Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  “You’re supposed to sit in the circle when things start shaking,” said Nan. “That’s what Mr. Grumley said, and he wouldn’t have said without a reason.”

  “But—”

  “Rhymes with ‘shut,’ which is what your mouth needs to do, young man!” Nan’s fists were on her hips.

  Willie crossed his arms and huffed. The ground started shaking again, a bit more violently than it had before.

  “You see? Shaking! You're supposed to get in the circle when the shaking starts. Now march, young man, and not another word!”

  The end of her sentence grabbed the protests out of Willie’s open mouth and had them standing in the naughty corner before Willie knew what was happening.

  “March!”

  It was more of a sulking float than a march, but it was in the direction of the circle, so Nan didn’t bemoan the specifics.

  “You’ve certainly got a way with him,” said Sloot, once they'd left the room.

  “Got to take a firm hand with willful lads like him,” said Nan. “It’s getting harder, now that I don’t have dessert to bribe him with.”

  Sloot nodded, suppressing a wince at the preposition with which she’d ended her sentence.

  “It’s especially bad when he won’t sit in the circle,” Nan continued. “Mr. Grumley seemed to think he’d only need a few moments here and there, but I swear he’s been in it for hours at a time! It feels like hours, at least.”

  Sloot nodded. “Perhaps they drew one of the sigils around the circle upside-down or something?”

  “All’s I know is that I’ve never gotten to two before. I don’t know why they didn’t make it ‘count to five,’ give us a bit more to work with.”

  That was troubling. As far as Sloot was aware, Nan had believed Willie to be six years old for more than thirty years. In all that time, he’d never once tried to test Nan beyond “one.” Why start now? There was the off chance that death had somehow emboldened him, but that was doubtful. Boldness required effort, and Willie avoided that sort of thing at all cost.

  He must have noticed that he was more powerful now. The great leathery wings should have tipped him off, even if the bonus octaves in his voice had somehow escaped his attention. Then again, this was Willie Hapsgalt. He was as likely as not to have noticed by now that he was dead.

  It had to be the power. Willie was the Soul of the Serpent, and there were blood wizards feeding him murder victims. Sloot shuddered. He knew that nothing good could come of blood magic, and he now had the misbehavior of children—or near enough to it—to count as evidence.

  “Have you got a minute?”

  There were no chirping birds in the Hereafter, but Sloot felt as though he could almost remember what they sounded like when Myrtle spoke. She motioned to him from the hallway, which was enticing and scary in equal measure. Being beckoned into a dark hallway by a comely ghost tended to have that effect on people.

  “Er, pardon me, Nan.”

  “Shh!” Nan was wearing her brooding face. It’s always a bad idea to interrupt a gran in the middle of a brood. Sloot reflexively hunched his shoulders in preparation to creep out of the room before remembering that ghosts float silently. As silently as the grave, in fact, which was dreadfully predictable as similes went.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Myrtle. “Not exactly. It’s just … something is off.” She opened her mouth as though to say something further, then didn’t. She nodded her head toward the hallway behind her, and then floated off in that direction. Sloot followed.

  “Everything’s off,” said Sloot. “I blame our collective loss of life. I know I haven’t been quite right since I woke up here.”

  Myrtle fidgeted. “Well, there’s that, but it’s something more for me. Everyone else seems to have certain compulsions. Things left undone, you know?”

  Sloot shrugged. “I don’t think I have any compulsions. Nothing beyond putting figures into Willie’s ledgers. Oh, I could spend eternity settling up columns of … oh, wait. I see.”

  “Right, like that. And what about haunting?”

  “Now that you mention it, I could go for a good haunting. Rattle some chains, find a spot in a nice hallway and freeze the air. Oh, my. Why does that sound so pleasant?”

  “Nicoleta said the same thing,” said Myrtle. “About the haunting, I mean. She’s not interested in ledgers as far as I could tell.”

  “Well, what’s unusual about that? I liked accounting when I was alive. It makes sense that I’d want to keep doing it.”

  “Why do you still work for Willie, then?”

  “Because …” Sloot had been so sure that some sensible answer would follow that single word out of his mouth that he didn’t close it. “Well, because. I’ve never quit a job, you know. There was the counting house, then I was promoted to Willie’s financier, and then, well … death.”

  “Willie’s still got a lot of ledgers that need tending then, does he?”

  “Not as such, but it would hardly be polite to quit.”

  “My point is that you were working for Willie when you died, and you’re still working for him. I think that’s a sort of standard ghostly compulsion.”

  “No it isn’t,” said Sloot. “It’s just good manners.”

  “Well, what about me? I’m not compelled to do anything at all.”

  “You were independently wealthy when you died. You weren’t doing much of anything, were you?”

  “Careful.”

  “Sorry,” said Sloot, silently chiding himself. He’d worked around the wealthy before. He knew better than to point their idleness out to them.

  “I had a big house. Shouldn’t I want to go haunt it?”

  Yes, Sloot thought, you should. His mind turned to his old apartment, the one Mrs. Knife had burned to the ground when she almost killed him the first time. He’d thought about that quite a bit, in fact. He fervently wished it was still there so that he could go and haunt it. It had been his for a long time, and now … what? The butcher who owned the building would just rent it out to some other pasty bachelor with little ambition?

  “I see your point,” said Sloot. “Perhaps you were more, I dunno, fulfilled than the rest of us when you died. No unfinished business?”

  “Maybe.”

  Sloot was completely out of his depth when it came to comparative weirdness. In his experience, things were normal or they weren’t. You start letting people stand around between the two, and they’ll find the spot that’s just weird enough to be cool. From there, it’s a slippery slope to masters degrees in the arts, and suddenly you live with your parents again.

  Sloot knew that wasn’t cool. His mother had told him so.

  “Why don’t you ask Arthur about it? This sounds like existentialism. Or post-existentialism, perhaps.”

  “I’d rather not, thanks.” That made sense. Arthur had been inside Myrtle’s head for most of her life. She was probably grateful for the separation.

  Sloot was starting to consider what possession must be like when he felt an insistent itching just behind his ear. No, not itching. Tugging. Perhaps both? He’d never gone fishing while he was still alive because he was afraid of worms. No, not afraid, but he was sure that he couldn’t trust them. In any case, the thought occurred to him that the sensation might be like what a hooked fish felt upon being reeled into a boat.

  “Sloot? What’s happening?” Myrtle’s voice was far away, indistinct.

  That’s what you get for trusting worms, Sloot silently chided the metaphorical fish, just before he found himself elsewhere.

  “Wait!” shouted Myrtle, suddenly much closer than she’d been a moment ago, and far more real as well.

  “There you are,” said Roman.

  “Roman?” said Sloot and Myrtle in unison.

  “Myrtle?” said Roman, a look of utter confusion twisting his neck as though he owed it money. “You’re alive?”

  Sloot looked down. He was still grey and translucent. Myrtle, on the
other hand, was opaque and rosy-cheeked. She was alive.

  The vast majority of moments come to pass in a very rote, predictable way. That’s why cause-and-effect was invented. Eat questionable meat sold from a cart in an unfamiliar city, spend the following day earnestly wishing you hadn’t. Cause and effect. Predictable.

  Then there are moments in the minority, like this one. It hadn’t been so long ago that Myrtle had met a grisly end at Gregor’s hand, yet she appeared to be as alive as whatever rodents they’re putting in cart meat these days had been at some point, presumably. That was unexpected, though not in quite the same way that Sloot couldn’t have predicted seeing his severed and preserved head hanging from Roman’s belt.

  “Roman, is that—”

  “Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Sloot groaned, or rather moaned. The echo was reverberant in a way that only the dead could manage, one of many natural traits that made them the pinnacle of evolution when it came to things like haunting.

  “Winking Bob put me in touch with her guy,” said Roman with a grin. “Top notch attention to detail, don’t you think?”

  Myrtle stared at her hands, which started to shake. “How is this possible?”

  In his horror over finding a primary bit of his mortal coil repurposed as fashion, Sloot had entirely neglected Myrtle’s apparent resurrection. Some boyfriend he was turning out to be. Even with his dearth of experience in the role, he knew this was the sort of thing he was duty-bound to notice.

  “Oh, dear!” Sloot exclaimed, rather louder than he'd intended. “Overcompensation” was a particularly offensive word among accountants.

  “But I … I don’t … am I alive?” Myrtle stared at her hands as though they were a pair of trembling sausages that had fallen off a cart and attached themselves to her wrists.

  “Probably not,” said Roman. He poked her shoulder with his finger. “Solid, though. And not bursting into flames, so you’re not a vampire. That’s lucky.”

  For reasons unknown to anyone who knows anything about the economy of blood or the way that death works, vampires have long enjoyed literary infamy as powerful, romantic figures who live forever and know how to brood better than anyone. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

  Blood is a precious commodity to everyone in the Hereafter, and anyone with the common sense of a broken clock—which is right twice a day—does everything in their power to conserve as much as possible. That’s why ghosts don’t bother with corporeal forms. Sure, they don’t get to get drunk or wear fashionable shoes, but they get to be ghosts for a very long time.

  Vampires, on the other hand, are doing it all wrong. They’ve got all the maintenance and upkeep associated with a regular living body, plus things like super strength and seeing at night and turning into bats that really throw their blood mileage for a loop. Also, they don’t breathe or sleep or eat proper food, so their only means of replenishing the vital energy in their blood is to eat someone and stuff themselves full of more blood.

  The vital energy in a pint of blood can keep a ghost going for years, or give a vampire a couple of days, during which he might wander into some sunlight and burn himself to a crisp of gristle. There used to be a Carpathian food cart that specialized in that sort of thing, but in terms of preference, catching vampirism from questionable cuisine was a distant second to botulism.

  “I was in the Hereafter a moment ago,” said Myrtle. “I was talking to Sloot, and when he started to slide away, I followed him. Followed? I suppose that’s right.”

  “You’re definitely dead, then,” said Roman. “Unless you’re a necromancer. Read any books bound in human flesh lately?”

  “Not that I’m aware.”

  “Probably wouldn’t matter.” Roman squinted as he studied Myrtle more closely than standard propriety would allow. “I imagine vampirism is easier to catch than necromancy. Got to learn the spells and whatnot to be a necromancer.”

  “Is this supposed to be comforting?” asked Myrtle.

  “Not specifically, but good on you if it is.”

  “Well, it’s not.”

  Roman shrugged. “I was just trying to help. I figured the truth would be more comforting than anything else. You’ll probably feel better once you know what’s going on.”

  “Could be.” Myrtle paused, her face going all contemplative. “Hang on, I think I can—”

  Myrtle disappeared abruptly, leaving nothing behind but potential panache. No puff of smoke or anything. She could learn a thing or two from Nicoleta about making an exit that leaves an impression.

  “Where did she go?” Sloot wondered aloud.

  “Hard to say,” Roman replied. “Her kind come and go as they please, very hard to track.”

  “Her kind?”

  “Leave it,” said Roman. “That’s where you and Myrtle differ. I doubt the truth holds any capacity to make you feel better.”

  Roman was right about that. For most people, the truth is a light that shines on the dark and scary unknown. It robs the unknown of its power to inspire fear. It’s different for worriers, who staunchly believe that what they don’t know can’t hurt them—yet. To them, the world is a horrible place, teeming with things lining up to do them harm. If they’re still sticking to the shadows, there’s something holding them back from using their sharp teeth or writhing tentacles or biting social commentary to pull their legs off, or whatever. It’s not until they’ve stepped into the light that things start to hurt.

  Sloot remembered then that he was upset with Roman.

  “You’ve shrunk my head and put it on your belt!”

  “And you recognized it straight away.”

  “Of course, I recognized it! It’s my head!”

  “We got lucky on that,” said Roman, admiring Sloot’s shrunken head as though it were a bottle of wine so expensive that you were expected to read the label and nod with approval. Sloot missed wine, even though he’d never liked it. He’d only ever drunk the stuff that you gulped as quickly as possible so you could avoid tasting it.

  “Lucky?”

  “It landed right next to me when it popped off.”

  “Popped?”

  “Afraid so. Tends to happen when you’re at the bottom of a fray like that. I managed to scoop it up before any of the undead got hungry.”

  “Hungry?”

  “I honestly can’t tell,” said Roman, “but are you doing your usual flustered bit, or are you having trouble hearing me?”

  “It's not a bit!” Sloot was offended. He'd never acted flustered in his life, or after it.

  “All right, all right,” said Roman, showing Sloot his palms in a placating gesture. “Morbid, I know, but it’s the easiest way to summon you.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Is that any way to talk to an old friend? Besides, death doesn’t release you from service to Carpathian Intelligence.”

  “That makes sense,” said Sloot with a sigh. “I still work for Willie, too.”

  “I figured as much. Not much has changed, then, aside from the dead milling about in Salzstadt.”

  “So it’s true. Salzstadt has fallen!”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Roman. “I mean, it probably would have, if it were anywhere else, but these salts have something that regular people don’t.”

  “Right you are,” said Sloot, swelling with patriotism.

  “Denial.”

  “What?”

  “Overflowing with it, each and every salt in the city. I learned the hard way that you don’t talk about the walking dead in Salzstadt.”

  “The hard way?”

  “Yep,” said Roman. “Publican overheard me, took my beer away. I had to find a new place to drink.”

  Had Sloot not been born in Salzstadt and raised in the traditions of the Old Country, he might have balked at the depth of denial playing out on the cobbled streets of the city. But knowing what he knew, it seemed about right. The Domnitor, long may he reig
n, would never truck with widespread panic. Order was essential. It was the bedrock upon which a functioning society erected everything from the courts that provided laws, to the universities that provided knowledge, to the abandoned sewer tunnels where black marketeers offered special prices on brass knuckles on the first Thursday of every month.

  “Of course, the Domnitor’s fled,” said Roman, as he turned down Grocers Row. A gran carrying groceries nodded primly to the desiccated husk of a city watchman, who gave a guttural groan in response.

  “That’s not possible,” said Sloot, floating along behind him. “The Domnitor, long may he reign, would never abandon his people in a time of crisis!”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You’re serious!”

  “I go in for whimsy every now and again, but not this time. Mrs. Knife has taken up residence in the palace.”

  Sloot turned to look to the east. The palace on the hill looked like it always had, flags fluttering in the breeze and everything. He’d thought for a moment that Mrs. Knife would have put her own up in their stead, but that would just be asking for trouble. She was power hungry, but she was subtle about it.

  Plus, Sloot knew what flag makers charged in Salzstadt. Given the recent population shift that everyone was ignoring, “an arm and a leg” might be a more apt metaphor than ever.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Sloot.

  “He’s in Stagralla.”

  “What, ruling in exile?”

  “In absentia is more like it. Nobody really knows he’s gone. The ministries are carrying on as they always have, squashing things like questions and unsanctioned long lunches.”

  It would have been unusual indeed for the city to have slipped into utter chaos in the simple absence of its prepubescent dictator, even in the wake of an undead horde. Sloot imagined that Uncle—the cleverly re-branded Ministry of Truth—would have stepped in to ensure that order was maintained in the city at all costs.

  They had, and they’d done a good job. Were it not for the fact that ghosts can’t smell anything—which, as it turned out, was the deepest question Willie had ever pondered while he was alive—Sloot would have noted that the lingering stench of rot was the only real difference on the streets of Salzstadt. Sure, Vlad the Invader had cut a bloody swath through the streets on the day of Willie and Greta’s wedding, but cleaning that up had taken little more than the following day. Even government janitorial workers were eager to get on with pretending it had never happened.