G is for Ghosts

by Rhonda Parrish

  There’s a crash of broken glass. I wince. A girl’s wail rises like a siren.

  “Freddy!” the mother shrieks. “Stop it! You’ve hurt your sister! We don’t do that in this house!”

  “I don’t want to be in this house!” Freddy yells.

  “Oh sweetie, come here,” the mother soothes to the wailing daughter. Then, to Freddy: “Apologize to Maggie!”

  I’m transfixed, my breath held, unable to continue.

  “It’s her fault for standing there.”

  “Apologize now, or you’re grounded.”

  “No.”

  “Go to your room! Think about what you did. You’re not to come out until you’re ready to apologize!”

  “No!”

  The mother’s voice rises and cracks at the limit of volume. “In your room, now!”

  Feet stomp up the stairs. I hear the mother cooing the screaming daughter. What seems ages later, the daughter’s screaming dwindles to sniffles.

  “Mommy’s got to clean up, okay, sweetie? Did you want to stay here with me, or did you want to watch a show?”

  The girl mumbles and the playful jingle of a children’s show follows.

  Finally I relax, and work my way to the front of the house.

  It’s a terrible time, but… Mum’s lacunita is in there.

  I ring the doorbell and suck in a breath.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake.” The mother rips open the door. “What do you want?”

  Her brown hair’s disheveled. Tears streak down her sunken cheeks, while her jogging pants and sweater are stained with gravy splatters.

  Mum’s lacunita hovers behind the young mother, trying in vain to pat her head and comfort her.

  “Who are you, and what do you want?” the mother snaps.

  The cycle is lain bare, and all at once I’m faced with how my own selfish needs are preventing karmic flow.

  Karmic flow this mother could desperately use. It wouldn’t solve all her problems, but it would definitely help.

  Mum’s lacunita wanted to pass into her, but she hadn’t gone through the cleansing process via the levels of hell. If all I’d been told was true, there was no way Mum’s lacunita could ever help this mother unless I let her go.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  The mother’s eyes narrow, suspicious. I probably seem more than a little creepy right now. “We’re fine, thank you very much. Good night.”

  She slams the door in my face. I drag myself to the curb, where Kate is waiting.

  “Mum’s lacunita… why does she have to go now?” Tears run down my face.

  “What did you see?” Kate asks.

  “Mum was trying to go into her.”

  “The longer you hold Mum’s lucanita here, the longer you prevent another’s karma being fulfilled,” Kate says.

  “I’m stopping someone else blossoming as a mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “I know.”

  What a crappy world. Choose between keeping your mother or damning the future.

  Mum wouldn’t want to damn the future. When she was lucid, she loved Roland more than anything. Somewhere, somehow, she still loves him.

  Kate wraps an arm around me. “I’m sorry, Damian.”

  I wipe my tears away. “I’ll do the rituals.”

  The next day I’m sitting at the altar in Kate’s house, Roland on one side, Kate on the other. Lacunitos cloud my vision. With the smoke from all the candles and incense, I can barely see.

  I raise my hands in prayer.

  “Spirits of all that’s passed

  Let go of your ties at last

  Cling not to the life that was

  But pass and embrace your flaws.

  “We hold the gate open for you

  The cycle that breathes life through

  We honour your memory and life

  Accepting that all things must die.”

  The lacunitos pass one by one through the altar, and I’m staring through blurry eyes, watching for Mum. Saying goodbye to my sister’s lacunitas, to Brendan’s lacunitos, and to the phantoms of encounters gone and passed.

  I grab a nearby kettle of boiled water, and pour it into a teacup full of yarrow leaves.

  Mum comes, her head poking playfully through the floor. Her laughter echoes with memories of walks by the river, of family meals, of a million tiny moments captured in a smile.

  “Bye, Mum,” I whisper, holding the cup of tea up for her.

  She closes her eyes and inhales deeply through her nose. The steam’s upward drift kinks for a moment. Then Mum waves, blows us a kiss, and hops through the altar.

  “Oh, how nice of you! Did you know these are my favourite?” Mum says, picking up the peanut butter cookie. She’s sitting up in bed, more energetic than usual.

  “I had a feeling,” I say, smiling even though it hurts.

  “How many kind young men are going around giving treats to old ladies?”

  “Not enough, I’d wager. But I’ve got something else you might like.”

  I pour Mum some yarrow tea.

  Her breath catches. “Yarrow? You’re an angel.”

  I want to be grateful for what’s left of Mum. I tell myself it’s better than not having her here at all. That others have it worse. It still hurts like hell, though, and I pray Mum will be whole again one day, somewhere, for someone.

  For now, I am with her, no matter how many times I have to introduce myself, no matter how many cookies and tea I have to sneak past the nurses.

  “Your mother must be very proud.”

  It’s hard to stop the tears. “I hope so.”

  I open the glass door, ready to catch an avalanche of junk. Clambering over the stool and the tricycle is too familiar.

  Does anything ever change in this place? Maybe, like the lacunitos the blind witch clutches, the objects are stagnant, too.

  As I move gingerly around the clutter, I see an old Mektron toy, one of the originals. Volker might not recognize it, but I’ll get it anyway.

  That’s one thing I’ve realized, with a lot of help from Kate. The lacunitos show you what you’ve lost, but they don’t really show what you’ve gained. We can build things, or try to build things, all the time.

  That’s what I’m doing now.

  The witch is at the back, eyes the same milky-white as the first time we met.

  I smile.

  “You seem familiar,” she says.

  “You helped me find my mother,” I reply.

  “Ah,” she says. “So you did find her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you looking for someone else, now?”

  “No,” I say, pulling out a Thermos. “I’m here to talk to you.”

  Y is for Yarrow

  Suzanne J. Willis

  Winter, 1868. Crystal Palace, London.

  “The Wheel of Life”, the posters proclaimed in bold lettering around a neat sketch of a spinning drum from which light illuminated the awed observers’ faces. Underneath, “London Steroscopic and Photographic Company” modestly acknowledged the owner of the marvel. Mary, in her long black dress, leather doctor’s bag by her side, cocked her head while studying the poster. There was a gentle snib of the bag’s clasps as Charlie, the wee automaton who was only a foot tall, poked his head out to read it, too.

  “Where’s the crank again, old girl?” He spoke quietly, not wanting to draw the attention of spiffy Londoners, in their bustles and suits and Sunday best, strolling along the paths. Like Mary and Charlie, they were here for the Crystal Palace, which glittered through the early morning fog like something half-dreamt.

  The exhibition hall would not open for another hour or so. Mary hoped that would be long enough for them to fulfil their task. Ever since Freya and Charlie had found her, rescued from the terror of her kidnap—when they had unmade her, ta
ken away the timepieces that gave her life and so rendered her no more than an empty, useless doll—and found a way to remake her, again, Mary had been slower, less herself than she would ever have thought possible. Her legs ached constantly, and there was a crick in her lower back that never quite went away. Once again, she wondered if this was what it felt like to get old.

  Despite herself, she smiled down at Charlie—her constant, ever-faithful Charlie.

  “If our Freya was right,” she replied, “she’ll have it set up just near the gas outlet valve, on the south side of the exhibit.”

  Just then, Freya slipped out of the side door of the palace, almost as ethereal as the fog that wreathed the gardens and lifted in misty tendrils as the winter sunlight hit it.

  Like clockwork, Mary though.

  Freya wore the same almond-coloured coat, trimmed in fur, and cloche hat, both of which would not become fashionable for the next fifty years, as she had when they first met. Instead of being conspicuous, she managed to appear insubstantial, wandering by the Sunday morning strollers as though she was not there at all. Perhaps her journey with the time-wraiths had changed her in ways that none of them yet quite understood.

  Mary stretched her hand out as Freya reached them, then pulled back as Freya winced. Clearly, she had changed. Once, she would never have recoiled from Mary or Charlie, but now… it was as though she was as fragile as old porcelain, spiderwebbed in cracks that were ready to shatter apart at the merest touch.

  “What did they do to you?” Charlie asked.

  Mary shushed him, but Freya just shook her head. “The time-wraiths don’t mean any harm. In some ways, they’re just like any other ghosts—the real world holds no meaning for them. But time, for them… well, for time-wraiths, they feel that it is theirs to own and guard, precisely because it has no effect on them…”

  Freya suddenly looked old, much older than Mary remembered. How long had she been with the time-wraiths, those creatures that exist outside time, twisting and turning it as though it was their own toy?

  Even had she not been with them, she’s never been like you, Mary reminded herself. No matter how long darling Freya travels back and forth across the ages with you and Charlie, no matter how much that tiny second hand from her father’s pocket watch ticks away in her wrist, holding back her own clock, she is still human. Something you and Charlie will never be.

  Freya would, perhaps, one day, be a ghost herself. But that didn’t bear thinking about. Not when they had been through so much. She refused to let herself think that they might one day lose Freya, who had become as dear to her as if she were her own child.

  “One thing at a time, old girl,” Charlie said softly, looking up at Mary. She nodded, amazed that he often seemed able to read her mind, as he turned his attention to Freya.

  “And you my friend… well done. It’s not an easy thing, setting up a job like this, but you’ve made our part in it easier still.”

  Freya smiled and held up an iron key. “And this should make it easier again,” she smiled. “Do you think it will work, Charlie?” Freya asked.

  Mary knew she wasn’t talking about the key.

  He smiled, then, a toothy grin under his ginger moustache. “Wouldn’t be heading in there if I thought it wouldn’t.”

  Inside the palace, it felt like they had entered a city made of ice. The heating hadn’t taken off the morning chill yet and Freya’s breath plumed before her. The morning sun, wan as it was, shone through the domed roof, sparking the day to life. The past and future, all the endless possibilities of time, seemed to whisper through the emptiness of the great conservatory, tiding over them as they made their way to the centre.

  “Can you feel that, Mary?” Freya asked.

  Mary nodded. “Try not to listen. This kind of place, where the weft and warp of time has been rent, and spectres are able to slither through, is unstable. It makes you vulnerable to them…”

  Freya straightened up, pushed her shoulders back. “They’ll not get me, Mary.”

  “Atta girl,” said Charlie, still peering out from Mary’s black bag.

  They passed all manner of wondrous exhibits—carved ice swans swimming on a lake of white blooms; a miniature city wrought from silver, crowned by a cathedral with windows made of amethyst, citrine, carnelian; an enormous tea-room fit for a czar, smelling of roses and cinnamon. At last, dead ahead, in the great performance hall, the very thing they had come for. The Wheel of Life—the giant zoetrope that had been the talk of London. And their only chance of setting things to rights.

  Here, the whispers seemed to grow quieter, as though they were avoiding this particular place. For those whispers had a life of their own, as all such possibilities do. Waiting to be called, to be made whole, to put roots down in the world where time rules all. In the same way, they know where it is not safe for them, for they fear being unwound, of losing the chance to be. They were the echoes of what was and what can be.

  But they were nothing compared with the real ghosts that were slipping through the tear in time that Mary, Charlie and Freya had been charged with fixing. They stood before the zoetrope, each of them quietly awed. A huge drum of copper and curlicues, attached to a gas generator. Through the vertical slits, a glimpse of the images inside that lined it, waiting to be animated. The wheel held a promise—to the ordinary folk, a promise of the miracle of the moving image. For the three time-travellers, the chance of starting afresh.

  Charlie hopped out of the bag and made his way to the back of the generator, muttering to himself. Freya stared at the zoetrope with wide eyes. “My grandmother told me about this, when I was very young. Told me about how all the people crowded around and looked through those thin windows into the wheel and saw magic happen! The gas engine cranked away and they came back twice during the day to see the different animations.” She turned to Mary. “That won’t change for her, will it? I mean, we are here to change the timeline—”

  Mary shook her head. “We’re here to do no such thing, Freya. All we are doing is changing something that should never have happened. To stop them from coming through from the future…” she trailed off.

  “But why are they possessing people?”

  “I think they want a second chance at life,” Mary replied. “In a different era, where they can cast off any attachments they held in life. Just a theory, of course.” What she didn’t say was that she also suspected that the three of them, with all their to-ing and fro-ing across the centuries may have caused the problem in the first place.

  As Charlie fussed around the engine and looked to fix the manual crank in its place (she always marvelled at his strength, given he was no bigger than a child’s doll), she and Freya took the stereoscope images they had prepared out of the black doctor’s bag and began affixing them inside the wheel. As they worked, Mary thought about all the havoc that the ghosts had wreaked. Not quietly, either. It had become a sensation, splashed across the papers and drawing all sorts of unwanted attention. Drawing Mary’s attention and the urgent, gnawing knowledge that this had to be stopped.

  The tear in time must have been small at first, almost infinitesimal, but big enough for the child’s spirit to find a way through. She had been from the early twentieth century, dead from the Spanish flu, Mary thought, given the terrible catarrh that the man she had possessed ended up with. Once the spirit had finished with that poor soul, he’d lost his marriage, his house and his sanity. The three of them had arrived shortly afterwards and Charlie had been hopeful, thought it was just the one and they could seal up the tear, be done with it. But that is rarely the way these things work and certainly wasn’t the case here.

  It was a trickle at first, scattered across the city; individuals not just acting strangely or out of character, but as though they were completely different people. Babbling nonsense about horseless carriages and flying machines and a terrible war that awaited the whole world. A few could be put down to the odd madman, but then that trickle t
urned into a tide.

  The ghosts—from the future, all of them, no later than 1936, they came to realise—were clever, though, they learned to listen to the mistakes of those who had come back before them. The last thing they wanted was nice, new bodies and lives to take over, only to be carted off to a madhouse. So, they were quiet and unassuming and made their changes slowly. After all, who would have more patience than those who are already dead and have all the time in the world?

  Perhaps it would have stayed that way, had it not been for the party that she and Charlie and Freya had hosted just a few short weeks ago. The Hothouse Bacchanal. It had started like all their other parties; Mary as the sparkling host, ready to give the guests a night like no other, Charlie as the charming, automaton bartender that everyone marvelled at. Freya in the background, sweetly keeping an eye on things to make sure that everyone drank their drinks and gave up just a small piece of their time in return.

  It had not ended well. It was then that they realised how dangerous the situation had become and how urgent it was to set things to rights.

  So, here they were. Outside, the fog was beginning to lift and the voices of those who had come to take in the wonders of the palace floated faintly in the air.

  “Alright then, Charlie?” Mary asked, sinking onto the closest plush, wine-coloured chaise longue as Freya sat behind her.

  “Up to you now, old girl,” came the response from behind the engine.

  Mary nodded and closed her eyes as Freya unclasped the silver buttons that ran down her spine and opened the doors on her back. She knew exactly which timepiece they needed.

  “Just up near the left shoulder,” she whispered.

  There was just the merest twinge as Freya removed it, then carefully shut the doors again. She handed it to Mary. It looked simple enough—a plain watch face, yellow with age and an owl with wings outstretched in the centre. Roman numerals marked the circumference, except where XII should have been, there were two words: THE END. Those two words sparkled silver with stolen time that, she hoped, would help them mend what was broken.