Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  “I love you, too,” said Myrtle.

  “You won’t believe what’s going on down there,” said Arthur. He strode into the room with utter disregard for the significance of having had to open the door to manage it.

  “For the last time,” shouted Myrtle, “you can’t keep invading my privacy like this! It was bad enough having you inside my head for most of my life.”

  “What privacy? Sloot’s here.”

  “Er, yes,” said Sloot. “Hello.”

  “Fine,” said Myrtle, “our privacy. Now if you’ll just—”

  “I guess it makes sense he could fool Willie,” said Arthur. “Imbeciles, the pair of them. At least Willie doesn’t pretend to know things about philosophy. It’s a good thing I was there to set the record straight.”

  “If you don’t get out of here this instant, I’ll—”

  “What do you mean, ‘set the record straight?’” asked Sloot.

  “Don’t you encourage him!”

  “Sorry,” said Sloot, “it’s just that—”

  “I told him, ‘sitting on the floor isn’t philosophy, no matter how funny you fold your legs up.’ I didn’t even have to prove the point, he did it for me.”

  “Did what? How?”

  There was a howl from outside the house. It filled Sloot with a sense of foreboding, like the opening profanity on Swearing Day at the Salzstadt Broom Carnival.

  “Oh, no,” said Sloot. He left the room at what passed for a sprint, when all you had to work with was left feet and elbows. Down the stairs, through the corridor, and out onto the lawn he ran, arriving just in time to see what looked like the shadow of a three-headed wolf baying at the moon. The moon seemed nervous.

  “That’s Nipsy,” said Nan, pointing at the wolf monster.

  “What?” balked Sloot. “No, that can’t be right. Nipsy’s just a puppy!”

  “Puppies grow up.”

  Sloot couldn’t deny that she was right about that, though he couldn’t remember ever having seen a puppy that had sprouted extra heads on the way to adulthood. Then again, he’d avoided dogs as much as possible. He’d always been suspicious that their reputations as homework gourmets were the result of fabricated excuses, but all the same, it didn’t seem worth the risk.

  “I told you,” chided Nan, “you never should have let Willie have that puppy.”

  “You never said that.”

  “I shouldn’t’ve had to! You know what he’s like. Who do you think has to clean up after it?”

  “You, I presume?”

  “Not anymore,” said Nan. “This is the last straw. It was your idea, you can clean up after it.”

  “This wasn’t my idea!”

  “Oh, that’s convenient, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter, your problem now. No givin’ it back, neither!” And with that, Nan stormed off into the house.

  “What do you suppose we should do about it?” asked Myrtle.

  “How would I know?”

  One of the heads breathed a gout of something very much like fire. A second head snapped at the first in admonition, and the third head gave a bark of warning that seemed to say “don’t make me separate you two.” The next thing Sloot knew, all three of Nipsy’s heads were growling with their toothy mouths open. One by one, they all turned to focus on him.

  That drew the natural reaction from Sloot that it would have drawn from anyone under the circumstances, but it’s hardly worth mentioning. “Sloot was afraid” was almost as important to state for the record as “fire is hot,” or “bricks are bad for the face,” or “stay out of Granny’s reach when she’s gotten into the schnapps and is swinging a sock with a brick in it.”

  Sloot was afraid, to be sure, but he also felt oddly comforted. Since he’d awoken in the Hereafter, precious little had credibly threatened his continued existence. He was quite overdue by his own reckoning, and there was something reassuring about not having lost his place in the natural order of things.

  All three heads stopped growling at once, and their six ears perked up. Sloot heard a faint howl in the distance, far higher in pitch than the ones that Nipsy had been making before. Nipsy turned suddenly, and one of the heads answered the howl as the whole monstrosity bounded off into the forest.

  “Well,” said Myrtle, “that can’t be good.”

  Sloot shook his head and indulged in an all-too-familiar sinking feeling. If the natural order of the universe had taught him nothing else, he knew that no matter how far Nipsy roamed, it—he?—would ultimately be Sloot’s problem to solve. But before he had a chance to ponder what he might do about it, he felt a familiar tugging from behind his ear.

  “You shouldn’t disappear like that,” Roman said. They were standing in the dark, in the tunnel that led into Greta’s chamber.

  “Sorry,” said Sloot, then cursed himself for apologizing, then decided not to make a fuss about it. He followed up on that by seriously considering dressing Roman down for summoning him uninvited so often, but found that he lacked the will. Whether that was due to some loyalty to Carpathian Intelligence he’d carried with him to the grave, or just because he was Sloot Peril, he’d probably never figure out.

  The subject needed changing. “Where’s Franka?”

  “She wouldn’t say. Big surprise. Forget about her for now, we need to check on Greta.”

  “We?”

  “Fine, you need to check on Greta.”

  “I thought that was what you meant.”

  Sloot recognized the dank, cobwebbed hallway in which they were standing, and that depressed him. It was the secret passage into the Domnitor’s castle, long may he reign, the one that ended behind Greta’s armoire. That wasn’t the depressing part—Sloot quite liked Greta, actually—he just hated that his afterlife consisted of myriad opportunities to say things like “oh, I remember this awful place.”

  “You’re catching on.” Roman beamed with pride. “She hasn’t made a report in a while, and she won’t answer the armoire. I’m worried that something’s happened.”

  “I know my place in the pecking order,” said Sloot, “but couldn’t you handle it? I’ve really got a lot going on in the Hereafter right now, and I’d—”

  “This is more important,” said Roman. “You took up your mother’s position, remember? That duty comes before all else.”

  “They all come before all else.”

  “Yeah, well, this one in particular.”

  Sloot knew futility when he saw it, and arguing the point any further definitely qualified. Sloot floated through the armoire and into the room, which was entirely empty.

  “It’s empty,” he said, sticking his head back into the tunnel.

  “That can’t be good,” said Roman. “She may still be in the castle somewhere. Have a look around, and come find me when you’ve got something.”

  “Come and find you? I wouldn’t have the faintest—”

  “There’s a pub around the corner from the library. Take your time.”

  Goblin Anthropology

  The Domnitor’s castle—long may he reign—was a grand, luxurious place, just as Sloot had always dreamed it would be. Some of the grandeur of the place had been lessened by the goblins, who were even now amusing themselves with choruses of rude noises that wouldn’t have been possible without ingesting massive quantities of spoiled meat. Despite Sloot’s best efforts to avoid learning anything about goblin culture—if one could call it that—he’d heard of their tradition of gathering around a pile of meat that had sat out for several days to spoil, so that they could increase their status within the congress (that being the name for a group of goblins) by defiling their guts in amusing ways. They referred to the tradition as being “in session.”

  Sloot had never dreamed he’d see a congress in session up close, though he’d had frequent nightmares about it. At least death had robbed him of his sense of smell. If the cacophony of flatulence was any indication, the grand ballroom must have smelled like an abattoir on a particularly warm day.

  T
hen there were the chandeliers. Great, delicate crystal affairs, wrought by the nimble hands of expert craftsmen a hundred years prior. Priceless and irreplaceable. Had Sloot been the sort to look on the bright sides of things, he’d have counted himself lucky to have shown up when he did. After all, it was only a moment later that the two teams of goblins who were swinging the chandeliers toward each other finally succeeded in making them collide with sufficient force to send them crashing to the ground.

  He floated on through the deserted-but-for-the-congress-of-goblins-infesting-it palace, sulking at the twisted remains of suits of armor, shredded paintings and tapestries, and a grand piano that looked as though it had ended its days as a sled upon the grand staircase. He worked hard at resisting the urge to have a long, ghostly moan in sympathy for the sorrow that the Domnitor, long may he reign, would no doubt feel upon his eventual triumphant return.

  There was a part of Sloot that wanted to keep looking around the upper floors of the castle, but the Ministry of Etiquette and Guillotines had taken a clear position on that sort of thing. While snooping on his friends and family was just good patriotism, snooping on the Domnitor—long may he reign—or his agents was tantamount to spying. That was just the sort of heresy that made you no better than the standard Carpathian savage. Sloot’s status as a spy for Carpathian Intelligence made a conundrum of the whole thing, so he decided to give it a miss.

  The goblins eventually noticed Sloot. Once they’d figured out he wasn’t a threat, they made a game of jumping through him, or worse, standing within him and making rancid-meat-induced noises. An anthropologist specializing in goblin studies would have taken that as a great honor, given that the goblins were attributing their great works to him. Sloot, however, was merely mortified.

  Most anthropologists studying goblins were really just stacks of goblins in human clothes, anyway.

  Sloot managed to elude the maelstrom of goblins that were following him around by taking a detour through the scullery. There was nothing shiny or pointy within to pique the goblins’ interest, and the cleaning supplies powerful enough to be any fun had already been drunk by the goblins who were sleeping it off on the floor.

  Eventually, Sloot found the steel-gated entrance to the dungeons and reasoned that if he were going to find Greta anywhere, that would be the place. It took him a moment to work up the nerve to float through the bars, wishing he’d had a key so he wouldn’t have to break any rules. Any more rules, that is. He was fairly certain he lacked permission to be in the castle at all, to say nothing of ransacking his way through locked gates like a filthy Carpath—

  Sloot really needed to stop saying things like that. Or thinking them. His mother was Carpathian, after all, not to mention—well, that was enough acceptance for one day.

  The staircase leading down to the dungeon kept itself within traditional standards. It was dark, it was damp, and Sloot had no reason to believe that it wasn’t both cold and musty as well. The occasional rattle of a chain sounded faintly in the distance. The whole affair would certainly fetch full marks if the marshal were inspecting it that day.

  Floor covered in straw, check. Sparse torchlight, check. A bit light on rats, perhaps, but Sloot supposed it was better than the alternative. He eventually found Greta in a little cell, slumped in a corner with manacles on her wrists.

  “Sloot?”

  “How long have you been down here?” Sloot asked.

  “Sloot, don’t—”

  Unfortunately for Sloot, he did. Had Greta been quicker, she’d have warned him about the spell that Gregor had cast on a lantern near the cell, to trap any ghosts that tried to walk past it.

  “Ugh, sorry,” she groaned.

  “Quite all right,” said Sloot. “I’ll just … no, I suppose not. But perhaps I could … hmm, not that either.”

  “At least there’s a bit more light now,” said Greta, “and someone to talk to.”

  Sloot was imprisoned in a battered tin lantern that looked like the ones atop Salzstadt’s ubiquitous gas lamps.

  “There’s a hefty fine for stealing these,” said Sloot with uncharacteristic anger. “You point me to the hooligan that made off with this, and mark my words, I’ll ask him to turn himself in!”

  “Stern words. It’s not painful or anything, is it?”

  “What, the lantern? No, ghosts don’t do pain. Well, not usually.”

  “You’re like a little grey flame in there.”

  “Really? I’m afraid of fire.”

  “Of course you are. Listen, I don’t know how long we have before they come back, but I’ve got to tell you something important.”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” came a sharp clucking of a disapproving tongue from somewhere in the darkness. “It’s that sort of naughtiness that got you locked down here in the first place.”

  Sloot knew that voice, that menacing tone of malice and disapproval. He groaned aloud.

  “The feeling is mutual, Peril. I was hoping for the valet. What’s his name? Roland?”

  “It’s Roman,” Greta snarled.

  “Either way, he’s made of meat,” said Mrs. Knife. She drew her wicked blade from the sheath at her waist. A single ray of light that shouldn’t have been there caught the gleaming steel as it sliced through the air. If she’d set that up on purpose, it’d had the desired effect. Sloot was terrified.

  “You don’t scare me,” said Greta, who consisted entirely of the sorts of things that Mrs. Knife’s blade was designed to menace.

  “Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Knife. “You’re only experimenting with bravado because you think I need you to deal with Vlad the Invader.”

  “Of course you do! Why else would I still be alive?”

  “Because you make it easier to deal with her,” said Mrs. Knife. “But you should know that I’ve no intention of returning you unharmed, no matter what I might tell her.”

  “That’s dishonest,” said Sloot, who was instantly sorry he’d reminded Mrs. Knife that he was there.

  “Oh, I beg to differ,” said Mrs. Knife. “Playing nice never got me anywhere, never earned me any respect. To be fair, I never really gave it a chance. Fear was always more expedient. Take your Domnitor, for example.”

  “Long may he reign,” said Greta and Sloot together. Force of habit.

  “See? That’s what I’m talking about. Expedient. Why should I bother threatening all of the simpletons in this accursed country into obeying me, when that boy’s already done the work?”

  “So, you’re really going to do it,” said Sloot. “You’re going to kidnap the Domnitor, long may he reign!”

  “Not exactly,” said Mrs. Knife. “I’m going to liberate him. Restore him to his throne.”

  “You’re—really?”

  “No, not really. I’m going to kidnap him and restore him to his throne.”

  Sloot was silent, the way that lamps tended to be. He was either utterly perplexed or getting into character.

  “He’ll be her puppet,” said Greta.

  “There will be a lot of intellect gone to waste when I slit your throat.”

  “How’re you going to do it?”

  “I have my Serpents watching his Stagrallan villa as we speak, and a Three Bells ship with diplomatic papers fully provisioned in the harbor. As soon as his guard is down, he’ll be whisked away before anyone’s the wiser.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” said Sloot.

  “It makes perfect sense, dimwit.”

  “No, it’s—if your big scheme is kidnapping the Domnitor—long may he reign—from Stagralla, why do you need directions to Carpathia?”

  Among the questions that Sloot regretted asking the most—and there were more than a few—that one yielded as much regret as any three of them combined. The look on Mrs. Knife’s face as she trudged into the light could most readily be described as “haunted rage,” which struck Sloot as an excellent name for a fragrance. Her phantasmal stare seethed with the hunger for revenge that cats bear for every human who’s never fed them, an
d most of the ones who have.

  “What did you say?”

  “Er, never mind,” said Sloot.

  Mrs. Knife always looked like she was just barely hanging onto her mask of sanity. Unbeknownst to Sloot, that was crucial to maintaining her status as a villain. If she were to let fly with a stark raving tirade in the wrong company, she could find herself downgraded to lunatic in a hurry. Villains get lots of perks that lunatics don't, like lairs, henchmen, and discount magazine subscriptions. It was a good thing for her, then, that the right people weren’t watching when she started stabbing at the empty air.

  "How much do you know, wretched ghost?" Her voice dropped into a gravelly croak and her eyes flitted around as though chasing a fly. She stabbed after it again and again.

  "Nothing! I swear!" Sloot panicked. Mrs. Knife had stabbed him once before, and she was known to be the sort of villain who got what she wanted at any cost. Even if what she wanted was to stab a ghost to death. Until he was absolutely certain that she couldn't manage it, Sloot resolved to panic on the side of caution.

  "Keeping us in the Dark, eh? Clever, clever little man. But not clever enough. Ha!" She lunged at the darkness, knife first.

  "Ahh!" shouted Sloot. "Please, I don't know anything! I'd tell you if I did!"

  "This is some rescue," said Greta.

  "You did!" shouted Mrs. Knife, her eyes wide and unblinking, as though she'd been possessed by a fish. She stabbed between the bars of the cell and started slashing at the air, still several feet from Greta. "You knew, didn't you, little man? Tell me!"

  "I don't know! I don't know!"

  "Leave him alone, you hag!" Greta leaned forward as far as she could, undeterred by Mrs. Knife's slashing. Whether she knew the range of Mrs. Knife's arm or simply hadn't developed a proper sense of fear for sharp steel on the move, Sloot couldn't tell. He was grateful in either case, as her courage had made the slashing stop.

  Mrs. Knife froze. She blinked, finally, and looked around as if trying to remember where she was. Her eyes narrowed and locked on Greta.