Unholy Ghosts (15 page)

—
Families and Truth
, a Church pamphlet by Elder Barrett

Terrible moaned, a sound so low and frightened it felt like someone rubbing tinfoil against her brain.
“Stop this!”
Tyson shrugged. “His time shortens while thou speaks.”
Fuck! Fuck, shit fuck. Where was her notepad? And her pen? The words in the book had almost finished forming, stretching across the pages like the footprints of bleeding ravens. An image started to form in the center, the amulet, the runes around the edge growing and shrinking.
“No…not me…not me…” Terrible’s body convulsed, folded over on itself, his head bowed. His entire body trembled and shook as he sank farther to the floor, shrinking into a semi fetal position. Red symbols scrolled up his arm, swirling around his elbow and creeping over the slice of bare skin showing at the back of his neck, then back down to spread over the page.
Finally her fingers closed over the pen and pad. She started writing, hardly paying attention, just trying to copy the pages and stop this. If it would stop, if she hadn’t just sacrificed a man’s life just to decipher that stupid amulet. Slipknot could rot forever for all she cared, who cared, just please let this end…
Tretso
, yes. To power. And the other one,
Etosh
, to direct it. More.
Vedak
, to trap the soul.
Arged
, to feed from it. Who the fuck had done this, had concocted something so foul? The lettering flowed faster across the parchment now, almost too fast for her to follow.
“That’s good,” she heard Tyson say softly. “So much pain…and strength…the book is pleased…”
“Fuck you,” she managed, but it was drowned out by Terrible’s roar, like a tiger in pain, setting every hair on her body on end.
The last rune formed now, pulsing bigger and thicker, the red marks forming a rune, then a face, then a rune again, the words stretching out even as Chess’s heart thudded and skipped. That face was that of the nightmare man, and his name was Ereshdiran, the stealer of dreams.
“Done!” she shouted. “I’m done! I’m finished, stop this now, stop it please…”
Red ink covered Terrible’s face, fiery bright under his skin, under the tears squeezing out from beneath his closed eyelids.
“No more, no more, no more, not me, please, please don’t.” Over and over, a litany she could not bear to hear any longer.
Terrible’s eyes flew open. Chess screamed. His irises were red, bright glowing red, his pupils nothing but black pinpoints against it. It was
in
him, oh fuck, whatever it was was inside him, eating him…
Tyson laughed softly as she reached out without thinking and grabbed the book, trying to yank it away.
Tyson’s house disappeared. Instead she was back in a bedroom, a familiar one, though she had not seen it in years, while heavy footsteps clumped across a wooden floor as she pulled the covers tighter over her head. She was only ten, she didn’t want him in here, didn’t want him to make her do those things again…
A different room, a different father, his beefy fist swinging backward to catch her across the face…
Another hit. A heavy, sweaty female figure climbing into her bed. Her clothes torn. Every image Chess ever wanted to forget flashing before her eyes, and over it all the despair, the pain, the misery and loneliness of never being touched except in anger or lust, of being outside, not belonging to anyone or with anyone, of hating herself so much it made her choke. She couldn’t even feel her body anymore, couldn’t see or hear anything but the voice in her head that reminded her every minute of every day how worthless she was, the voice she tried to dull with drugs and work but never really went away, it never would go away, not until she finally died and went to the silent and cold City beneath the ground, a place she’d always thought bad enough to make life just a tiny bit preferable to it. There was no solace there for her, no peace, just endless days and nights of drifting…
“Noooo,” she sobbed, and just like that it ended. Her knees hurt from hitting the floor. Every muscle in her body ached, but it was done, the book was closed, and Terrible was halfway across the room before she stopped feeling the imprint of his hands on her arms.
He grabbed Tyson by the throat and lifted him, flinging the smaller man against the rough-hewn stone like a ball at the end of a tether. Tyson made a small choked sound that could have been a cry or a laugh, his eyes slithering back to solid gray.
“Lemme hit him, Chess,” Terrible moaned, his voice breaking. His right hand fisted and flexed, fisted and flexed, the muscles on his arm bulging as his whole body trembled. “Just let me…you…you fucking…”
“Thou saw things thou did not want to see again.” Tyson smiled like a zipper sliding open. “Bad memories, guard? Was it worth it?”
“Chess…”
“No! No, Terrible, don’t, don’t—wait.” Her leg bumped the table as she got up and crossed the room, leaving a smear of blood soaking into her jeans. “Wait. Who else saw this, Tyson? Who came here before, and made that amulet?”
“I know not—”
“No, you do. You do, that’s why you laughed when you saw it, isn’t it? Who was it? Tell me, or I’ll let him beat you. I’ll let him kill you if he wants to, and I think he does.” She glanced at Terrible, but his eyes were still focused on Tyson with the intensity of a hungry wolf watching a house cat. “Do you want to, Terrible?”
“Aye.”
“Thou cannot kill me. I am more powerful than thou knows.”
Terrible growled.
“You know what I have in my bag, Tyson? Melidia weed. Melidia, and my psychopomp. I can send you and whatever that thing is you’re hosting into one of the spirit prisons so fast you won’t even have time to beg for mercy, and I can let Terrible break every fucking bone in your body first. Now tell me, and we’ll go. Fair evens.”
Terrible tightened his grip on Tyson’s throat. Tyson’s eyes bulged slightly, rolling back into his head. “Like thou,” he gasped. “A dark man, inked like thou…ahhh…”
His arms stretched out at his side, his fingers spreading as his eyes went pure silver. Shit.
“Terrible, let him go!” She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from Tyson. “Let him go, now!”
Terrible obeyed just as the thing inside Tyson freed itself, flying from the man’s open mouth and into the air over their heads like pale, misty vomit. Chess ducked, pulling Terrible with her. They fell to the dirt in a jumble of arms and legs as the thing formed itself into a face, vaguely human, with huge empty eyes and a mouth that opened as if on hinges.
It spread across the ceiling, growing larger and larger. A long finger of tattered ectoplasm brushed Chess’s cheek, leaving a trail of freezing slime across her skin.
Terrible’s fingers were warm and hard in hers, painfully tight, as he yanked her up and pulled her across the room, throwing his body against the door to break it open. The thing screamed behind them as they ran, but nothing emerged from the ramshackle hut, and after a moment silence fell.
“My bag,” she gasped. “I left my bag in there.”
“Shit. You joking me?”
She shook her head. The wind blew so hard she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, or maybe her lungs were simply frozen in terror.
Inked like thou
, he’d said. A Church employee? “I have to have it, I have to go back for it.”
“Oh, naw. You stay.”
She couldn’t argue. All she could do was watch as he ran back into the house and emerged a few moments later dangling her bag from one bloody-knuckled hand.
“What did you do to it?”
He looked down. “Ain’t my blood. Couldn’t just let him get off free, aye?” He was breathing too hard, the knuckles of his other hand white.
“Sit down, okay? Just sit here with me for a minute.”
“We oughta go, he cold out now but—”
“Please? Just…just sit with me.”
He sank to the ground beside her, with his legs bent and his arms resting on his knees, while the ocean shifted and whispered before them. The sound soothed her, but she did not think the harsh fire in her stomach would be appeased so easily. Those images, those memories…it all felt again as if it had just happened.
“Thanks. I mean, thanks for doing that for me, I didn’t think, well, I didn’t know it would be—”
“Nothing, Chess.” His shoulders moved in a casual shrug, but he didn’t take his gaze from the water before them. “Why I here.”
“No, it’s not. That was—I don’t even want to think about what that was, and you couldn’t have—”
“Forget it. It’s over now, aye?” Now he glanced at her. She caught a glimpse of his eyes red-rimmed in his pale face before he turned away again. “Over.”
What had he seen? She would never ask. It was private, just as hers had been private. But at the same time she was aware of her curiosity, irritating and unwelcome like a splinter in her finger. She felt she owed him something now, in a way she hadn’t when he’d helped her at the airport…when, she realized, he’d helped her several times over the last few days. And she’d assumed, when they’d come here, that he would do it again. Shit, when had that happened? When had she started trusting him? She should know better than that.
But it was there, nonetheless, mixed with her curiosity. She trusted him, and she owed him.
“You know,” she said, scooping up some sand and letting it fall between her shaking fingers, “ancient people used to think the ocean had healing qualities. They said if you left offerings to it, if you sat before it long enough, all of your problems would wash away in the tide.”
“You think there’s truth in it?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. She owed him something, but she couldn’t carry through the lie. “No, I don’t.”
He nodded. “Me either.”
Waves broke and crashed against the shore as they got up and started trudging back up the hill, taking their time, until Chess’s hair clung to her head and she could not tell anymore if her face was wet with tears or spray.

* * *

A silent drive, two Cepts, and a line later, she sat in the Mortons’ tidy living room and frowned. Nothing. Either these people were particularly good, or the lack of food in her stomach combined with speed and pills was putting her more off-kilter than she should be. Their faces were so distorted by fear it was like looking into a fun-house mirror. Would she see the same bizarre warping of her own features?
Shit, this wasn’t right. She’d never had problems with what she took before, not like this. A little memory fuzz once in a while, sure—it was one reason why she took copious notes—or sometimes asking people to repeat things because she couldn’t get their words to process in her head, but…sitting with them now was like sitting in a wind tunnel.
Something else was different, as well. All the lights were on, though the sun was just setting.
“I don’t know why you’re asking all these questions,” Mrs. Morton said, for the third or fourth time. “I haven’t slept in days. Please, when will you be able to get rid of it?”
“We’re working on it. Have you thought of staying somewhere else for a while? A friend’s house, perhaps, or a hotel?”
“We can’t afford a hotel,” Mrs. Morton snapped. Her eyes widened. “I mean, a hotel for weeks would be very expensive.”
Chess didn’t react, or make a note. She didn’t need to—this part was set hard into her brain. “According to the records you gave us, you have approximately ten thousand dollars available on your credit cards. Surely you can stay at a hotel for a while? You would of course be reimbursed by the Church after the Banishment.”
She said it with such confidence, she really did. Just as if she hadn’t found out earlier that one of her fellow Church employees was doing illegal magic to call forth something whose name she’d never heard before. Something that reeked of evil like a dead dog in the street reeked of decay.
And speaking of decay…The image of Slipknot’s rotting flesh, sliced open, marked up like a demented child’s tortured dolly, refused to leave her. What his soul must be suffering as he lay trapped in the stinking wreckage that was once a living, breathing body, was unimaginable. And she was responsible for it, because she hadn’t yet figured out how to release him.
It was hard enough not to think of herself as someone who barely deserved to live, without that kind of shit smeared all over her conscience.
How could one of her coworkers do such a thing? For what felt like the millionth time since leaving the beach she tried to think of illegal ink, forbidden tattoos, the possibility that the culprit might simply be someone who looked like a Church employee.
But no. Tyson knew who he’d seen, would know the difference between genuine Church tattoos and illegal ones.
Inked like thou
, he’d said, and it couldn’t have meant anything but Church ink.
She hoped he’d been lying. She couldn’t deny the possibility that he hadn’t.
“Yes, well, we’d rather stay in our home and have everything taken care of quickly, instead of being inconvenienced by living in a hotel,” said Mr. Morton. It took Chess a second to remember what they were talking about.
“Has the haunting escalated? You said last time that it was just a gray sexless shape, Mrs. Morton. Has it taken form? Started moving objects, anything like that?”
“It’s not gray anymore.” Mrs. Morton pulled at the string of pearls around her neck as if they were choking her. “It’s black. A man, in a black hood. He…he watches us while we try to sleep, he sneaks into our dreams…he scares me.”
She dissolved into sobs, sobs Chess could not hear over the pounding of her own heart.

Chapter Twenty-one

“So they found the open spaces beneath the surface of the earth, and found the power there stronger than even that of the spirits, and they sent their guardians and messengers to the surface and brought the spirits to their new home, and imprisoned them there.”

—
The Book of Truth
, Origins, Article 400

She didn’t want to go home. Not after the break-in—had that really only been the night before? It had, and she couldn’t bear the thought of spending a night there alone. Not now, when she knew the person after her knew her, knew everything about her, had worked with her for years.
Tyson could have been lying, but Chess knew he hadn’t. Knew it the way she knew what the Truth was, the way she knew…the way she knew the only safe place now, even in the midst of all her doubts, was the Church. This late at night the building would be deserted, no one would be in the great library, and she had a key. She could do some research, try to decide what everything meant. She could just sit and breathe. The locks in her home could be picked, but the locks of the Church buildings were impregnable.
Of course, whoever had murdered Slipknot had a key, too. But they wouldn’t know where she was. It was still the safest place she could think of.
She spread her notes on the table before her, scanning them to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, looking for things she might have missed, before starting.
Neither Ereshdiran nor the symbol on her assailants’ robes appeared in any of the standard texts. She hadn’t expected them to, but wanted to be thorough.
Why would someone want to summon a Dreamthief? This wasn’t the first time illegal entities had been summoned, of course. When Chess was still a student someone had tried to call an elemental hate spirit, to show off at a party. Those who’d survived the carnage had failed to be impressed.
But a Dreamthief…? She kept thinking if she could remember where she’d seen that damned symbol she might have some idea what was going on, but her memory of it seemed too fuzzy. She couldn’t be sure in her mind it actually looked like she remembered, or if she’d embellished it somehow, made it up.
Sighing, she closed the last book and glanced at the clock. Almost ten. She’d have to leave soon if she wanted to replenish her supplies, and she definitely wanted. Only a desire to get to the bottom of this had kept her from running straight for the pipes after Terrible dropped her off. After the book…after the memories, carving themselves fresh into her head and leaving bloody tracks running down her neck…if she hadn’t been determined to make that hellish experience worth the price of admission she would have done it.
She gave herself half an hour more. Enough time to check a couple of the restricted books. Then she’d go. Straight to Bump’s.
The door to the Restricted Room was locked, but Chess knew where a spare key was kept, tucked on the ledge at the top of the center desk drawer. She’d never needed to steal it before, but then she’d never done research like this after hours before—the library Goodys had always been there to let her in. Feeling a little like a criminal, she felt around the ledge with her fingertips until the key dropped into the drawer, then crossed the room and slipped it into the lock.
It gave an audible click as the catch released, a click that seemed to echo in the big, empty room. Chess froze. Had that just been the lock, or had another click followed it, so closely she just mistook it for an echo?
She whipped around, her gaze skittering from shelf to shelf, across the empty expanse of shining wood floor and up the walls to the fans hanging like bizarre spiders from the ceiling. Always look up. Nobody ever looks up.
Nothing was there, and gradually her heart rate—already fast from all the speed—calmed down. She gave a soft, snorting laugh at herself, like a child bravely declaring themselves unafraid of the dark, and turned the knob.
She’d always loved the Restricted Room. Here were the banned books, the esoteric books, the relics of past forms of religion. Ornate gold crosses and a diamond-encrusted Star of David in glass cases lined the walls and glittered in the dim light, welcoming her into their presence like they’d been waiting for her. Bibles and Korans rested silently on pillars, their wisdom no longer needed, and in one corner sat an enormous gold Buddha, his benign smile blessing them all—if blessing had been permissible, anyway.
To own such items without proof of historical worth outside the Church meant heresy. Here she could look at them all she wanted, read the archaic words, piece together what life must have been like even thirty years before, much less centuries in the past.
She padded across the thick carpet to the Esoteric shelf at the far end, flicking the light switch as she went. The main library room disappeared as the light hit the long, tall windows separating the sections. Funny how she’d never really noticed that before, but then she’d never been in the Restricted section this late at night, when the great library was a cavern of silent secrets between thick dusty covers.
Her skin prickled as she grabbed the largest book, one of her favorites. If it couldn’t be found in
Tobin’s Spirit Guide
it probably couldn’t be found anywhere. The heft of the book comforted her as it always had, but even it could not hide the fact that she’d thought she heard another sound.
A rustle, like breeze blowing a sheaf of paper or, she thought with a vague sense of nausea, the sound made by the pages of Tyson’s horrible book when Terrible’s fingers brushed against it.
She stopped and stood rock-still, with the weight of the
Spirit Guide
starting to make her wrist ache. Looking toward the windows did nothing to help. That damned glass may as well have been a mirror; all she saw was her own pale face staring back at her.
Her muscles creaked as she stood there, letting the seconds stretch into minutes, her ears straining for another sound, but the silence continued for so long she started to doubt herself. She hadn’t slept in days, not really. She was so wired she imagined her pupils were the size of pinpricks and her fingers felt grimy no matter how many times she washed her hands. Of course she was hearing things. It was probably Brownian Motion, or her own brain sizzling as the speed burned away at the cells.
Had she heard a noise, really?
She was being ridiculous. No, not in being cautious. Caution was the only way to stay alive. But in thinking she’d somehow been followed here by the unknown Church employees who’d imprisoned Slipknot’s soul. Tyson didn’t even own a phone. The idea that he’d somehow managed to get himself back together and notify whomever it was, that they’d managed to track her down here when she’d told no one where she was going, was stretching things a bit.
Thus convinced, she sat down, grabbed her notepad, and started checking the
Guide
‘s index. Eraduac, Eramuel, Erbereous, Eredmiam…Ereshdiran. Page one hundred fifty-three.
She pulled off the cap of her pen with her teeth as she used her left hand to flip through the pages. Ugh. The line drawing was crude, but it captured the thin, cruel face and the hooked nose. It even managed to suggest the bloody teeth.
Her pen scratched across the paper as she made notes, her skin growing colder with every word. She was going to have to call Doyle, to agree to go with him to see the Grand Elder. This wasn’t something she could handle on her own—or rather, it wasn’t something she wanted to handle on her own.
Who the fuck had summoned him, and why? What possible reason could there be to invade dreams, to invest that much power into something as banal as sleeping patterns? If they wanted to put homeowners to sleep so they could break in, they could get a Hand of Glory like hers, or perform some other sort of spell. How many homes could they invade in one night? And the damned thing simply wasn’t safe, there was no real way to—
This time the noise was definite. A click, like the step of a hard-bottom shoe on the wood floor. She might not have heard it if she hadn’t paused in her writing, but she had, and so she did. Someone was in the library, and whoever it was had not come simply to do some research. No one called her name, no one noticed the lights on in the Restricted Room and asked who was there. Instead there was only silence, clogging her ears, pressing in around her until she felt her body would collapse under the weight of it.
Sweat beaded on her brow as she casually flipped a few pages in the book, her muscles aching from the strain of keeping her movements slow and even, as though she hadn’t heard anything. Two exits led from the library: the main one she’d used earlier, and the second one she’d used the other day when she overheard the Grand Elder and Bruce talking by the elevators.
Talking about the fear infecting the ghosts, about their unusual behavior. Looked like she had an answer for that, at least. Ereshdiran. The presence of an entity like him would drive normal ghosts crazy.
She’d take the amulet to the Grand Elder, tell him what was happening—No. She couldn’t, not without admitting she’d been out at Chester Airport, that a body had been found and not reported. The amulet explained clearly to anyone who could read it exactly what powered the spell.
So would setting Slipknot’s soul free end it and send Ereshdiran back where he belonged? Or would he start feeding on her, as she’d worried originally? Her blood had fed the amulet…and it had left its little calling cards burrowing into her skin, hadn’t it, in exchange?
Her fingers ached. She looked over and realized her knuckles were white around her pen, and that perhaps this was not the best time to start pondering the ins and outs of ritual but, instead, would be a good time to get the fuck out of the library before whoever was out there decided to make his or her presence known.
The side exit would probably be best. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the sounds came from the direction of the main entrance.
Okay. Smoothly she grabbed her bag and set it on the table, slipping her pen and pad back into it while pretending she was simply looking for something. She wouldn’t be able to turn the lights in the Restricted Room off without advertising the fact that she was leaving and losing the element of surprise. The Element of Surprise had always struck her as a really good name for a band. This probably wasn’t the time for thoughts like that either, but her mind seemed to be working triple-time and she couldn’t quite catch her breath.
So. Casual, busy, unaware. She set her bag on the floor next to her, wrapping the strap around her wrist under the table. With her left hand she flipped forward in the
Guide
, hoping to disguise what she’d been looking at.
Another footstep sounded, closer this time. Her entire body ached, her muscles so tense she was surprised blood still flowed through them. They were coming—he, she, it, whatever was coming, and she couldn’t see them but she might as well have had a neon arrow over her head, and she needed to move. She’d been so stupid. So careless, and so stupid.
Her legs shook.
Go! What the fuck are you waiting for, get up and go! Go!
Carefully she slid her chair back, keeping her gaze focused on the book in front of her, as if she was just trying to get more comfortable. They were watching, she knew, she couldn’t see them but all the same she
saw
them, big shapes in black with no faces, their heavy boots moving across the floor toward her, their arms outstretched to grab her, to choke her, to slide a blade into her throat—
Go!
This time she obeyed, ducking down and slipping off the chair. If luck was with her—what a joke, luck was never with her—they might think she was looking for something, scratching an itch.
Of course, they might also think the perfect time to attack her was when she wasn’t looking. Crablike she scuttled across the floor, keeping her head down. The fifteen feet or so to the door had never seemed like such a great distance; now she felt like an insect running across a hockey rink in full view of a crowd.
She reached the door and stood, not breaking her stride but speeding up, and knew immediately that her gamble had not paid off. The other feet, the other person, was running, too, their heels making loud clicking thumps across the floor as they headed for her.
Chess yanked her knife out of her pocket as she ran, but she didn’t think she’d have a chance to use it. It just made her feel better, sharper somehow, as if she herself could become steel. She ran as fast as she could, not seeing anything but the vague outline of the side door in front of her.
She burst through it and almost fell. The rickety stairs clanged and rattled beneath her as she raced down them, her bag thumping against her legs and threatening to trip her with every step.
Halfway down she heard the door above her open with enough force to make the staircase shake. She didn’t dare look up. She had to keep going, once she got around the next curve she could probably jump the rest of the way…
This she did. The impact sent pain shooting up her legs and she knew her pursuer would unfortunately follow her lead, but she had no choice. The only choices she had right now were to try and go through the chapel, or get into the elevator, plunge into the earth to the platform for the ghost train, and head for the City. Neither appealed. If she went through the chapel she might be caught, and she’d still have to run through the hall and out the front doors to the parking lot.
On the other hand, aside from her general discomfort and dislike of the City, there was no escape from there at all. The only way out was the way back up, and she didn’t particularly want to spend the entire night there while silent ghosts stared at her and her skin went pink then white with cold. Underground…underground was never safe.
Unless…Hadn’t Lex said something about those tunnels? How they went everywhere under Triumph City itself? That probably extended to the Church grounds, right, since before Haunted Week this had been a business district?
At the foot of the elevator was a platform where the train waited.
Hadn’t she seen a couple of doors down there, when she went? One of them might lead into the tunnels. And if she could get into the tunnels, despite the confusing twists and turns, she could find an exit. She knew she could. She had her compass with her, tucked into its little pocket in her bag.
It wasn’t a great idea, but it was the only one she thought might work. She slammed her palm against the elevator button. The second or two it took for the door to open stretched out like hours while the footsteps on the staircase grew louder, and she threw herself into the car as the railing rattled and she knew her pursuer had jumped over the side.
Just before the doors closed she saw him, a hooded figure all in black, the symbol on his chest iridescent in the glow of the safety lights, and memory clicked into place like a bullet into a chamber.