by Sam Schenk
A Gap in the Veil
A Witchy Fiction Novella
Sam Schenk
Copyright © Sam Schenk 2021
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1994, no part may be reproduced by any process without the permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN 978-0-473-56501-5 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-473-56499-5 (softcover)
Created with Vellum
Chapter One
Gregory Able was going to save his first soul tonight.
He dropped his gym bag near a collection of broken gravestones in the shade of the state highway retaining wall, and fished a white candle and lighter out of the pocket of his denim jacket. An icy wind immediately tried to steal them from his grasp.
Greg swore, not for the first time, at Wellington’s tendency to choose her moments. She wasn't going to have her way tonight. It was otherwise perfect — no people, the reach of tree branches just long enough to shut out the street lights and windows of parliament the next block over. The moon was bright enough to illuminate all but shadows beneath tree copses that hovered over faded grave markers.
After several sparks fell harmlessly from the lighter, he managed to get the candle lit.
Shielding the new flame carefully, Greg approached a pair of benches contemplating a large rectangular plot marked by humble clay bricks. Swept clean, sanitised of moss and cleared of overgrowth, the vault exuded an air of quiet importance that trumped the unreadable grave markers inside. Had more care been taken in laying the dead, the other side would have been lulled to peace long before now, no intervention needed. But, here he was.
The crystals laid at star points around the edge of the graveyard were all in their proper places. Cloudy formations were already gathered around them, ready to work.
His teacher would laugh at his refusal to call these clouds of energy “magic” like everyone else. Greg hadn't bothered to find a good name to call it either, but something about “magic” didn't seem right. He supposed it was a bit sparkly, a bit cold, definitely not produced from any gift he had. Magic was stuff cast from wands and words. This was something else. Something he was privileged to be able to connect with.
He drew atmosphere from the clouds and twisted it around his fingers, eventually weaving the thread-thin result into a pentagon-shaped glyph. Once the shape was solid, each point connected with its brothers, he expanded each thread and pushed it into the air. A gesture brought it down around him, where it seared into the ground as cleanly as a laser burn. The wind quieted. The twisting flame stabilized into a thin, smoking line of heat. Colours and textures swirled out from around it, eventually clasping the remaining cloudy material into doorways to the veil.
Greg felt his body begin to relax. This was his place.
He knelt in the narrow space between the benches, breathing into focus the smells of soft moss and dirt tainted by the grease which somehow found its way onto his after-work clothes. He placed the candle on the ground at the exact centre of the five-point star.
Giving his shoulders a quick roll to release the last of the tension, Greg allowed his consciousness to wander. His attention spread between here and there.
He reached out of his body to open a door.
He still looked like himself, but the weight of the physical world was gone. The veil cushioned his manifested projection like a warm bath in a sauna as he moved away from his body. He was surrounded by a humid atmosphere that would have clammed up his skin if he still had it. Cloudy, condensed energy swished between his spirit and body, throbbing along with his heartbeat. A pinch of tightness clasped at the base of his skull to remind him that he was still connected to the other world.
When Greg settled into his senses, he noticed a pair of familiar figures knelt over a ghostly chessboard. The first ghost already had a stern gaze prepared for him. He was a moderately sized man in life, clean-shaven, broad in body, and dressed in plainly decorated vestments. His opponent was bearded and lean, with a tall hat and equally keen eyes. A watch with a gold chain peeked from his vest pocket.
“Evening, Robert, Lipman,” Greg said, approaching.
“Good even’, heathen.” Robert sniffed. Lipman meanwhile, was deep in study of the board and raised his hand in greeting.
“Seen Elizabeth Hadley around?” Greg asked.
Lipman grunted for silence.
Robert grimaced at the other ghost but walked away from the chessboard. A living visitor made a much more interesting target for attack then his constant opponent, Greg supposed. The ghost’s eyes pierced into his with zeal. “What would a worshipper of Lucifer want with Mrs Hadley? Think you I’ll allow that sweet woman into the hands of the devil?”
Greg could feel his forced smile weaken at the edges. His stomach churned. Nevertheless, he pushed through, trying to keep his voice firm, but friendly. “Look, we can have this argument again later. Besides, she’s hardly some colonial miss that can’t fend for herself. After a hundred and fifty years she would know her way around. For now, I’d appreciate it if you’d let her know that I’ve found her body.”
“What do you plan to do with it?”
Greg forced himself to hold eyes with the ghost. “I don’t like your tone, old man. I’m just trying to help, and you know it. It’s not as though I’m responsible for losing her body in the first place.”
“What are you implying…”
“I’m implying that her body was lost. I’m telling you that I found it. Fact. I’m ready to tell her where it is so she can rest. Now, are you going to help me or not?”
Robert held his eyes for a good twenty seconds longer than a modern-day politician. A ghostly hand thrust between them.
“Boys.” Lipman interrupted.
“You stay out of this,” Robert growled, turning to sneer at his opponent. “Mrs Hadley is not under your care.”
“And you’re the boatman for the goyim now?” The second ghost patted Robert’s shoulder good-naturedly. “It’s good business to clear this place of people who don’t want to be here, that’s all. You don’t want her to get bored like the Wakefield kids, do you?”
Robert shuddered. “A disgrace.”
“A living who can turn book pages and use the internet is of much more use than us hanging around waiting for the first coming. We have a problem, Bobby, and you know it.” Lipman walked back to the chessboard, moved a chess piece definitively into the centre of the board, and gave him a wide grin. “Mate in five.”
Robert stared, wide-mouthed at the board, and moved back to the game. Greg let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Lipman had saved Greg from a fire and brimstone sermon more than once, and he was grateful. “Cheers, Mr Levy.”
Greg caught the hint of a smirk as Lipman turned away from them towards parliament where tiered seats were set into the hillside. Greg didn't notice them anymore. In the other world, he supposed they were charming, the largest piece of man-made architecture in the graveyard. In this world, they were mossy, covered over by the energy of the grasses and hillside. As a piece of art or construction, they were soulless and new — unlike even the highway retaining wall, which had at least been built with some sort of pride.
"Elizabeth, don’t slin
k around in the schmutz. It’s rude to keep a caller waiting,” Lipman addressed the stairs.
A ghost’s head emerged from the chipped marble veneer, tinted blue and green from her surroundings. Colonial attire followed, hanging on her corseted body as though it was being dragged by her head. Greg had seen her in the graveyard for months, stared at her even. But he had never been so close before. The clothing was tattered and dirty, her face drawn and tired, her eyes a single dark colour. She looked like a fearsome ghost from some action thriller, compared with the orderly appearance of Robert and Lipman.
He held out his hands so she could see them, the aura from his spirit self growing brightly to contrast with her near invisibility. Greg couldn’t stop his hands from trembling. “Elizabeth, my name is Greg.”
She manoeuvered behind Robert but didn’t say a word. Maybe she couldn’t.
The two ghosts abandoned the chessboard. The preacher placed his hand on hers. His eyes softened, as did his voice. “Maybe it is best that you listen to what this heathen has to say.”
“It’s not out of character to trust a heathen when you have bupkis yourself.” Lipman snickered.
“Be kind.” It was Robert’s turn to ignore Lipman. His nasal British accent was particularly prominent when he felt he had the higher ground. He floated away from Elizabeth towards Greg. “Remember you are in the presence of the fairer sex.”
Greg gritted his teeth against a rebuke. He couldn’t imagine there had been much time for coddling when Elizabeth was alive. Unwilling to draw this out any further, Greg steadied himself before addressing her again. He hoped his face was genuine.
“Elizabeth, those who want to move on should do so, and I’m here to help. Many of the spirits that linger here do so because their body can’t be found.” When he gestured to the vault, the sight of his body: still, breathing deeply in a meditative pose, drew his spirit form towards it. He resisted — straining against the compulsion, forcing himself to ground to the earth, adding weight to his spirit self to avoid moving forward. “I’ve managed to track the path your body took after you died. It’s in the vault, Elizabeth. If you’ll come with me, I’ll guide you to it. Then you can decide whether you would like to stay or go.”
Elizabeth drew nearer to Robert, who fixed Greg with a protective stare. But when the old preacher spoke again, his voice had lost its edge. “It’s your choice, my dear. I believe you should go before you lose any more of yourself. Loath as I am to trust your soul to this… necromancer, it is too precious to lose to madness.”
“If I were a necromancer, I'd wave my hands and you would all be gone, ” Greg growled. "Show a little gratitude for the number of hours I've spent figuring out how to make this work."
Elizabeth gazed at the side of Robert’s head, then cautiously back at Greg. Finally, she floated toward him.
Greg brightened. “Great, come this way… please.” The last was added after a sniff from Robert.
He moved into the vault, deepening his connection with the earth with each step. He chose another anchor point — far below the surface, well below the vault, and increased his connection to it. The farther away from his body he moved, the more the connection at the back of his brain began to tense, itching as the cord twisted against his skin. He was drawn to touch it, to turn and see the source of the pressure on the back of his head. What he saw instead was Elizabeth, following at the edge of vision, her transparent hands folded against her tattered skirts.
By the time they had passed from sediment into hollow, stale air, the clawing at the back of Greg’s head had tightened against his brain. He wasn’t that far away from his body, nowhere near enough to worry, but moving through the vault was like travelling kilometres while listening to radio static. The interference made sense. The vault was home to some thirty-seven hundred named bodies, plus a few extras, not that he’d counted.
The interred bodies were mostly placed in long lines, veils respectfully laid over each. Some had deteriorated so much that you had to look hard to recognise any humanity at all. But he knew enough to sense when something didn’t belong — in the walls, below the benches, in pieces here and there, some far beyond the vault marker above. The veil marked them with the guilt of the handler.
Elizabeth faltered behind him.
Greg couldn’t afford for her to stop, but when he tried to turn, the connection stiffened and pulled against his head, threatening to drag him backwards. “Elizabeth, you have to keep moving. Come forward. It’s not much farther.”
The ghost let out a soft moan, but he sensed her move towards him. Before he could say anything else, a searing chill electrocuted through him. The next thing he saw was Elizabeth’s head as it passed through his chest. Greg’s thoughts flooded and merged with Elizabeth’s.
He couldn’t move. He was drenched in her misery. The weight of her insecurities tumbled over him, each thought driving pieces of humanity away.
She had never thought much about the afterlife. She missed her husband who had. She was so far away from family and everything she knew, and now she was stuck here, without him. He was her only connection. The land, the faces, the activities, everything was foreign. The corpses lying in the vault were reaching towards her with a thousand sharpened javelins, ready to spear her over and over again onto eternity. There were no friendly spirits to comfort her besides this living descendent of people she didn’t know. Was being mad worse than spending eternity here? Where was her husband? Why had he moved on without her? Why was she still here?
Why wasn’t Maddie here?
He wanted nothing more than his wife’s arms around him. It was difficult to breathe, even though he knew he wasn’t breathing. He felt the connection to his body throb with his increasing heartbeat. He felt like it would break his consciousness apart.
The glimmer of hope at the edge of their shared thoughts tore him away from his selfishness: maybe this could all finally be over for her. Greg glanced at Elizabeth, her ghostly form shivering as the veil’s clouds flickered through her. She was in pain, the memories cycling over and over through her mind. She couldn’t see past them. Any pleasure that she’d had in the afterlife, looking after her children and their descendants, influencing their lives in any small way, had faded into the background.
He focused, drawing on the small cloud of gathered energy hovering against the body like a beacon. He remembered how excited, how sure of himself he’d been as he marked it. The feeling, the pattern of the energy around it was the same as Elizabeth’s. These broken cords were similar to his own connection to the physical world, the frayed ends swarming with energy. He’d stared at them for weeks. Physical channels had offered the key to her name: libraries, history books, genealogies. He’d meditated, stalking the feeling of her until he was absolutely sure.
Greg needed to channel those feelings, get the job done. So much work, and finally, here she was, trusting him with her last shred of humanity. After shifting past several dozen half-rotted remains, down several levels, he found it. Greg struggled to lift his arm well enough to urge Elizabeth to move in front of him.
“Here you are, or…were.”
Elizabeth moved from his side, eyes locked to the corpse. As she drifted nearer to it, energy collected from the thick atmosphere, and one of the thousands of connections dangling in the vault reconnected again. Her transparent figure started to fill out, but it didn’t stop there. Soon, she was glowing with golden light. An otherworldly breeze brushed her clothes clean. The pressure around Greg’s projection loosened, just a little bit.
When Elizabeth turned back to him, her face had substance, as though she had breathed moments ago. Her eyes — human and elegant, judged the miserable, crumpled shadow that he had become. Without a word, she leaned down against her remains and disappeared. No fanfare or fuss, not even a thank you. A ghost was gone from the world and onto the next, wherever that was.
Greg hovered, shaking, as the shared sensations rolled across his mind and spirit. He waited to feel lik
e himself again. Though Elizabeth’s doubts were sucked away from him like a vacuum, his own remained.
Disappointed, feeling dirty and exhausted, his head buzzing from the static of the vault, Greg turned back towards the surface. He should feel happier. This was the first step in clearing out the congestion in the vault. Instead of being able to luxuriate in a success he had worked for months to achieve, he couldn’t get Maddie’s face out of his head. He needed a drink, followed by a shower.
Lipman was waiting on the bottom row of seats when Greg regained control of his gravity. He waved Greg over past the chessboard, pieces now littering the floor. “The air is a bit cleaner. Mazel tov.”
Greg wasn’t sure if that was a question, but he sat next to the ghost anyway. “All done.”
Lipman placed a hand near Greg’s shoulder but avoided touching him. “You’re a mentsh, lad.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Greg caught a glimpse of Robert out of the corner of his eye. Arms folded, he observed the scene from the top of the highway retaining wall. When he realised he’d been noticed, the preacher turned and floated over the highway toward the upper graveyard.
“Don’t mind him,” Lipman advised. “That meshugenah preacher thinks gentile souls are his responsibility rather than God’s. You can’t change a lifetime of beliefs, even after another couple of lifetimes.”
“I’m going. It’s another hour up the hill for me.” Greg’s voice sounded tired even to him. He wanted to avoid a round of debate with the philosopher if he could help it.
The chess pieces began to assemble themselves into their right order again under Lipman’s stare. “You should go into town, celebrate with a pint for all of us who can’t. Have one for Elizabeth. Meet some person to help you warm up for the night.”
“I am still married, you know.”
“You’ve given her plenty of time to come back. Face facts. She’s out the door, son. There’s no need to let yourself go to waste.”
