand against her head, till Agatha stopped her. “I know I’m here for something, some—it’s all a blank.”

  John opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as Trish stood from her stool and walked over to him. He didn’t know whether to reach for his wand or to back away, so he stood there, frozen, as she took his hand, sending his heart racing and a shiver through his whole frame. She felt so real. He held her hand back.

  “I think I’m bound to you,” Trish said, and her soft voice washed over his battered mind like smooth milk and honey. “I materialise to you.” She dropped her head in thought. “And Lizzie, too.”

  It took every shred of his strength, but he kept himself from pulling her into an embrace. He knew he couldn’t ever let go.

  Agatha hummed, turned to him and furrowed her brows. “Her e-mails were wiped, as were Kate’s,” she said, taking control of the room as she gestured to Trish.

  John nodded in agreement and waited for her to go on. Trish let go of his hand and walked back to her mother.

  “Margaret Goodland refused to speak to us, and Professor Goodland’s notes were destroyed, same as all the e-mails. She still hasn’t said a word to us.”

  John nodded as he started to follow her idea.

  “She was always so fond of Trish,” he said. “If we show her the blood vial—”

  “Yes,” Agatha said, turning to Mrs. Murphy. “Can you stay here at all? With Lizzie? Maybe for a day while John and I investigate this?”

  Mrs. Murphy looked back from the window, hesitated, but nodded. “We are all but servants of the Sky Mother,” she said.

  Trish sat back next to Agatha, and the two of them turned to him. He felt as though his mind ought to be going numb by now, but every time he looked at her, a fresh spike seemed to ram straight through his heart. He shuddered for a moment and collected what remnants remained of his wits. He took in a long breath, stretched out the ache in his shoulders, and looked at his watch.

  “It’s one in the morning here, should be past six in the morning in Scotland.” He sighed and dropped his head as the gravity of the situation dawned on him yet again. “We can apparture to Fort William and fl
y the rest of the way into the Highlands.” His mind swam in a hundred different currents, but going to Professor Goodland’s widow seemed to offer the best chance at an answer. He was with Trish when they died. He’d never kept notes electronically. Maybe whoever had murdered them missed something. Maybe his widow would help them, assuming she could accept that Trish wasn’t a demon’s apparition. “We can be with her by eight or so.”

  He looked up, breathed out a prayer to the Sky Mother, begging for strength, and finally released his clutch on his wand. He let the power it held dissipate, and unclenched himself. He’d need another bottle of scholin weed before leaving. Margaret Goodland was not a woman to suffer dull minds.

  Chapter Three

  JOHN DREW ANOTHER dove feather from his breast pocket and fed it into his wand to maintain altitude. He suppressed a yawn and poured more power into the wards protecting him from the surging air as they raced towards Loch Carron, flying below a rain cloud the size of the sky that seemed to be in some monstrous hurry to empty its bowels onto the land below.

  The ground below was awash in lush green canopies, beige hills—some snow-capped—and golden fields of rapeseed breaking the otherwise wild landscape here and there. He weakened his wards against the air for a moment and breathed in the rich scent of life all around him, letting it settle into his core as the air inside his ward started to swirl and rush about. In a few moments, the few slivers of rain poking through his wards drenched him, and John relaxed a touch as the cool highland rain washed away the ache from his weary frame.

  He turned to check on Agatha. She barely seemed to be feeding any power into her broomstick at all, and her charm against the air even kept her lilac robes from flapping as they raced across the Scottish sky. He wondered at how little power her flight seemed to take and patted his breast pocket again to make sure he held enough feathers for the flight back.