by Sam Hooker
Bartleby sighed and opened his eyes. He made a very slow, deliberate production of standing up. It made sense to Sloot that coming up from that sort of position would take a while.
“It’s a different sort of meditation.” Bartleby smiled, baring his unnaturally white and pointy teeth, and speaking with a level of patience that appeared to catch Arthur off-guard. That made sense too. Arthur had a way of putting people off and was not often approached with civility. He eyed Bartleby with suspicion.
“What would the world need with a different sort of meditation? How much whiskey is involved in this sort?”
“Vell, none, but—”
“Worthless!”
“Hardly. Besides, how much vhiskey have you gotten into since you came to the Hereafter?”
“Don’t you try to ply me with logic! When was the last time your clothing bothered with inseams, hmm?”
“I learned the secrets of meditation in the monastery at Blasigtopp,” said Bartleby. “Everyone there vore robes.”
“Good for you,” said Arthur with a sneer. “Found a whole commune of hippies who found that disdain for bathing was easier than the practice of it, did you?”
“You don’t have to join us if you don’t vant to.”
“I don’t,” said Arthur.
“Oh, I don’t want to either,” said Willie, perking up at the notion that participation was optional.
“Oh, er, well,” sputtered Sloot, “I’m sorry, m’lord, but I’m afraid you must.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Don’t listen to him,” Arthur counseled Willie. “You’re your own man, aren’t you?”
“I think so. Can I go be my own man, Sloot?”
“Don’t ask him! The inherent dignity of every man demands he be allowed to set the course of his own destiny! You see? Wagstaff’s Forty-Third Meditation clearly states that—”
“But Willie has to learn to control his power,” said Sloot, who was no more comfortable interrupting people now than he was the first time he’d tried it.
“Stop telling Willie what to do,” said Arthur. “Did you hear me say ‘set the course of his own destiny,’ or do I need to berate you with Haversham’s Anonymous Retort to Tyranny?”
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” said Sloot.
“What about women?” asked Willie.
“What about them?”
“Do they get to inherit destiny too?”
“Inherent,” Arthur over-enunciated. “I don’t know, Wagstaff didn’t have a meditation for women. Terrified of them. Perfectly rational stance, if you ask me.”
“There is no difference betveen men and vomen,” said Bartleby. “Not vhen it comes to meditation, anyvay.”
“Whose side are you on?” asked Arthur, his hands setting up a threatening pose on his hips.
Bartleby grabbed the edge of his cloak and used it to cover the lower half of his face. The movement was swift and fluid in a way that only could have been managed if he'd practiced it thousands of times in a mirror.
“Never reveal vhat side you're on! It keeps them guessing.”
That made little sense to Sloot. “You prefer that your allies don't know you're on their side.”
“Obviously,” Bartleby warbled mysteriously.
“That seems like it could be confusing.”
Bartleby dropped his cape and shrugged. “That's the price of embodying the mysteries of the arcane.”
“What sort of philosophy is that?” Arthur demanded, his fists slowly rising above his waist in anticipation of a debate.
“I don't know that it is a philosophy,” Bartleby mused. “If it is, it's a mysterious one.”
“I don’t think I need any kind of philosophy,” said Willie. “Can I go and play now?”
“You must learn to control your power, Willie,” said Sloot.
“I cannot be controlled,” said Willie, his eyes gone black again. Scorpions started pouring from the folds of his clothing and skittering across the floor.
“That’s the spirit,” said Arthur with a wicked grin. “Give ‘em hell, Willie!”
“I could,” said Willie. He seemed delighted at the realization.
“Vicked!” Bartleby was grinning from ear to ear, his sharp teeth gleaming in the gloom.
“We should really do something,” said Nicoleta.
“Ow,” said Sloot. His headache was getting worse. “Shouldn't he do something? Find his center, perhaps?”
“I could as easily find yours,” Willie growled.
“That's not nice,” said Nicoleta. “What's happened to Nan? Isn't it time for your nap?”
An argument of typical proportions started up around the subject of Willie’s naptime, but Sloot was too busy doubling over in pain to make it out. More like doubling inside-out, really. It was a lot like the sensation he’d felt when Roman had summoned him, only with eyefuls of molten lead thrown in.
“Would you please let me do it properly?” asked Roman. His voice had the sort of croak to it that would naturally accompany a stiletto heel to the windpipe.
“I need to be sure,” said a voice Sloot had heard before. He worked on focusing his vision despite the blinding pain and recognized the woman holding his shrunken head.
“I know you,” said Sloot. “You're in that Skeleton Key Circle.”
“Quiet!” She snapped. “You know too much about that which you scarcely understand!”
“Sorry,” said Sloot. “Wait, is that even possible?”
“Would you mind not vexing her?” Roman’s tongue lolled as he drew in a ragged breath.
“Sorry. What do you want?”
“Answers,” she demanded. “Who do you work for?”
“That’s a complicated question,” said Sloot.
“For the Serpents of the Earth?”
“Sort of. Technically. Again, it’s complicated. Ow.”
“I knew it,” said the woman. “Time to end this.”
“Wait!” said Sloot. “I just work for Willie, not Mrs. Knife!”
“Willie? You mean Wilhelm? Hapsgalt?”
“No one calls him that,” said Sloot, “except Nan, when he’s being naughty.”
The woman’s eyes darted from Sloot to Roman and back again. She considered her options for a moment and removed her boot from Roman’s throat. Roman gasped and coughed, which was what was expected of him, given the circumstances.
“Talk,” said the woman. Her voice was starting to fade, as though she were speaking through mud. The pair of them were going dark.
“Sloot? Is that you?” A voice that sounded like Myrtle’s echoed faintly to him from another direction.
“You’re losing him,” said Roman, through the mud. “Give it here.”
“Sloot,” echoed Myrtle, “what’s happening? I can almost—”
“There,” said Roman, suddenly very clear and distinct. He was holding Sloot’s head with one hand and gingerly checking his throat for blood with the other. They appeared to be in a sewer tunnel in the Narrative, possibly close to the black market.
“My headache’s gone,” said Sloot. “Where’s Myrtle?”
“Who?” asked the woman.
“His girlfriend,” said Roman. “Sorry, lover boy, haven’t seen her.”
“But I just—”
“It’s not too late for me to kill your friend here,” said the woman. In one of her hands was a sword pointed at Roman, and in the other, a wand pointed at Sloot. “No more distractions, tell me what you know. You! Not a word.”
Roman nodded to Sloot, and he recounted the events that took place on the day that they went to the Cross to listen in on the meeting.
“The fourth door should have been guarded,” said the woman.
“Right you are,” said Roman. “Simple matter of making two guards each think the other was on duty.”
“And how did you find the door?”
“A gentleman doesn’t reveal all of his secrets.”
“A lady could rev
eal a gentleman’s entrails.”
“No need for that,” said Roman. “For now, let’s just say I’ve got friends in low places. We can share contacts if we can agree to work together, Franka.”
“You know my name? All the more reason I should empty your belly of guts.”
“I know a lot more than that,” said Roman, “and I’m going to need my guts where they are if I’m going to help you get Willie’s remains.”
“Even if you could hand them to me, I can’t accept them. I don’t even know who his Keeper should be.”
The Skeleton Key Circle is a uniquely complex entity that was created by the people who wrote the Book of Black Law centuries ago. The Serpents of the Earth knew the sort of deviants who were likely to join shadowy cults bent on world domination, and were smart enough to devise a means of keeping their members honest. Well, honest-ish. With each other, anyway.
When the Eye of the Serpent passes away and becomes the Soul of the Serpent, their mortal remains become a thing of power. Sloot pleaded with Franka to skip past the specifics of what a wizard might do with putrefying bits of evil cult leader, and she ultimately relented because it’s hard enough to beat a living person until they stop crying, to say nothing of ghosts.
The Steward of the Circle interacts with the Eye of the Serpent on behalf of the Circle’s Keepers, each of whom are responsible for the remains of six Souls. They keep specially coded journals that record where a Soul’s remains are being kept at any given time. Each Keeper is responsible for training his or her replacement before they die.
“When Sir Berthold died,” said Franka, “he left me his estate and everything in it. Most importantly, his journal. The only entry I’ve made pertains to the current resting place of his—my—sixth and final charge, Constantin Hapsgalt.”
“Not Sir Berthold Kriegstockente?” asked Roman. “Didn’t he just die a few days ago?”
“The same,” said Franka, nearly in a whisper. She shed a single tear at the mention of his name.
“So I don’t suppose that the Souls’ remains are kept in their graves,” said Sloot, trying to change the subject.
“That would be clever,” said Franka. “Unlikely, but clever. No one who knew what they were doing would think to look there, but it’s still too obvious. They’d know about the decoy graves as well, but there are too many to watch all the time.”
“Is that where your Souls’ remains are?” asked Roman.
“Don’t trouble yourself with that.” Franka waved her sword casually in Roman’s direction, implying that it would be no trouble for her to see to all of Roman’s dissection needs if he persisted. He did not.
“And you don’t know the identity of the next Keeper,” said Sloot.
“That’s the Steward’s business,” said Franka, putting her sword and wand away. “I just want to get Willie’s remains to him. He can sort it out from there.”
“Not to pry,” said Roman, “but how is it you managed to recover Constantin’s remains, but not Willie’s? They were on top of each other when they died, you know.”
Franka gave Roman a withering look. A squinting, sneering, disposing-of-your-corpse-is-going-to-be-a-lot-of-work sort of look. An I-just-put-my-sword-away sort of look.
“I know,” said Roman, showing her his palms in a placating let’s-not-jump-to-murder-straight-away sort of gesture, “but we’re going to have to share some information if we’ve any chance of working together to steal Willie’s remains!”
“You’re probably right,” said Franka, who was probably only partially disappointed that slitting Roman’s throat was a bad idea. At least she wouldn’t have to tidy up. “Sir Berthold had cast a spell on Constantin a long time ago. When he died, the spell transported him to … someplace.”
“Good enough,” said Roman.
“Er, sorry,” said Sloot, “but do we really need to steal Willie’s remains? The Steward made it sound like there was a legal means of getting it done. Perhaps we could, you know, wait it out?”
“Come on, Sloot,” said Roman. “Do you really think that Mrs. Knife will—”
Roman probably continued speaking, but Sloot was no longer there to hear it. Instead, he found himself back in the Hereafter. More specifically, he was in the library with Nicoleta, Bartleby, and—to his gentle elation—Myrtle. She and Bartleby both had their hands outstretched in an incantational sort of way, as though they'd worked together to bring him home.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes wide with concern. “I heard you calling out before, but I couldn’t reach you.”
“I’m dead,” said Sloot. “Past that, I’m all right, I suppose.”
“So nothing gruesome befell you,” said Bartleby, somewhat crestfallen.
“Not really. Sort of. I was summoned poorly, and that hurt.”
“Oh?” Bartleby perked up a bit.
“Give them a moment,” said Nicoleta. “Can we please get back to the Shroud of Silent Screams?”
“I nearly forgot,” said Bartleby. “You’re not viggling your fingers enough.”
“They’ve been at this for a while,” said Myrtle. “Nicoleta’s a quick study though, finally starting to get some of her power back.”
Whatever Nicoleta had been doing wrong before, Sloot wished she’d kept it up. He hated rooting for his comrades’ failure, but the Shroud of Silent Screams was a truly dreadful thing to behold. The only nice thing that Sloot could think to say about it was that the name was accurate. The shroud—or, in this case, the lace doily covering the coffee table—rose up and looked as though it were covering a face that was screaming in silent agony.
“Vonderful!”
“Hardly the word I’d use,” said Nicoleta, “but it’s nice to be able to bend something to my will again.” She was still wiggling her fingers like mad, prompting the horrid thing to roam about the room, trying in vain to outrun whatever it was that was causing it such anguish.
“At least it’s quiet,” said Sloot. Okay, two nice things.
“That’s the Shroud of Silent Screams,” said Bartleby. “Ve’ll move on to the Screaming Shroud next. You have to valk before you crawl, you know.”
“And what’s all of this … for?” asked Myrtle.
“It’s cool,” said Bartleby. He furrowed his brow in a “duh” sort of way.
“It’s practice,” said Nicoleta. “Bartleby’s right, knowing wizardry is helpful, but necromancy is very different. I imagine I’ll have to learn a bunch of basic spells like these before he’s able to teach me anything really powerful.”
“Er, right,” said Bartleby. “Poverful.”
“Can we talk?” Myrtle hadn’t really meant it as a question, given the way she was leading Sloot away by the hand. She led him through the corridors of the house, up the stairs, past Constantin’s bedroom—where he sounded to be berating the bed for just lying there—and into her own bedroom where she closed the door behind them.
It was the second time that Sloot had been in a girl’s bedroom. Same girl, different bedroom. This time, he was even less sure what might happen next. He was a ghost now, and she was a demon. He wasn’t even sure if they were still … compatible. In a more-than-friends sense, that is.
Myrtle sighed and then lunged at him. To say that Sloot was caught off guard would imply that nature had seen fit to equip him with any defenses whatsoever. Better, then, to say that he was merely caught. While shocking, it was not unpleasant. Just as he had begun assessing all of the feelings that were upon him, Myrtle started weeping. Sloot chucked what little he had worked out and started over.
“What’s wrong?” That seemed like a reasonable place to begin.
“Oh, what isn’t wrong?” Myrtle wailed ceiling-ward. She broke away from Sloot’s embrace and started floating around the room. “I’m not dead, I’m not alive. I’m not compelled to haunt things or serve those whom I served in life. Agather says I’m a demon, but what does that mean?”
Sloot had thought that bit was self-evident.
Then again, perhaps Myrtle hadn’t seen her own leathery wings when they went to the Witchwood.
“I think,” said Sloot, who’d hoped that starting a sentence that way would coax some grain of wisdom forth from deep within his subconscious. He hadn’t done any wisdom in a while and thought perhaps he was due. The whole thing ultimately called him to question whether the dead even have a subconscious.
“Yes?”
“Oh, that failed spectacularly,” said Sloot. “I’m more confused about my own state now. Sorry.”
“I’d have found that charming once,” said Myrtle.
“When we were alive, you mean?”
“Yes, in fact.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know,” said Sloot. “It turns out I was worse at this in life than I’d previously realized.”
They stood there in silence until Myrtle burst into a fit of laughter. She doubled over on the floor. Sloot continued standing, his awkwardness the only apparent fixed point in a roiling sea of confusion and insanity. It was the closest to normal Sloot had felt since he’d told his mother he’d gotten promoted at work.
“Dear Sloot,” Myrtle gasped, wiping a tear from her eye. “Thank you for that, I really needed it.”
“For what? Are you sure it was me?”
She kissed him on the lips, then threw her arms around him and started sobbing again.
“Oh dear,” said Sloot. He scrambled desperately for another awkward confession that he could lob toward her. He felt sure that they would move closer to a reasonable conversation if they just kept pushing through the insanity than if they were to turn back.
“You’ll still tell me the truth, right?” she asked, her eyes imploring his for reassurance. “Death hasn’t granted you the ability to lie with a straight face, has it? You certainly couldn’t manage it in life.”
“I don’t—I think—I’m terrified right now. No, not that—not terrified—it’s just—well, it’s like, when a man and a woman love each other, there could be kissing. And if you don’t—”
She kissed him again. Hard. Sloot gave a little whimper that didn’t know what feeling it was trying to represent, but it wasn’t the cold grip of fear that was holding him in place. That much, he knew for sure.