Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  “You’d rather I stood still and vaited for you to devour me?”

  Willie’s snake eyes caught fire as they darted back and forth. His expression went incredulous. “Yes, I thought that was obvious. Whatever, you’re boring me with your mortal foolishness. I want to talk to Sloot now.”

  “Bevare, Mr. Peril,” said Bartleby, using his cape to cover the bottom half of his face for dramatic effect. “Villie is trying to devour people today.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Sloot.

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Willie. “Listen to me! I’m your employer, after all. I insist that you come inside the circle at once.”

  To Sloot’s abject horror, he didn’t hesitate to obey. He was within an inch of the circle when Nan grasped him firmly by the ear and yanked hard.

  “Ow!” said Sloot. “Couldn’t you grab my shoulders or something?”

  “Not how it’s done,” said Nan. “If you’d been caring for children as long as I have, you’d know that there’s nothing for it like a good twist of the ear.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  Nan scoffed. “Too old to be best friends with a six-year-old, if you ask me.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Sloot,” said Willie in an especially sibilant voice. It echoed in a sickly sweet sort of way, as though it had been spoken by a dozen snakes in unison.

  “Yes, m’lord?”

  “Come here,” Willie demanded.

  “Yes, m’lord. Ow!”

  “I can do this all day,” said Nan.

  “She’s here somewhere!” Constantin was shouting from the hallway. “I just heard her, I know I did!”

  “Got to run,” said Nan, turning to flee in the other direction. “Stay out of the circle!”

  “Don’t listen to her,” said Willie. “Come in here at once, or I will visit such nightmares upon you as to make you beg for the sweet release from death!”

  That was lucky, thought Sloot. The “or” gave him a choice, and inflicting nightmares upon someone as congenitally fearful as Sloot was about as effective as hurling thimblefuls of water into the ocean.

  “I’ll take my chances out here, m’lord.”

  Willie collapsed to the floor in a heap. Sloot had seen some of Willie’s worst tantrums begin with this maneuver, and feared that they were in for a big one.

  “It’s so boring in the circle,” Willie moaned. “They don’t give you chocolates or clowns to make you balloon animals or anything!”

  “That sounds dreadful, m’lord.”

  “It is! You have to do something about it! I swear on my life that if I don’t get a birthday party in the next five minutes, I’m going to hold my breath until I die!”

  “You’re already dead, m’lord.”

  “I don’t follow,” said Willie, suddenly very deadpan. He stood up.

  “That is to say … well, you cannot die, m’lord.”

  “Says who?” Willie put his hands on his hips and tapped his cloven hoof agitatedly on the ground. Sparks danced across the floor. “It’s just typical, you know? People always love telling their extremely wealthy betters what they can and can’t do. Makes me sick, I don’t mind telling you. Who do they think they are, real people?”

  “Vhat?” Bartleby looked truly perplexed.

  “Don’t … mind … him,” said Nicoleta slowly, without taking her eyes off of her little wisps of darkness.

  “Oh, yes you will,” said Constantin, who’d wheeled his way into the room. “He’s a Hapsgalt, by gum! What’s more, he’s the son of the Soul of the Serpent, and next in line for that!”

  “I thought Villie vas the Soul,” said Bartleby.

  “That’s just the kind of dim-witted lack of vision I’d expect from a man in that much eyeliner,” said Constantin. “Have you ever killed a man, sir?”

  “Never had to,” said Bartleby with a shrug. “Plenty of dead ones just lying around.”

  “Dad, make Sloot come over here and release me from the circle!”

  “That’s enough simpering out of you. You’re a Hapsgalt! Be a man, do it yourself!”

  The floor rumbled. The new sigils that Myrtle had placed around the outer edge of the circle glowed in a way that made them seem perturbed. Willie snarled from several different mouths at once, which was probably a very normal thing for a shapeless horror from the Void Whence Nightmares Come, but that didn’t make it any less unnerving.

  “Sloot,” several of the mouths barked in unison.

  “Yes, m’lord?” would have been the cool, collected sort of thing that Sloot would later fantasize about having said, but did not. He settled instead for screaming several octaves higher than he’d ever been able to do with the limitations of mortal vocal cords, and curled up into a little ball on the floor.

  “You’ve been very naughty, Sloot.” A pair of glowing eyes glowered at him from among the many mouths.

  “S-s-sorry, m’lord!” he managed to squeak.

  “That’s more like it,” said Constantin.

  “Vicked,” said Bartleby, eyes going all moony at Willie.

  “Just when I’d gotten the hang of these,” said Nicoleta. She waved her hand and the little wisps of shadow slinked off to join up with larger shadows elsewhere in the room. If Sloot had been less sufficiently terrified at the moment, he’d have had a good worry about whether they could come after him later, when no one else was looking.

  “You vere doing great,” said Bartleby. “Vhy did you stop?”

  “Why did I stop plinking out Maris Had a Little Goblin while you were gawking over Wicked Willie, the Maestro of Darkness?”

  “Now hang on a minute,” said Willie and Bartleby in unison. Sloot knew what was coming next: an argument. They usually made him uncomfortable, but the distraction was well-timed. All he wanted was a quick lie-down to decide which of the dozen or so things in his worry queue would get first crack at sending him into hysterics.

  That was ridiculous, of course. Sloot’s spiritual ulcer was wide enough for all of his woes to link arms and dance through full can-can, with room besides for a buffet table. The can-can was hungry work. Still, the only thing worse for the nerves than dwelling on his problems was avoiding them, so Sloot took advantage of the argument that had broken out and slipped out of the house.

  He just wanted a nice lie-down. The only place he managed to find any peace and quiet was in the graveyard up the hill from the house.

  There was something off about the graves. He hadn’t noticed it at first. The realization started as a salesman lurking in a corner, creeping ever closer, waiting for just the right moment to swoop in and sell you on a new set of kitchen knives.

  There’s nothing on them, Sloot realized. What’s more, they all appeared to be the same age. Hardly shocking, as things don’t really get older in the Hereafter, but it made one thing clear: this graveyard wasn’t like the ones in the Narrative. There was something else going on.

  Sloot was tired. Not physically, more like mental exhaustion. He’d felt a certain degree of that his entire life, and supposed that he felt honor-bound to continue the tradition afterward. All he really wanted was a nice lie-down. Just a little one so he could catalog all of his woes and give each a proper fretting as befitting its severity.

  They were just headstones. No mounds of dirt or anything. They probably counted as symbolism, though Sloot couldn’t say for sure. He’d deftly avoided arts classes during his education. Unlike the beds in the house, he instinctively knew which of the graves was his. He made a beeline for it and laid himself down.

  It was quite nice. It was quiet, and that was most of it. The eerie-looking clouds that formed the sky of the Hereafter floated in sinister patterns overhead, no doubt drawing out sigils that would curdle milk, or ruin crops, or put children of a mind to try their hands at graffiti; but aside from their obvious malevolent intent, it was … lovely. Peaceful. He hadn’t felt that relaxed since … since …

  “Don’t over think it,” said a voic
e.

  Sloot shot up to a seated position and looked around, but saw no one.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” said the voice again, but from where, Sloot couldn’t have said. “I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

  The voice was familiar. Not just “didn’t we meet at a party last June?” familiar. It was deeper than that. It was like one of his oldest memories had come back to give him a good haunting, and in one very specific sense, that was true.

  “Fairy Godmother?”

  “I still wish there was a better name for it,” she said, “but yes.”

  It was his first posthumous memory. They’d spoken while he was a nascent ghost, just starting to come to grips with his timely demise. Most people would have said untimely, but Sloot couldn’t imagine a more auspicious opportunity to expire than beneath an undead-versus-goblins brawl. Frankly, if that didn’t qualify, nothing would. If all deaths were considered untimely, the word would cease to have any meaning. Accountants didn’t truck with waste, and that included adjectives.

  “So, how’s it going?”

  “Oh, fine,” Sloot lied. It wasn’t a real lie, just the inconsequential sort you used in response to this sort of passing conversation. It was a polite lie. You didn’t want to unload on people, or they’d be sorry they asked and avoid you in the future.

  “Hmmm,” said Fairy Godmother. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all. You’ve got quite a lot of confluences.”

  “Oh,” said Sloot, looking sheepish. “I thought that had cleared up. I don’t have a body anymore.”

  “No, confluences. They’re like the shadows of interactions with outside influences.”

  Sloot didn’t cast a shadow anymore, he was sure of it. The last time he was in the Narrative, he’d checked. He opened his mouth to say so, and Fairy Godmother graciously interrupted before he had a chance to embarrass himself further.

  “Your dealings with other people,” she said. “That Myrtle, for instance. I can tell you’re quite fond of her.”

  Sloot grinned.

  “I hate to tell you this, but I think you ought to know.”

  Sloot’s heart sank. “Yes?”

  “Oh, I suppose I should just come out with it. No sense in delaying bad news, right? Yank off the bandage, get it over with?”

  “Er, right,” said Sloot. That was irony. He knew it in the bones he no longer had.

  “All right. Here goes, then. Myrtle is … oh, bother. This is so difficult! It’s just that I know how much you like her!”

  “Please,” said Sloot, “it’ll be all right, just come out and say it!”

  “Very well,” said Fairy Godmother. She cleared her throat dramatically, which seemed unnecessary. “Myrtle Pastry is a demon.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “What? What and? You don’t mean to tell me you knew already?”

  “Well, yes,” said Sloot. This was unsettling territory for him. He’d grown quite accustomed to being the last to know about things, and didn’t see why he should have to give that up now. They’d want him to set trends next. Trend-setting was best left to people in the arts, or perhaps their publicists, if they didn’t have the time.

  “Oh,” said Fairy Godmother with a mix of surprise and concern. “And how long have you known?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” said Sloot. “A while.”

  “Sorry,” said Fairy Godmother, “I forgot about the time thing. It’s just … well … you know about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re all right with it?”

  Sloot shrugged. “I fell in love with Myrtle while we were both still alive. I mean, they say you can’t take it with you, but love’s not really an ‘it,’ is it? Not in that sort of way.”

  “I suppose not,” said Fairy Godmother. “I just … well, call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Well, the two of you. A ghost and a demon. It’s just not natural! You should be with someone more like you!”

  “Oh, we’ve got loads in common,” said Sloot. “We’ve got all the same friends, we live together, very fond of kissing—”

  “But wouldn’t you rather be with a nice dead girl?”

  Sloot sighed the way he usually did when things turned awkward. He was sure she meant well, but that was the problem. No one in the history of etiquette has ever said “I’m sure she meant well” in response to something having gone well. “Meaning well” was something that people started out with on the way to disaster.

  “I’d rather be with Myrtle,” said Sloot, his voice quavering. As much as it galled him to disagree with anyone about anything under any circumstances, he was in love with Myrtle, and that was that.

  “Well, that’s love for you,” said Fairy Godmother. There was a soft breeze for just a moment, its timing fitting rather well with the timing for a disappointed sigh. “Just be careful, will you?”

  “Always.”

  “I worry about you, you know.” She meant it. Sloot could tell. His mother had never worried about him, he was fairly certain. So strong was Sladia Peril’s belief in her son being made of sterner stuff that she must have thought him invincible. If Sloot’s utter trouncing at the hands of a pair of ten-year-old bullies on his thirtieth birthday hadn’t convinced her otherwise, then her belief in Sloot was matched only by her powers of denial, which she’d swear up and down that she didn’t have.

  “Er, thanks,” said Sloot. “I should be going, I think.”

  “I’ll be here if you need me. Bring a sweater, it might be cold out!”

  “I’m a ghost, Fairy Godmother.”

  “Oh, right. Silly me.”

  Sloot left the graveyard and wandered back down the hill toward the house. He’d only just begun to fret over what other people might think about him consorting with demons when he saw Myrtle, floating serenely in the shade of a tree with her feet up. He needn’t have remarked upon the shade bit, of course, seeing as the entirety of the Hereafter seemed to have been built in the shade, but retracting a passing thought seemed excessive. Plus, Myrtle was smiling at him.

  Sloot smiled back. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Thanks for that,” she said.

  “You’re thanking me for letting you kiss me? Oh, dear. Was I supposed to be thanking you for that this whole time? I told you, I’m new at kissing. I don’t know all of the rules!”

  Myrtle chuckled, and the corners of her mouth curled up when she smiled. “No, silly! You stood up for me with your Fairy Godmother, didn’t you?”

  Sloot’s smile returned. He nodded, then his face made all of the necessary preparations to ask her how she’d known about that.

  “Demon powers,” she said. “I’m getting quite good at reading causation. I was all but certain you’d have that conversation, you know.”

  “I know,” said Sloot, who knew nothing of the sort. He did know that responding to a sentence that ended with “you know” by saying anything to the contrary was an invitation to an argument. He knew anecdotally that lovers quarreled, but he sought to avoid it anyway.

  “I thought you’d be more impressed,” said Myrtle. She frowned slightly, in a way that was more curious than angry or disappointed.

  “Oh, I am,” Sloot hastened to declare. “I didn’t know you even knew about Fairy Godmother.”

  “I didn’t,” said Myrtle. “At least not before certain signs indicated that you’d be talking to her.”

  “Certain signs?”

  “It’s all very intuitive. It started with Willie trying to convince me to let him out of the circle.”

  “That’s a favorite game of his lately. How did he know I’d be in the graveyard?”

  “He didn’t. Not exactly. He simply occupied the space in time that led me to the inevitable conclusion that that’s where you’d be.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Myrtle. “That didn
’t make sense at all, did it?”

  No, thought Sloot, it didn't. He couldn't very well say that, though. Myrtle was his girlfriend! If he were a good boyfriend, he'd say something encouraging.

  "You pronounced it beautifully," he blurted, then winced. He half expected her to roll her eyes in disgust and break things off with him right then and there.

  Instead, she smiled. It was the sort of smile that embodied all of the best parts of a warm spring day, the sun flagrantly dappling gold across green fields from its pompous perch in the cloudless blue sky. Or something like that. It had given Sloot the keen sense of grey clouds over a darkening field of grey, where neither bird chirped nor soft breeze tickled. There may have been a grey sun behind the clouds, though.

  Being dead is harder on romantic poets than it is on most people, or at least it should be; but despite all the bleakness that the long, grey Hereafter has to offer, poets are irrepressible in their knack for finding silver linings, bright sides, that sort of thing. It’s irritating to anyone doing their best to wallow in a long stretch of dismal silence. That’s why poets and stoics don’t mix.

  "You're not very good at lying," said Myrtle with a giggle. "I love that about you."

  "Thank you," said Sloot.

  "There you go again. Why is your awkwardness so adorable?"

  Sloot started to panic.

  "It was a rhetorical question," said Myrtle in a soothing tone.

  Sloot relaxed, but only a bit. He made it a point never to relax completely. That was when they got you.

  "I've got some good news," Myrtle continued. "I've figured out the first step in solving your problems!"

  "Oh," said Sloot. "That's good."

  "I definitely thought you'd be more excited this time," said Myrtle. She was less amused and more disappointed this time.

  "I am," said Sloot, "it's just ... well, it's the price."

  "The price?"

  "My soul," said Sloot. "It's all I have left, really."

  Myrtle didn't react. She was clearly waiting for him to explain why that was problematic. This resulted in an exemplary display of one of life's—poor turn of phrase—most disheartening outcomes, as both of their expressions turned slowly from expectant to defeated.

  "Honestly," said Myrtle, "I don't understand what the big deal about souls is. It's not like you're using it."