Sorcerers, Spirits, and Ships

by Katherine Gilbert

  “More footsteps,” Kitty confirmed. “They’re coming closer.”

  Somehow, Annabella remembered that some of the children had been sent away to the country at that time to keep them safe, and she didn’t even know if Miriam had lived somewhere the blitz had hit the worst. She just went with the feeling she got, continuing to talk into the dark.

  “Then, just as the war was ending and you were getting ready to go to school for the first time, you got sick and couldn’t.”

  For a moment, she felt a little dizzy, was certain the ghosts were looking for a way in, but fought it while trying to keep enough focus to see what they were thinking.

  “Then your mommy said you had to go to another country, and you got on a big, overcrowded boat where there was no room to play. Then the waves and the movement came, and you were sick again.”

  She swayed just slightly.

  “You never got the chance to play.”

  Annabella? Armand pressed, grabbing hold of her arm. Are you still with me?

  I think I’m fine. Why? she wondered.

  He put his arm around her. Your voice just went seriously creepy and childlike there.

  Oh. Yay.

  “They’re here.” Kitty pointed to the side of the pool where they’d been before. “They’re watching us.”

  “Do you know our mommy?” The words echoed lightly around the room and made Annabella shiver.

  Although Annabella could see nothing, the voices came from the spot Kitty had pointed toward. Now that she noticed it, though, there did seem to be wet footprints.

  PLEASE tell me you heard that, she asked Armand.

  I think so. It’s more like I felt it than heard it. Did they just ask if you knew their mother?

  Yes. Except it was WAY creepier than that.

  “I’ve met your mommy,” Annabella answered, trying to keep her voice non-threatening. “She still misses you.”

  “She didn’t stay with us,” the voices chanted, echoing into her blood.

  Um, telling them about Miriam’s thruple probably isn’t a good idea, is it?

  Armand held her closer.

  When she didn’t answer them, the paired voices grew louder. “We want our mommy.”

  Okay, that I heard, Armand told her. I also think that letting them meet would be a phenomenally bad idea.

  Couldn’t agree more. Let me try to shift this.

  “Is there someone new on the ship who’s making you angry?”

  As the ghosts were fairly single-minded now, it occurred to her that she really should have started with this line of questioning.

  “Mommy!” they screamed, and the echo grew louder. “We want our mommy!”

  “They’re coming closer,” Kitty warned, backing up a step.

  Um, Armand noted, the door we came in by is . . .

  . . . now blocked by them. I noticed.

  As Annabella tried to distract them, they were all backing up into the dark.

  “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. You never have before.”

  The wet footsteps came closer, and they all backed away, hoping there was another way out.

  “Can you tell me who’s been encouraging you to . . .?”

  Suddenly, the little girl ghost was visible—and right up against Annabella’s face. Her long, light hair floated back from her, and her eyes were red.

  “I SAID I WANT my MOMMY!” she screamed.

  Annabella grabbed Kitty’s arm to keep her from running and pushed her over to Armand. People here got hurt when they ran.

  Staying as calm as possible, she managed to put up a magical barrier, although she was shaking slightly.

  I understand, Armand agreed with her decision not to run. And, yes, I see her.

  Seeming to understand their conversation, Kitty whispered.

  “The question is . . .” she managed, maintaining human speech admirably under duress. If they got out of here, they might have to have a conversation with her about when it was okay to just get to the point. “. . . where’s her brother?”

  Maintaining her barrier against the floating girl, Annabella turned to see the little boy staring at them in front of the door they’d been backing toward, their only other escape.

  His eyes were a glowing red of Hell, too.

  “You won’t escape, Annabella.”

  While the voice seemed to come out of his mouth, it didn’t sound like his or any child’s, but she was a bit too terrified to analyze further than that.

  He grinned terribly.

  “You’re never going to be free.”

  Armand, she prompted. Maybe she could ward off ghosts on both sides, and maybe she couldn’t. She’d never really tried, but Armand had been an akukar for years.

  It might hurt him, he warned. He and his sister are just being used.

  I agree.

  Glancing back, she saw the ghost girl reaching for her, though thankfully not yet breaking through her spell.

  I also think we’re sadly at an “it’s them or us” point.

  Apparently agreeing, Armand raised his hand.

  The child’s terrible grin continued, his voice now something out of Hell. “Demons don’t die, bitch.”

  The revelation that this might well be the same demon who had wanted to kill her before scared Annabella enough that she nearly let down her guard.

  Thankfully, Armand screamed out, “Hecate Sancti!” and the child was blasted to the side by a magical light.

  It was just enough time to get out the door and slam it behind them. Although they heard the little boy weeping behind it, they couldn’t go back.

  Fortunately, the ghosts somehow stayed to their designated area.

  Unfortunately, they were now alone in a completely-disused and entirely-forbidden corridor of the ship.

  With Kitty shivering beside her, Annabella rubbed her hand over her back for a moment, but somehow having her hands free seemed more important now.

  The ex-cat didn’t complain, all of them moving forward very tentatively through a darkened hallway. Although it was getting to be a bit later, it was still daytime. While an occasional open doorway seeped a little dim reflection of light through the unwashed glass, only Armand’s magic provided any real way for her to see.

  Even once they managed to find the stairs and made it a story or so up—which Annabella thought should have been either their own floor or the one below it, although she did keep getting turned around—nothing really changed, so maybe she had made a serious wrong turn somewhere. All they could find was a deserted, desolate wreck.

  Clearly, this floor was where some of the cabins had once been, and still were, although now empty of anything living. The carpeting beneath them was worn out and dusty, and the cabin doors were missing all their shine and—in some cases—their numbers.

  Why do you think they left this part unconverted? she wondered, uncertain where they were.

  Something about it said that it hadn’t seen people since it had stopped sailing the seas in the late 1960s.

  The further they walked, as well, the creepier it became.

  In some places, what looked like old, abandoned luggage was piled up. In other rooms, doors were open to reveal beds which hadn’t been slept in by anything living in decades.

  Annabella, Armand began, but she didn’t let him finish.

  Can we get out of here alive before we discuss how I seem to be demon bait?

  As he said nothing, she supposed he agreed.

  The ship was gigantic, and there was no obvious end to the hallway. Kitty clung to Annabella’s shoulder, for which she couldn’t blame her. If it hadn’t seemed a much better idea to have her hands free, she might well have been clinging to Armand.

  Still, it wasn’t just the abandonment and the creepiness which were getting to her. They were on a ship with at least hundreds of people on board. They should have been able to hear voices, footsteps, something. Instead, all they heard was their own footfalls, the beating of their hearts, and the occ
asional, odd creak of the ship.

  They had nearly reached what looked to be a central area, from which they could hopefully escape to more populated sections, when they started to hear a struggle.

  At first, it was just tussling, thumps, and screaming. But eventually—slowly and eerily—figures formed out of the dark.

  Soon, there was a couple in expensive-looking evening dress from sometime in the early or mid-twentieth century. The man, in a perfectly-fitted, black dinner jacket and suit, was screaming abuse at a woman, while the woman, in a blue, beaded dress which fit her body like a dream, was yelling that she’d done nothing wrong. The anger, sadness, and just pure evil of it seemed to penetrate every wall.

  While Annabella—and Armand, she knew—wanted to intervene to protect the woman, it was also clear that they weren’t really here.

  “That’s the couple I saw dancing last night,” Annabella whispered, so Kitty could hear too.

  As much as all of them wanted to go rescue the girl, the chance for that had passed over half a century ago.

  Instead, they stood there, shivering, as, back inside a cabin which stood with the door wide open, the argument became a violent fight and finally a deadly one, the man shooting the woman, then himself.

  You did see that one, didn’t you? Annabella asked.

  I wish I hadn’t, but yes, Armand agreed.

  Looking back around to what she could see of the dark hallway, she pondered. “That was what you call a reenactment, wasn’t it?”

  Armand nodded.

  She remembered what he had told her about ghosts before they’d come, that some events just imprinted themselves on the environment and replayed, regardless of what happened around them. They were more like short films than actual spirits that could be communicated with.

  When they were basically snuff films, however, they were definitely still creepy.

  While it was a difficult scene to forget or to focus away from, suddenly, Annabella got a very strong feeling, looking back to both her companions.

  “We’re being distracted here. The ghosts are targeting someone else.”

  Kitty and Armand looked at each other.

  “Who?” he wondered.

  “I think the new age girl Hubert talked to is about to get a very nasty answer to the question of how she died in her previous life.”

  Chapter 15

  Armand

  Not for the first time, Armand was finding it difficult to focus on much of anything besides Annabella. While this was often the case, his current reasons were much more frightening than normal.

  As Annabella somehow led himself and Kitty out of the dusty hallway and back to the more living areas of the ship, he worried. The feeling wasn’t helped any when they passed by the huge signs near the front desk about “renovations” to the Grand Salon and instructions on where events had been moved to.

  As far as he knew, there was only one demon which still wanted a piece of his beloved. He just wasn’t certain how to protect her from him again, especially as he suspected it had mostly been Tillie’s formidable magic which had saved them the first time—and Tillie wasn’t here.

  Annabella had his hand, gave him a look, as they found their way back toward the bar area where Hubert had seen the girl before, and she didn’t even have to speak into his mind to tell him to focus.

  But how could he? If the family demon who had had its mark on her for most of her life were back, just what were they going to do to save her from him this time?

  Not having any answers, he sent a small signal to Hubert and Miss Janeway, one which would tell them that they needed to meet as soon as possible but not necessarily that they were in the midst of being attacked at that very moment. Then, he followed Annabella, as she stalked determinedly toward where they hoped the girl still was.

  As it was approaching the always-misnamed “happy hour,” the Observation Bar was fairly crowded. This might partly have been because several members of the historical society appeared to have made it their new home.

  As Hubert hadn’t told them much about her, other than her clothes, it took a bit of scanning to see anyone who was likely to be her.

  Finally, though, Annabella nodded toward a young, attractive African-American girl with pixie-cut aqua-colored hair. Her outfit was straight out of the black, frilly ‘60s rack at a vintage store, and she wore a plethora of right-side-up pentacles and a necklace or two with angel pendants. However you cut it, she definitely seemed to define “new age.”

  She was talking to a man who was in a very neat suit, but from another era. Apparently, the historical society had a cosplay element.

  Or so he thought until Kitty pulled back with an only half-repressed hiss.

  “Don’t like him.”

  When Armand looked to Annabella, she nodded.

  “He’s the one who was calling to me in my dream, yes.”

  Making a path quickly around the dozens of elderly revelers, who were apparently taking part in a Queen Mary trivia contest, they made their way over.

  Armand, though, had no idea what to say. So far, the revenant—which the dapper man seemed to be, as he was apparently both dead and quite solid—was not touching the girl or doing anything very harmful, so it seemed a little odd just to attack him because Kitty “didn’t like” him. She hadn’t liked his old housekeeper, either, but he suspected that had been because of her longstanding war with the terrifying vacuum cleaner monster.

  And how were they going to explain to the woman without seeming insane?

  Thankfully, Annabella started, looking thoroughly beautiful, even after the various traumas they’d just escaped—and probably more that were to come. She gave off a bright gold aura which he wasn’t certain whether to ascribe to an intentional spell or just a sign of her need to protect.

  “Excuse me . . .”

  Leaning over, she put her hand on the table, a gold screen appearing between the ghost and the girl.

  Hubert didn’t tell us her name, did he?

  Why make things easy? No.

  “. . . I believe my friend, Hubert, was talking to you earlier.”

  The girl smiled up at her. “Yes.” Looking them all over interestedly, she asked, “Are you here to protect me, too?”

  Annabella startled a little and then stared at the dapper man.

  “My name is William,” he nodded. “I will look after you both, if I can.”

  As this was too odd an invitation, a half hour later they were all reconvened in Armand and Annabella’s quarters with an attractive young woman and a revenant in tow.

  Annabella had put Teena, the girl, on the couch with her, on the side Armand himself wasn’t on. Even more now, he wasn’t leaving her.

  Kitty had pulled up a chair and was sitting close to Teena, too. Ivan and Miss Janeway were on either side of the dapper man, who had a very complicated pattern of protection in front of him, which Armand thought was probably the older woman’s. Given Kitty’s reaction to him, it was still hard to trust.

  Looking far more formidable than she usually did, Miss Janeway began.

  “You’re not responsible for anyone else’s death that I can see, which is the only reason you haven’t been banished yet.”

  Eyes narrowed, she watched him.

  “Now tell us what your interest in the young woman is.”

  William, who was a tall, thin man, rather looked like something out of a Magritte painting, minus the umbrella and the fact that his hat was now on his lap. He had brown hair and kind, sad brown eyes, though, which looked into their female guest tenderly.

  “That will take more time than we have just now.” He smiled back at them. “Let’s just say that I don’t want to see her or the other young lady harmed.”

  Watching him for a moment, Miss Janeway finally refocused on Teena. “You died on this ship in a previous life?”

  “Yes.” Teena smiled at them then shrugged. “It’s kind of nice to be around people who don’t think I’m crazy for saying that.�
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  Staring at her, Miss Janeway wondered, “How much do you remember of that life?”

  “Just flashes.” She shook her head. “I know I was young, white, female, and British. I also think I probably had some money, but I suspect that may have been part of the reason for my murder.”

  For a moment, Miss Janeway looked like she’d ask more but left it.

  Annabella picked up. “It’s nice that you’ve accepted us so far, but you may well think we’re crazy when we keep talking.”

  Teena shrugged. “I thought my roommate in college was nuts when she told me she was a werewolf. When I saw her transform into a big, hairy wolf, I wasn’t thinking that anymore.”

  Staring like everyone else, Armand worried. “Did she attack you?”

  Werewolves didn’t usually tell their secrets to strangers.

  “No, she watched me for a moment to see if I was going to scream, and when I didn’t, she hopped on her bed and took a long nap.”

  Teena shrugged.

  “I brought her back the rarest meat I could find from the cafeteria downstairs. We never actually talked about it again.”

  Okay, Annabella told him, I vote for some serious undiagnosed magical power. At least enough to show itself as complete unflappability.

  Agreed, he noted then picked up the explanations. “I’m sorry. Bad things are happening, so there’s not enough time to detail it in full. Still, some of the ship’s ghosts are getting out of hand, and there’s a demon behind them.”

  “Ugh” was all she said before simply watching them talk.

  It was the longest Armand could hold out, as well, the fear which had been pounding in his brain finally demanding to be heard.

  “We talked to the child ghosts by the pool, but they are definitely being controlled by something. They knew Annabella’s name.” Shivering slightly, he held her hand tighter. “Apparently, the demon is after her.”

  The other people sent by the Magical Council stared at each other in a way which said they already knew.

  Armand narrowed his eyes. “When were you planning on telling us?”