Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

There were half a dozen wizards in black hoods with their backs to Sloot, chanting toward the stone altar where Nipsy sat, surrounded by piles of bleached bones. Sloot recognized the bindings on the piles because Constantin’s had the same treatment.

  “They’re Soul remains,” Sloot said to himself. “There must be dozens of them!”

  “Hi Sloot,” said Willie. He lounged fabulously just above the ground, smiling guilelessly upward at Sloot.

  “Willie! What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” Willie grinned. He didn’t seem confused about it at all. It was as though not knowing things was such a large part of his being that he’d simply embraced it. “Mrs. Knife told me to come. She said there would be a man doing magic, but I guess she meant Gregor. I thought she meant something cool, like balloon animals.”

  “You’re too late, Peril!” Gregor had a mad gleam in his eye. It was just the sort of gleam one would expect to see a few inches above the bloodthirsty sneer he was also wearing.

  “What does that mean?” Willie whined. “It can’t be finished already. You haven’t done any tricks or anything! It’s not fair!”

  “Quiet, Willie! Oh, we’re nearly finished with a saucy bit of magic now.” He cackled with rabid delight.

  Gregor waggled a wand at Nipsy. Sickly yellow tendrils of thick wet smoke flowed from the wand’s tip, meandering among the remains of the Souls like pickpockets at a street fair. His other hand was gesturing thaumaturgically at Willie. Sloot noticed that he looked withered, drained; as though he’d just sat through his grandfather’s old war story for the umpteenth time, having long ago given up on convincing him that you couldn’t use certain words for foreigners nowadays.

  “What’s he doing to you?”

  “Don’t worry,” yawned Willie, “I’m sure it’s all part of the trick. I once saw a man in a top hat cut a lady in half, but she was back together by the end of it.”

  There was a banging sound from behind Sloot that resembled glass cracking. He turned around to see Vlad slamming her warhammer against the magical shield.

  “Do something!” she shouted, her voice muffled by the shield. “Possess that necromancer!”

  Sloot didn’t have the foggiest idea how he might go about possessing someone, especially given that Gregor had most likely possessed that particular body while it had still been alive.

  “Think, Peril, think!” he shouted to himself, as though it were a voice-activated process.

  “I hope he finishes soon,” said Willie. He yawned. “I feel so sleepy.”

  “Sleepy?” Sloot hadn’t felt sleepy since before he was crushed to death. He noticed smoky white pulses of light that were flowing from Willie to the half dozen wizards facing the other way.

  “The wizards,” said Sloot, “they’re draining Willie’s vitality!”

  Sloot drank in the horrifying realization. Wizards could, in fact, harm the spirits of the dead! The only thing standing between him and an oh-so-sweet “I told you so” was the technicality that he’d not, in fact, told anyone anything of the sort. At least he still felt the fiery shot of a full-scale panic rise up within him. Never let it be said that Sloot Peril ever insulted an inducement to terror with anything less than the full brunt of his discomposure.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Sloot whimpered as he floated as quickly as he could away from danger. That was difficult to do, partially due to the sheer number of things that counted as “dangerous” by Sloot’s measure, but mostly thanks to Gregor.

  “Don’t let Peril escape!” he shouted. A couple of wands turned in his direction, and he felt a jolt. What was it? It wasn’t painful. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long time, and it took him a moment to place it

  Tired. Yes, that was it. He felt like he could sleep for a week. He turned and saw steamy little wisps of his essence pulling away from him, floating toward Gregor and his cadre of wizards.

  Is Willie still alive? Sloot wondered. Oh, he knew what he meant. Still deceased in the ambulatory sense. He thought back to Constantin’s lawyer telling him about the blood economy. They’d only covered vitality going into a ghost, not a word regarding withdrawals. He wondered how quickly they could drain a ghost entirely. Could this be the end for Sloot Peril? Er, again?

  “I’m afraid so,” came a disembodied voice. It sounded even more timid than Sloot’s typical inflection, more wretched even than the one he used when imploring mercy from muggers, by which he meant children selling cookies.

  “You’re not Gregor,” said Sloot. The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere within the crusty old sack of bones, but it definitely wasn’t him.

  “No,” wheedled the voice, “I’m just the wretched fool he possessed nearly a century ago. You wouldn’t happen to know how to kill a necromancer who’s lived for over a thousand years, would you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh, well. Thanks anyway. Gosh, but I’m on tenterhooks for the sweet release of oblivion.”

  Sloot was horrified. Anyone with an inkling of humanity would be, not just a career worrier with a flawless record. At least when Myrtle was possessed by Arthur, she was still largely running the show. This poor fool had apparently been relegated to silent partner, a passenger within his own mind.

  “What’s your name?” asked Sloot, hoping the conversation would help him stay awake.

  “I don’t remember. Lawrence, maybe?”

  “And what did you do before you were possessed?”

  “Nothing good, I’m afraid. I mostly beat people up, as I recall. I was a big fellow.”

  “Not that big anymore,” said Sloot. He was right. Gregor was an emaciated walking corpse. He looked like someone had wrapped pancetta around a pile of kindling and taught it to sneer.

  All of a sudden, the connection was broken. There was an explosion of light, and Nipsy started howling.

  “Hey,” shouted Willie, “what are you doing to my dog?”

  “The Serpent!” shouted Gregor. “The Serpent of the Sky! Rise up, horrid stars! Rise!”

  Nipsy and the remains of the Souls gathered around him flamed and sparkled. They rose up into the air, coalescing into the shape of a gargantuan, coiled serpent. The serpent hissed and rumbled, its great maw opening as it shot toward the heavens.

  Despite the overwhelming feeling of dread, Sloot had to fight to keep his eyes open. Even Franka running through him to collide sword-first with one of the wizards wasn’t enough to give him a surge of whatever passed for adrenaline with the dearly departed. Neither was the roar from Vlad as she charged toward Gregor, his bolts of magic bouncing harmlessly off her enchanted armor.

  Distracted by his overwhelming desire to have a lie-down, Sloot was having trouble focusing. He watched the Serpent of the Sky rising up into the heavens, flaming, sparkling—and suddenly, it winked out.

  Gregor screamed in fury. “Where is it? Curses upon all of you, where is it?”

  Gregor received no answer but his own screaming, as Vlad tore his wand arm from its socket.

  “Villain!” she shouted at him.

  “Curse you,” he spat back at her. “You’re the villain! I’ll have my revenge, I swear it!”

  “Not without a body to possess, you won’t!”

  Sloot looked around. Vlad was right! Franka had already killed all of the other wizards with ruthless efficiency, not that Sloot needed any more reasons to be afraid of her. Furthermore, she seemed to have disappeared. There wasn’t a living human nearby. Not one not wearing enchanted armor, anyway. No one for Gregor to possess. This could mean the end of the curse! Vlad could raise her army again!

  She lifted her hammer high.

  Gregor said a particularly vile swear word.

  A goblin went pop!

  Crunch.

  At least Lawrence must have found some peace. Well, Sloot hoped for that, in any case. He hated to think of anyone trapped silently within their own mind, especially when his head had been reduced to the consistency of uncooked eggs wi
th the shells mixed in.

  “It is done!” shouted Vlad.

  “Not quite,” croaked the goblin that had just blinked in.

  Sloot’s jaw went slack with disbelief. “Gregor?”

  “Peril,” sneered the goblin in an all-too-familiar way.

  “Gregor!” said Sloot, the horror plain on his face. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, though he had to admit he knew nothing about magic. Perhaps possessing the bodies of goblins was a very humdrum practice for necromancers.

  Gregor said a swear word. “I’ve never had to be a goblin before. This is going to take some getting used to.” He flinched, and said another swear word. “I bit my tongue! Curse all of these pointy teeth, why are there so many?”

  There was a great rumbling noise from behind them. Sloot turned to see the enormous pile of goblins collapsing in on itself. They must have decided to give up on reaching the portal, since it was no longer there.

  “Myrtle!” shouted Sloot. She’d stayed on this side of the portal, no doubt to hold the goblins off for as long as possible while Nicoleta and Bartleby did … whatever it was that they did to stop the Serpent of the Sky. Myrtle flapped her powerful wings and headed in Sloot’s direction.

  Vlad bellowed in fury. The sound was terrible on its own, which was good, because the maneuver seemed to be missing something.

  Blood, thought Sloot, with a nod to himself. Goblins dissipate into shadow when they’re cut down, so Vlad didn’t have a drop on her. It was the first time that Sloot had ever thought, “you know what’s missing here? Copious amounts of blood and gore,” and it had very nearly made him feel like a proper Carpathian. It would have done, if that thought hadn’t been immediately followed by some sincere fretting over who was going to clean the battlefield up, and whether they’d manage it before the Domnitor returned, long may he reign.

  Gregor cackled with delight. Wait, perhaps not delight. He might have been mid-going-mad, coming to grips with the fact that he was now in the goblin possession game. It could have been both. It seemed perfectly reasonable to Sloot that necromancers might be delighted by their own descents into madness. But even if he’d wanted to consider the matter further, the congress of goblins charging toward them moved said consideration to next quarter’s business.

  “Oh, no,” said Sloot. “This is going to be bad.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Willie with a yawn. “Nan said if I’m to have a puppy, I mustn’t let him out of my sight. Oh, well, I’m sure one of the servants is looking after him. What’s for dinner?”

  “No,” said Sloot, “ I mean—”

  “Any last words, Invader?” Gregor’s cackling had gained the accompaniment of some properly villainous hand-wringing.

  “I should ask you the same,” growled Vlad.

  “Go ahead,” Gregor spat. “If you strike me down, I will only—”

  Vlad’s hammer passed frighteningly swiftly through the space that had, until then, been occupied by the newly minted goblish necromancer. Had Gregor been permitted to finish his sentence, he might have said “I will only dissipate into a cackling shadow and escape to most likely turn up and thwart you at some later date.” Unlike Myrtle, Sloot couldn’t see into the future, so he could only validate the first part of that with any certainty.

  “Now for the rest of them.” In true heroic fashion, Vlad turned toward the oncoming congressional horde like it was just another day at the office.

  “Sloot!” shouted Myrtle, who was hurtling swiftly toward him. “Wait for me!”

  “Wait for you? Before what—”

  And suddenly, Sloot wasn’t there anymore.

  In Disgrace

  “He’s had ample opportunity,” said Hans.

  “True,” said Geralt, “but he never really got the training, did he?”

  Sloot was still very sleepy. He remembered Hans and Geralt from when he’d first arrived in the Hereafter. Geralt Schlangenkessel was financier to the late Constantin Hapsgalt, and Hans Schweinegesicht was financier to Constantin’s mother, Otthilda. They each spared a sidelong glance in his direction, but obviously preferred talking about him like he wasn’t there. That was the fashionable thing to do in cases where the subject had fallen out of favor, and was probably in a lot of trouble.

  Oh, thought Sloot, with a sinking feeling. He was still very, very tired. How much of his vitality had Gregor and his cronies drained away? Sloot didn’t particularly enjoy being a disembodied spirit, but reasoned that it was probably better than not being a disembodied spirit, which—according to the philosophers—might or might not mean being nothing at all.

  “Training or no,” said Grumley, “he conspired with the enemies of the Serpents of the Earth, and that is not something that we can forgive willy-nilly.”

  Something was different about the dining room, but in Sloot’s listless state, he couldn’t figure out what. The wall that Willie’s body had melted to summon Nipsy had been repaired, but that wasn’t it. The table that could easily have seated and entire orchestra, second chairs and all, was gone. That much was obvious, but there was something else.

  He shook his head and immediately regretted it. It did what it was intended to do, snapping him out of half-sleep and giving him a moment of clarity; but in light of the discovery it afforded him, he’d much rather have continued drifting in his haze of confusion. The difference was the floor. Instead of the psychic approximation of carpet over stone that he’d expected, it was now a swirling morass of grey spiritual energy, composed of innumerable tormented souls writhing in agony.

  “The Well of the Void,” Sloot said aloud, his voice quavering.

  Sloot was chained to the wall by his wrists. The others were hovering above the Well by the chandelier, looking warily downward on occasion, as though worried they might fall in.

  “Quite,” said Grumley with a prim sneer, his moustaches bristling with a righteous I-told-you-so. “You’ve been given ample opportunity to get the affairs of the Soul in order, Peril. I’ve tried to give you enough rope to hang yourself, but you couldn’t even manage that. And then you turn up in the company of none other than Vlad the Invader! What are we supposed to make of that, hmmm?”

  At the best of times, Sloot would have been hard-pressed to come up with a satisfactory lie. The truth came as easily to him as exaggeration to a snake oil salesman. So prodigious with the truth he was, he could have been an anti-politician, had that but been a career.

  Fortunately for Sloot, he was also as groggy as a sailor the morning after a lost wager. He was as hard-pressed to remain coherent long enough for the truth to unrumple itself and stumble out into the light.

  “Bah!” said Hans. “This is intolerable! Why do we have to wait for him to give account of his actions? Let’s just toss him into the Well and be done with it. I don’t have all eternity, you know.”

  “No one does,” said Grumley, “but rules are rules.”

  “You keep the Well of the Void under the floor in the dining room?” asked Geralt, who’d only been dead as long as Sloot had.

  “No, no,” Grumley chuckled. “The Well isn’t stuck to a particular place. It comes and goes as needed. Convenient, eh?”

  “Quite,” said Geralt with an approving nod.

  “Get on with it,” Hans growled, his upturned nose giving a porky snort. “You’re accused of being in league with Vlad the Invader! What do you have to say for yourself? Do you deny the charges?”

  “And you call yourself a loyal subject of the Domnitor,” scoffed Geralt, “long may he reign.”

  “Long may he reign,” Sloot blurted.

  “Don’t you dare!” Geralt squawked. “Traitors shall not mock the reign of the Domnitor, long may he reign!”

  “Long may he reign.”

  “Stop it! It’s against the law for traitors to—”

  “It’s against the law to be a traitor,” Grumley snapped. “But you forget, sir, yet again, that the laws of the Old Country do not apply here! Would you please focus on th
e matter at hand so that we can conclude our business?”

  A scowl that could have dissuaded crows from bothering crops took up residence on Geralt’s face. His chest puffed up to bursting. Sloot knew what he must have been feeling, and would have felt the same himself, had someone told him to stop defending the good name of the Domnitor, long may he reign. In fact, Sloot had half a mind to jump to Geralt’s defense in the matter. Not only was it the right thing for a true salt of the Old Country to do, it might buy him more time to think of a way out of his predicament.

  “He’s obviously guilty,” said Hans. “The Book of Black Law was very carefully written to not require a stenographer at these proceedings, specifically so we could cherry-pick the most convenient rules and get the results we’re after. Let’s just dispense with his testimony and get on with chucking him into the Well.”

  “The Book of Black Law doesn’t require stenographers because they were very expensive when it was written,” said Grumley. “I don’t think—”

  “Now, don’t you go thinking too deeply about the Book of Black Law!” Hans floated menacingly close to Grumley and waggled a finger under his moustaches. “It’s not subject to interpretation! It is the guiding body of law—”

  “Everything is subject to interpretation,” Grumley waggled back. “If the Prime Evils had been able to conceive of every possible—”

  “The will of the Prime Evils isn’t subject to interpretation either!”

  “Gentlemen, please!” shouted Geralt, with all the audacity of a junior clerk running on pluck and coffee alone. “We just need to hear his testimony. Can we leave the interpretation of the Book of Black Law for another time? We’ll be here forever if we get into a philosophical debate.”

  In the moment of silence that followed, the room trembled. It was almost imperceptible, leaving Sloot to question whether it had actually happened, or if he was simply paying homage to the old trope of a dog sleeping by the hearth, raising his head suddenly at the sound of nothing.

  It wasn’t nothing. It was footsteps. The hurried, agitated sprinting of one very perturbed for having been called upon without an appointment.