G is for Ghosts

by Rhonda Parrish

  Squashing down the memories, Seth glared at the clock on the wall while the others continued their lamentations. Astoundingly, they’d made it almost an entire hour without anyone perishing in any of the ten districts represented at the meeting. Five deathwalkers were absent though. Probably trawling the Otherworld. That’s the thing with a big city. There was always someone giving up their ghost, generously donating shards of memory to the deathwalkers. The majority of the living populace didn’t even know deathwalkers existed. Not until it was their time to shuffle off.

  Bethany was whining about ghost-induced migraines when Daniel choked on his shortbread and dropped his mug of tea, sloshing beige Earl Grey across the pock-marked linoleum.

  The others rushed to his aid, sliding Daniel from his chair into the safety position on the floor. Genevieve—or was it Jennifer?—took off her cardigan and folded it beneath Daniel’s head as he writhed in spasms.

  The passing must’ve been sudden and unexpected, possibly violent. Seth leaned forward in his chair and licked his lips.

  These days, he could usually feel a death coming on, especially ones due to natural causes. A tingling in the fingers warned of an imminent heartache, a throbbing in the skull for a stroke or aneurysm. Death by old age was the worst. Boring. Like being smothered in a warm blanket. These days murder was the usual cause of death in Seth’s district. And murder always came as a surprise.

  Given his wide eyes and sharp gasps, Daniel was in the throes of a sudden death. A car crash or a stabbing perhaps.

  Seth shivered and dug his nails into the sides of his knees.

  A back alley brawl getting out of hand? Too early in the evening for that though. Definitely not a drive-by shooting in Daniel’s territory. A domestic dispute turned deadly was more likely. Daniel foamed at the mouth, eyes-rolling back to glaring white. He shivered and convulsed.

  Ah. A drowning. Seth should’ve known.

  Fire in the lungs. Icy nails driven through flesh and bone.

  Seth swallowed hard, remembering all the drownings he’d walked. He crossed his legs, but no one was looking at his crotch. All eyes were on Daniel who still flopped around on the floor.

  Seth closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths, trying to stifle the swell of memory rising in his mind; and the swelling between his legs.

  Daniel stopped convulsing. He was probably in the Otherworld by now—that liminal space where deathwalkers caught up with the recently deceased. Purgatory some might call it. He’d likely be there a while.

  As the minutes dragged on, Seth lost interest.

  “Well that killed the mood,” he said, releasing his hold on his knees. No one laughed. “Guess the meeting’s over then?”

  “You’re such an arsehole,” Riya said. She twisted a curl of hair dyed obnoxiously red around a finger bearing matching nail polish.

  “Only realizing this now?” Seth gave her a grin, letting his long hair fall across his face.

  Riya rolled her eyes and Keigo raised their middle finger.

  “See you all next week.” Seth shrugged into his black trench and popped the collar. This time of year, the wind liked to molest bare necks with icy fingers.

  No one waved goodbye or even looked his way, their attention riveted on Daniel. Seth lingered at the door, waiting. Everyone waited. Seth held his breath as the clamor of ghosts in his head grew in brutal crescendo. Something inside him wanted to know if Daniel made it out all right.

  Every ‘walker knew what it was like to die. For real. It’s how they became deathwalkers in the first place. Get murdered by your mentor—a parent in most cases—traverse the Otherworld, wade through the river and—if you made it back from the other side, successfully clawing your way back to the realm of the living—voila.

  Seth hadn’t quite believed it all. He’d liked the idea, despite how his mentor—Grace—had described it as a ‘duty’ and a ‘burden.’ Fifteen-year-old Seth had also been okay with not making it back at all. Death was a curiosity; maybe a relief. He would’ve preferred something dramatic and bloody, but when the time came, Grace slipped barbiturates into his morning smoothie.

  Twenty-two minutes later, Daniel gasped and sat up. Seth exhaled, easing surprising tension from his shoulders. When had he started giving a shit about other ‘walkers, even the ones he wanted to bone?

  “Suicide, fourteen,” Daniel said between coughing as though the water were still in his lungs.

  “So young?”

  “But why?”

  “It’s so sad, I can’t even.”

  The others crowded round: sniveling, hugging, mourning.

  Seth had had enough. While the others offered their condolences, he slipped onto the street. He let the cold wind slice across his cheeks and inhaled the sharp air, savoring the ache in his teeth and lungs.

  Seth made it four blocks before he couldn’t take the noise in his skull. Ducking into an alley with overflowing dumpsters, he rifled through his pockets, found the tin pillbox, and planted two blue petals on his tongue. Sour-sweet, bitter-salt—the taste of magic.

  Eyes-closed, back pressed against cold brick, he waited. Five minutes, ten, twenty passed before the panacea took effect. Finally, some volume control.

  Footsteps in the alley.

  Seth cracked open his eyes, needing a moment to focus on the figure sashaying through alley detritus with her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and a carefree whistle on her lips.

  She leaned against the opposite wall in a pose mirroring Seth’s own, draped in the long shadows cast by the sallow light of streetlamps.

  “You high?” Tamara asked in her melodious drawl, her voice a crush of deep velvet. A smirk twisted the corners of her perfect mouth.

  “Almost.”

  She nodded and a few more minutes shuffled past as Seth’s system re-calibrated, the cacophony in his head fading to white-noise whispers. He offered Tamara a smile.

  “Been a good day then?” she asked.

  “Boring but busy. There’s a turf war on. Any takers on death by bullets?”

  “My clients are more discerning.” Tamara slunk away from the wall in a movement agonizingly fluid and closed the space between them. Her fingers were hot against Seth’s cheek. Her breath smelled of the raspberry-mint gum she was always chewing. Her magic prickled Seth’s skin; teasing, tantalizing, threatening.

  “Glean anything interesting?” She tapped a finger against his temple.

  “More of the usual. Gang-bangers aren’t the most creative when it comes to violence.”

  “Think I can organise you a proper fix,” she said. “If you’re up for it. You do owe us after all.” She tapped the pocket where Seth kept his pill box.

  “And when am I not happy to deliver?” He arched closer to Tamara, their ribs and hips connecting. Decade-old memories ignited in the murk, tearing through the mud of Seth’s mind to bloom in neon.

  Back when Tamara thought he’d only survive another year or two, back when the witch had been a mere apprentice with incipient power still being coaxed from her veins, back then, they’d fucked and ‘loved’ each other, secure in their knowledge of an expiration date. But Seth had failed to make the expected dramatic exit. Now, Tamara was a Council witch and Seth was impossibly still alive.

  Now, they fucked without any pretenses of love.

  And now, Tamara murdered degenerates in Seth’s district and extracted his memories of their agony. Her magic rendered his experiences a potent drug for wealthy humans with more money than principles to consume. Not that Seth could stand in judgment.

  “Got something lined up?” he asked, trembling in anticipation.

  “Tomorrow night,” Tamara said, sliding a thumb across his parted lips. “I’ll come to yours at six.”

  “You won’t be the one doing it then?” he asked, disappointed. Tamara rarely delegated murder. To the witch, dying was an art and she made it so. She knew exactly how to draw a deathwalker to the soul,
to wring exquisite pain from the target and let the agony linger.

  “This one I want to watch.” She dragged a nail down Seth’s cheek. “I’ll do the extraction though.”

  “Make sure it hurts.”

  “You are one twisted fuck,” Tamara said with a laugh.

  Seth smiled and squeezed the witch’s waist.

  She dipped her hand inside his jacket, removed the pillbox, and filled it from her own stash of petals.

  “Always a pleasure doing business with you,” Seth said, tugging her closer and nipping the skin of her neck with careful incisors.

  “Tomorrow.” Tamara stepped away and Seth almost toppled over, her parting sending seismic shock waves through his foundations.

  She tossed a careless smile over her shoulder before vanishing from the mouth of the alley, the tapping of her spiked heels fading, absorbed by the ruckus of the city.

  He’d already been to the Otherworld twice before tea. Nothing exciting though.

  The clock on the wall gave him thirty minutes to shower and prepare for Tamara’s arrival. Seth only hoped no one else decided to perish in the time it would take for the witch’s murder to occur. Simultaneous deaths were harder to enjoy, confusing and diluting the sensations, polluting the memories.

  Washed and dressed, Seth waited, listening to the rain splatter the window. At precisely six o’clock, Tamara made her entrance, shrugging out of her leather jacket to reveal a sheer, lace blouse beneath. She kept her boots on.

  “For after,” she said, lifting the bottle of wine in her hand. She left it on the kitchen counter, took Seth’s hand, and led him to the bedroom.

  “Are you going to tell me what to expect?”

  “And ruin the surprise?” Tamara tsked as her fingers slowly undid the buttons of Seth’s shirt. Her hair was damp from the rain. She smelled of mint and sandalwood.

  “How much do they deserve it?” he asked as Tamara pressed a hand to his chest and forced him back onto the bed.

  “This one deserves the worst.” Something flashed in her dark eyes, too fast for Seth to catch. Tamara checked the time. “Any minute now.” She smoothed the hair from Seth’s face, perched on an elbow beside him, her body hot and Seth’s growing hotter. Tamara’s fingers traced spirals across his collarbones, down his sternum, trailing fire as they wended lower.

  “Will I—” but his words were cut short. The death pounced, pain exploding behind his eyes as the world fractured. He was aware of Tamara’s hands on his body, of her lips and teeth. He was dying, slow and excruciating. Such was the magic of witch murder, letting him tip-toe the line between realms. He straddled the veil, bombarded with sensation in both realms.

  Tamara and her magic kept him tethered, reeling him back into his body every time he thought the riptide would drag him into the Otherworld.

  He gasped and thrashed, groaned and writhed. Tears burned trails across his temples as he squeezed his eyes shut. The horror inflicted on the body of the dying reverberated through his own skin.

  A man, sixty-two, and decades from a natural death. He must’ve been a monster to deserve this. Seth certainly did. The pain, that is—but not to enjoy it the way he did.

  Seth had no words to describe what he was feeling. Language dissolved in technicolor torment. His nerves were a conflagration. Tamara’s hands sent shock waves through his living body as another witch wrung protracted agony from the target.

  Seth arched his back and screamed, air torn from his lungs, skin flayed from his bones, his life unraveling inexorably as he climaxed in one realm and died in another.

  He slipped into the burgundy embrace of the Otherworld. Reality melted and reformed, puddles of blood-red aether taking shape as he crossed through the veil in search of the soul who’d earned such a grisly end.

  Seth’s Otherworld was a labyrinth of streets flanked by brown-brick tenement homes, each identical. A blurred rendition of the neighbourhood where he’d grown up. He traipsed through the streets, searching for the recently deceased. The pain of the man’s passing lingered, sizzling down his spine and pulsing in his fingertips.

  Seth rounded a corner and froze.

  The soul stood on the sidewalk staring at a house indistinguishable from the rest except for the Yule wreath on the door.

  The wreath. Seth’s little sister had made it at school. A muddle of string and beads and pottery pieces. Their father had nailed it to the door even though it was only November. Every time Seth had come home from school, he’d broken a leaf or torn loose a bead, gradually destroying his sister’s work of art. Her tears had made him smile.

  The soul stepped toward the door, his translucent hand reaching for the wreath, fingers ghosting over the jagged edges of badly glazed clay.

  Seth swallowed mouthfuls of aether, lungs burning, insides roiling.

  “Am I dead?” the man asked, glancing at Seth without recognizing him.

  Seth nodded.

  “I didn’t want to die.”

  So few did.

  “Not like that,” the man said, choking back a sob.

  “You didn’t deserve it,” Seth said.

  The man was shaking, shedding soul stuff in swirls of grey-blue. The wisps curled away and floated down the street. Seth inhaled them, each a dagger.

  Love and loss, fear and confusion, regret, joy, sorrow, anger—he absorbed every poisoned barb. The memories were a kaleidoscope cascade and in them he saw himself, shattered and refracted.

  Seth fought through the assault and grabbed the man by the wrist. Trying to blink the memories from his eyes, he dragged the soul through the labyrinth of streets. The Otherworld peeled open, the tenement houses falling away as asphalt dissolved into soggy banks.

  The river loomed ahead, a crash of black water tumbling over rocks, its shore crowded with willows and rowans.

  “Where are we going? Who are you? Why are you here?” The man dug his heels in, but Seth was stronger. The man tried to peel Seth’s fingers from his arm, but succeeded only in shedding more soul stuff.

  “Stop,” The man said. “Please, stop. Look at me!”

  Seth stopped and turned to face the man. He’d never been able to resist a command issued in that tone of voice.

  “It can’t be,” the man said, voice cracking, tears cutting furrows down his death-eroded cheeks. For moments that felt like hours, the man simply looked at Seth, studying, analyzing. His eyes widened with disbelief, then faded to grey with resignation.

  “I thought—we thought—we didn’t know what to do.”

  “I know,” Seth said. He’d lived the man’s memories.

  “We looked for you.” The man raised his hand and cupped Seth’s cheek. Seth shuddered but endured the cold-fire contact.

  “I didn’t want to be found.”

  “I hoped you were dead. That way you wouldn’t hurt…”

  Seth closed his eyes as the man’s words landed like hammer blows.

  “Are you dead?”

  “Not yet,” Seth said, eyes opening. “But you are.”

  Together they negotiated the river bank, stepping over rotting logs and pulling back the curtains of willow fronds.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I’m sorry we didn’t do more or know how to help.” He closed a cool hand over the scars on Seth’s right wrist.

  Seth sucked in a breath of aether, staring at the churning waters, not daring to look at the man he’d once called father.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Seth said as he shoved the soul into the river.

  The waters raged, waves spitting and hissing as they tore at the man wading through the currents.

  Seth turned away and started up the bank.

  It was only when his feet hit the grassy path of the meadow, he risked a glance over his shoulder. The waters were calm. The soul gone, to the opposite shore or the depths, Seth would never know. He forced his feet up the path, each step heavier as the Otherworld condensed around him. Its edges turned
slick red, the air sticky and clotting in his nostrils. The realm enveloped him in burgundy folds before expelling him with a squelch.

  His heart beat, he drew breath, and looked up into the smiling face of Tamara.

  “I take it you enjoyed that.” Her fingers teased the skin pulled taut over his hip bone. “Can I get started or do you need a moment?” she asked, resting her fingers on his chest. “I imagine that was rather intense. Perhaps I should’ve warned you.” She laughed.

  Seth grabbed her hand and squeezed.

  “Hey, easy there, you’re hurting me.”

  Seth squeezed harder until he felt her bones grind together, until he was sure just a little more pressure would cause them to break.

  “Hey!” Tamara wrenched away with a bolt of magic leaving his fingers charred.

  He sat up and dragged a hand through his hair, pulling hard, harder until his scalp burned. The voices in his head were quiet, a timid susurrus as they welcomed another ghost to the fold.

  Tamara stood beside the bed, massaging her wrist.

  “Maybe it was too much,” she said with a mocking pout. “Perhaps I truly outdid myself this time. Actually traumatized you,” she added.

  Seth didn’t respond. He was out of balance. His system needed time to reestablish an equilibrium he’d probably never know again. He pressed a hand to his chest, as if he could staunch the icy depletion he felt in his organs.

  “Come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t like it,” Tamara said. “Didn’t you enjoy seeing that arsehole get what he deserved? Feeling it?” Cautiously, she perched beside Seth and rested her bruised hand on his knee. “Or was it all a bit too meta? You must’ve seen yourself. What was that like?”

  “He didn’t deserve it,” Seth said.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Tamara’s voice turned soft and sympathetic. “After everything he did to you? It’s the least he deserved! You know you’re the victim here. You didn’t do anything wrong…” Her platitudes and reassurances continued.

  Seth bit the inside of his cheek, tasting copper.