A Summoning of Souls

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  In immediate response, the glow of spirits on the dark lower levels of the house brightened and blossomed to luminous silvery life from within the Prenze walls. Spirits flew from the basement in a secondary explosion of life force. A collective cry went up from the house: the distinct sound of a soul’s freedom, repressed life uncorked and bursting forth. Just as the spirits began to rise to upper floors, Maggie’s gaze followed, noting a haunted face.

  Arielle, tired and lost, looked out her bedroom window. Perhaps she heard the cries of the freed spirits because she whirled around, eyes wide in terror, shivers wracking her frail body.

  Maggie floated through the window as the whine of the electrical malfunctions died down. “I’m here to help your family.”

  Inside the house was pure chaos, the freed spirits darting in wild abandon. Arielle Prenze dove to hide under the covers of her bed.

  Two familiar faces appeared before Maggie: children dressed in Bavarian garb as if from a folk tale. She recognized them as the brother and sister who had drawn her into the Prenze mansion in the first place; she’d been responding to their call for help.

  “You freed us! Thank you!” The little boy said. “His terrible walls finally broke!”

  “Who are you,” Maggie asked, “and why were you imprisoned here?”

  “Lab animals. The first successful test subjects,” the little girl said.

  “In trapping spirits,” the brother clarified. “We haunted the photos after our death. Our spirits came with the photos the mortician brought, the photos you launched downstairs.”

  “Oh, I remember,” Maggie replied mordantly, recalling what got her into all this: the day she found herself in the Prenze parlor, looking at these children. Prenze—now she knew it was Albert masquerading as his brother—had ushered everyone out and turned up his device so high she felt torn apart, like the burning or tearing away of skin, but when there was no skin, it only flayed the soul....

  “We’re sorry you got hurt; you were just the first soul to hear us. We didn’t mean to trap you too,” the little girl said, wringing phantom hands. “But you got out. Something got you out but left the rest of us there. Thank you for coming back for us. Thank you for not forgetting us!”

  Sanctuary had heard Maggie’s plea, but it hadn’t been able to rescue anyone else from the darkness below. Maggie only had a slight recollection of the experience; it was all a spiritual murk.

  “Of course. Get out while you can,” Maggie said, ushering the children to the window. “Anything you can share that will incriminate our torturer, any proof, any papers, anything we can use, bring that information to the Ghost Precinct, care of Eve Whitby, you hear?”

  The children nodded and floated out the window, the boy so happy about his freedom he did an aerial flip before diving away, his sister grabbing onto his hand. “He keeps a diary of his deeds!” the boy called. “You’ll find everything you need in his old study upstairs, the one his brother thinks is always kept locked! Go there!”

  Maggie’s heart leapt at this. Tactile proof! Now to get her hands on it. She whirled to Arielle, advancing on the shuddering form beneath the covers. But before she could manifest poltergeist energy to tear back the covers and confront the woman, there came an ungodly, wretched sound, the likes of which Maggie had never heard.

  Up from the floor below came a terrible scream of rage and frustration, keening sounds of misery. This is how one became a banshee, Maggie thought—a soul, tortured long enough to have lost language, and nothing else remained but pain, retaining only the capacity for wailing. Following the sound was a form, erupting up from the floorboards.

  An intense face with the piercing gaze Maggie recognized as the tintype Eve found stared at Maggie, puzzled a moment, before whirling onto Arielle.

  Mrs. Prenze. The dread matriarch her son hated so deeply as to despise all spirits. A tattered, bony shipwreck of a spirit.

  In a violent gust, the ghost managed to throw back the covers her daughter hid under, and Arielle cried out.

  “Mama?” she squeaked, the sound of a terrified toddler, not a grown woman.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” the ghost screamed, hovering over the bed like a predatory creature, white hair floating wild around her furious face like snakes in water.

  “Oh no…no, no, no…” Arielle murmured, tears streaming down her flushed face. “Please, no…”

  The severe spirit swooped around the room, searching, before she whirled back on Arielle, hand raised in the air like a claw, a talon ready to shred. “WHAT HAS HE DONE?”

  Arielle turned to Maggie, tears in her eyes. “Help me.”

  Without hesitation, Maggie dove in.

  The physical sensation of merging soul into body for possession was impossible to describe, and as this was only Maggie’s second attempt at wholly overtaking another’s body and staying put for results, she hoped she’d get less clumsy about it if it became routine.

  A roaring sound then tearing pain, a sinking, falling feeling. She found her body, but as she did, Arielle spasmed on the bed, kicking the satin duvet. Maggie had been seasick once as a child, and this approximated the feeling, churning and shifting discomfort. Her incorporeal body was merging with another layer, like a heavy coat, but it wasn’t a garment—it was another person.

  Maggie saw through another’s eyes.

  “What is wrong with you?” the old woman cried, looming down on Maggie and Arielle as their visages merged. Mrs. Prenze’s surprise was quickly masked by a venomous anger, grey eyes flashing. “What abomination is happening now?”

  Maggie wasn’t able to place Arielle’s thoughts at the foreground of her own, but she did have the strong inclination to throw herself out of the bed and run for her life. Arielle’s entire person could not be conveyed to Maggie, but she could sense her most base terrors and a crushing feeling of being trapped, as if Arielle were a woman buried alive before she’d even died.

  The doors to the next room flew open.

  Upon sight of the man at the threshold, the ghost of Mrs. Prenze unleashed another banshee scream.

  Staring into the transparent eyes of his deceased mother, Albert Prenze’s face went from controlled to horrified to furious in one malevolent swoop. His mouth fell open, and he screamed back.

  Man and ghost, mother and son, screaming at one another in primal rage.

  The pain was palpable. The virulence was incoherent, impossible to put into words. That these entities were enemies was undeniable.

  Arielle quailed again, her thin frame wracked with a shudder, terrified of the exchange. Maggie winced within her and didn’t fight the physical recoil.

  “I’ll be rid of you once and for all!” Prenze finally shouted.

  Mrs. Prenze just kept screaming.

  A fresh wail of anguish came from the next room. Another voice. Mrs. Prenze stopped abruptly at the sound and flew forward through the closed set of doors.

  “Yes, yes, run to your precious baby,” Albert sneered. “The only one you ever loved.”

  Mrs. Prenze flew out of the room, and in her wake, the rest of the ghosts that had been prisoners in the house took up where Mrs. Prenze had left off, swirling around Albert in a tornado of rage. His breath clouded around him in an icy fog.

  “All right, then,” Albert cried, as if he were rallying troops. “If the animals are all out of the zoo, then it’s time we commence with the cleansing!”

  “The cleansing…” Maggie repeated, and Arielle lumbered through the syllables.

  “The next phase of the plan has been hastened by this electrical outage. I didn’t plan for the prisoners to be let loose. All of it’s been compounded by that stupid girl’s challenge in the papers,” Albert spat, glancing to the side.

  The spirits stopped whirling and hovered, tense, worried, ascertaining the next moves.

  Albert Prenze swiped at the air. �
�Go on, get out! I’ll rid myself of you soon enough!”

  The remaining spirits flew away, many with curses on their lips, several with prayers. Maggie thought they’d all need both.

  Maggie directed Arielle’s gaze to follow in the same direction of her brother’s eyes, and she saw a model sitting on a corner desk, a cardboard diorama like a designer would craft for a stage production as an instruction for dimensional designers and carpenters.

  At the center of the model were small figures standing on a familiar replica of two great Gothic arches and a vast span across a river. To the side was a small, thin wire and another simple arch that put her in mind of Sanctuary and the entrance to that spiritual enclave.

  “Out from under the great arches, oblivion will fly.” Maggie recalled the cryptic message they’d received during Dr. Font’s séance.

  Whatever was about to happen, it was about to happen on the Brooklyn Bridge, with another wire going off into the ether to Sanctuary’s gate. If they hoped to wage a counterattack, it would have to be waged in both locations.

  A bridge to burn, severing two sides of a world. Maggie threw Arielle’s arm forward, pointing at the model, turning toward Zofia’s ghostly form, an indication that the girl needed to relate what was shown there.

  “Go,” Maggie murmured hoarsely through Arielle’s parched throat. “Tell all our allies. Out from under the great arches, oblivion will fly. Protect and intercept both places.”

  Zofia nodded, eyes wide yet defiant. “Then let it be so.”

  Maggie felt a shudder of fear that came most certainly from Arielle, for Zofia’s defiance bolstered Maggie. Whatever Arielle knew about what was to come, the idea that the spirit world wouldn’t be passive but would fight back wasn’t something that Arielle felt prepared for. A life of being submissive to men seemed to have narrowed Arielle’s sense of possibility.

  Albert grabbed Arielle, peering deeply into her eyes. “What’s gotten into you?”

  At this, Maggie just giggled, wanting to yell, “Me!” but her laugh only caused a burble from Arielle’s numb lips. The maniac must have drugged the woman. Coronado was a smooth and elegant joining. This was like a marionette with tangled strings and jumbled limbs.

  “I can’t rely on you in this state,” he growled. “I’ll have to lay you down with Alfred.”

  “No!” Arielle and Maggie joined forces to speak, indignant. “This state is your fault.”

  “I thought you’d fare better with all the fireworks against the spirits if sedated,” Albert countered, “but you’re not acting like yourself.”

  Maggie could feel Arielle’s panic, wanting to say what had happened, but Maggie didn’t allow for it, her spirit stronger. Arielle had been weakened by control Prenze had lorded over her for too long.

  * * * *

  After the spiritual melee had overtaken the Prenze mansion, Antonia rushed out from the carriage that Gran had left for them all, an escape vehicle if there was danger.

  “Gran,” she said breathlessly. “I just had another vision. The forest again. I recognize it now. The arch. It’s Sanctuary. And I saw you there, and all around you a great light.” Antonia blinked back tears. “What I saw is beautiful and terrible in equal measure.…”

  Zofia appeared on the street.

  “There are two attack sites, all wired up,” the little girl explained. “One is Sanctuary!”

  Antonia and Gran looked at one another, Jenny watching from the carriage window.

  “You’re tied to Sanctuary, Gran,” Antonia said. “If that’s a place spirits consider safe, it needs all the protection it can get.”

  “What about Eve?” Gran asked worriedly. “She’s still conducting a séance from my house, yes? While guarded?” Gran asked.

  Zofia nodded. “I’m going to tell Cora and the detective too, all hands on deck.”

  * * * *

  From within the Prenze mansion, another man stepped quietly into view as if he’d been lurking at the threshold just beyond, listening. Sergeant Mahoney. Maggie remembered Eve saying he’d initially given her trouble but then saw sense. Whether he would prove ally or hindrance was yet to be seen.

  “Let me take care of her, then, if she’s not seeming herself,” the officer said. “Why don’t you go and do whatever it is you plan to do and I’ll look after them.”

  “Keep them here,” Prenze growled. “If you need to sedate them—” Prenze plucked out a tonic bottle from his breast pocket.

  Suddenly, at a lumbering run from the next room, another body flew forward.

  Alfred Prenze, greying hair mussed and distressed, hair askew and jaw slack, came running at Albert and knocked him over, the bottle flying to the side of the room and shattering in a green splatter across the champagne wallpaper and oozing down the lower wood paneling.

  Mrs. Prenze the ghost followed Alfred and flew around her now tussling sons who wrestled on the parquet wood floor. The leaner, sharper Albert quickly got the better of his incapacitated twin. Mahoney tried in vain to pry Albert off but couldn’t keep a grip.

  “Leave my best boy alone, Bert!” the old woman cried. “We were better off when you were dead!” At this, Albert Prenze snarled and threw his brother aside, where he groaned against the floor.

  “Now, now,” Mahoney said, helping Alfred up. He stumbled back, brushing himself off. The sergeant turned to Arielle. “Are you all right, Miss Prenze?”

  All Arielle could seem to do was blink at the officer. The only words Arielle could manage were “I’m scared.” Maggie prompted Arielle to more. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  Albert Prenze was brushing off his suit coat, muttering. “Don’t play stupid. You’ve been as supportive of ending ghosts as I am. And it’s overdue.” He stormed out, and Maggie forced Arielle to stand and try to follow. Mahoney tried to block her, but she stumbled past him. She caught her balance at the threshold, gripping onto the wall.

  “All right, Eve Whitby, queen of the dead!” Albert called from the landing as he charged down the stairs. “I’m coming for your reign.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Upstairs in her tower, sweat dripped down Eve’s temples as her body shook and her fingers trembled. Reaching for a glass of water with her good arm, her injured arm still smarting and throbbing, she drank messily, spilling it down her chin, closing her eyes to keep the room from spinning as a migraine shoved its miserable way in too.

  Keeping an open channel for this length of time was taxing to Eve to this point of nausea, but it was the only way to gauge the effectiveness of her editorial.

  From the morning on, as papers had been delivered and the city took to the pages, Eve could feel an additional opening. The channel widened. The response was positive. The spirit world warmed to her appreciation and call for engagement. The living thought of those they’d lost and strengthened the bonds between worlds.

  But just as this feeling crested, there came a sharp crash. As if the river grew too wide and suddenly overflowed its banks, breaking a dam.

  One of the things Eve hadn’t anticipated was muddying the Spiritual channel, the reality of which Lily Strand and the Sister-souls of Sanctuary had specifically warned against. There was resistance. What had felt like a pure channel was now getting foggy, full of silt and sediment.

  For all the swell of positivity and affirmation Eve’s editorial created, there was rejection and denial too. Not everyone would agree with her, and she couldn’t expect everyone to. She could taste disapproval on the air, a bitter tang.

  Prenze wasn’t the only one who wanted to reject ghosts. It was a reaction from the collective unconscious Eve hadn’t bargained for. Just as the spirits were nervous about the coming age, so was the city worried about its future. Entrusting part of its spiritual welfare to the dead was hardly a comfort for many. Prenze likely deemed her blasphemous.

  Like a spot of black
growing before her into a shadow, there was the astral projection she’d been expecting.

  Outside the tower window floated a dark silhouette, glasses slightly askew, hat at an angle, eyes still as piercing and vitriolic. The streaks of silver hair that had grown in around his temples flared out in mad tufts. Eve liked to think, by the look of him, that he was unraveling, but she didn’t know if she could use that to her advantage or if that would make her situation all the more precarious.

  Did you or your minions have anything to do with the electric? The figure sneered. The voice was disembodied, like her mind was manifesting it just outside her ear. It was not the way she heard spirits; this was infinitely more disconcerting. It was too close. Insidious.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eve said, and she held up a paper with her editorial at the fore in front of her face. The shadow growled, the sound terrifying Eve, but she tried to make sure it didn’t show on her face. But when the paper was ripped away from her by unseen hands, just the force of projection and power, pages falling torn at her feet, she jumped.

  How dare you, little girl, came the indignant message slithering through her mind like an unwelcome insect in her ear. How dare you challenge me? Proud fool. You’ll come with me and we’ll see who’s the better mind. It’s been a fun game to determine. I faced down death by industrial fire and came back with great power. You’re a child.

  Eve swallowed the insult. “Leaving someone else to die in your wake, then,” she countered, trying to get him to admit his responsibility for the body that had been assumed his.

  That was…unfortunate. An accident of timing and too eager artists. But it provided advantage. Come along; we’ve much to advantage together. An incorporeal shove of her wounded shoulder forced Eve to her feet, garnering a hiss through clenched teeth. Ah, that’s right, you’ve a little bruise.… Such accidents of timing, yet again! Cooperate and we’ll keep you clear of others. Prenze’s laugh echoed in her head. Eve wanted to scream a curse but bit her tongue and let herself be led.