by K. J. Emrick
Nathaniel Williams bent over at his waist, his hands held together behind his back. He regarded Darcy with his head cocked to the side. “Well, well, well,” he said in a pinched accent, his smile twisted and sardonic. “Thou hast some skills, at the least.”
“Enough to take care of a murdering dead man like you,” Darcy spat at him as she scrambled back to her feet, putting distance between them.
Williams chuckled and stood up to his full height, six feet tall and then some. Winds swirled through the mists around him whenever he moved. “Murdering dead man?” he repeated. “That was the best thou couldst manage?”
Deep breaths, Darcy reminded herself. Don’t let the ghost-figment-of-your-imaginary-world bait you into doing something stupid. You’re in control.
The winds buffeted at her, pulling her, pushing her, rising to a fever pitch, but she was in control.
Repeating that, over and over, helped her to calm herself down. I am in control, she said. I am in control. I am in control.
She was in control.
Do the ritual, said a voice whispered faintly on the roaring winds. Start it now.
How her Aunt Millie had managed to get through to this place that Darcy had conjured was impossible to say. Her words gave Darcy the push she needed, and with her aunt’s strength added into her own, she locked herself into her struggle with the Pilgrim Ghost.
“Desirest thou to fight with me?” he asked her, walking in a circle around where she stood. “Marvelous! I should like thou to be demoralized before I kill thee.”
Darcy thrust a hand forward, grabbing at his energy, mentally trying to make him yield to her. It was like trying to hold an ocean’s worth of water in her arms as she extending her own spirit, enfolding it around his, wrapping him into her. Or, trying to at least. She felt him twist, saw the look of surprise on his face that she would be able to do that to him, and then saw his expression turn ragged with hatred.
“Get off me!” he shouted, throwing up his arm like a blade cutting through the mental ropes Darcy had entangled him in. His words were like knife thrusts of their own, sharp and abrupt and painful.
His spirit struck at hers, and she lost her grip on him entirely.
The world around her turned upside down and for a moment she was sure there was no up and no down. Until she found herself on her side and sliding with her feet up over her head. Then she was very sure there was a down. The pain lancing in long lines through her spine and ribcage told her there very definitely was a down.
“Don’t worry, Aunt Millie,” she groaned softly. “All part of the plan.”
She just wished the plan didn’t hurt so much.
“How quaint,” Williams sneered, circling her again, slowly. “Thou callest upon the spirit of thine aunt? I knew her. Not well, of course, but enough to know she couldn’t have beaten me either. She can not help thee. No one can. Death comes for you this day, Darcy Sweet. I need not even lift my hand.”
He leaned into her, his face hovering over hers, the light in his eyes painful to look at. “I need not lift my hand, but I shall nonetheless.”
His hand rose up in a fist, and into it the mists collected and solidified and became a sharp edged dagger with a wicked curve to it. It was aimed for Darcy’s chest, and if it came down she knew she would die. Even if this place wasn’t real, her death would be.
The wind swirled around them at a gale force, gathering every scrap of Darcy’s own conjuring, turning it into a tornado around them, and as Nathaniel Williams smiled down at her it all collected behind him into a funnel with the knife at its apex.
“Die, Darcy Sweet,” he said in a voice full of heated desire and centuries old hatred. “Die!”
His arm came down with the knife, the mists following, racing to tear into her.
A single word passed through Darcy’s mind.
Now.
Holding up her right hand she concentrated on her Aunt Millie’s ring. The ghost, the embodiment of all things malevolent in the town of Misty Hollow, gasped when he saw the piece of jewelry shining before him, shrieked when he realized what she had done, and tried to stop his forward momentum. He was too late.
The image of his body stretched and lengthened, sucked into the ring as Darcy watched, the horrid and fetid mists following after. There was no way that something so small could contain so much. Possible or not, her aunt’s ring caught hold of the evil that was Nathaniel Williams and held him trapped within the way.
Darcy spasmed like someone had punched her in the gut. It was a lot to take in, more than she had ever tried to do before. Even forcing Nathaniel Williams out of her body hadn’t taken this much mental and physical strength.
The method of exorcism was simple. First, chant the right words to create the rhythmic vibrations that opened the portal between the two worlds. She had done that, just now when she had told herself over and over, “I am in control.” It didn’t have to be those words. They could be anything that had the same meter and cadence. The book Aunt Millie had led her to—the one Nathaniel Williams had tried to keep her from seeing—had suggested using that phrase because of its positive energy.
Next, the doorway to the other side had to be opened forcefully, and held open. Most spirits of the dead went to the other side because they wanted to. Some needed a little help to go and were happy to take it. For those few ghosts who didn’t want to leave the world of the living at all, the only way to get rid of them was by force.
The door was open and waiting for Williams. Now she needed to show him the way out.
Unable to make it to her feet, Darcy rose to her knees, keeping her focus on her ring the whole time. The Pilgrim Ghost was lost inside. Not literally, of course, but everything here was symbolism. With a little bit of her own spirit used as a push, Darcy moved Williams along the etched lines and intricate maze design around her finger. She tilted her hand this way and that, flipping it over, rolling it sideways, forcing him down the way against his will. She heard him railing against her, swearing and cursing, and she didn’t take those curses lightly but it didn’t matter anymore. When she got him where she wanted him, this would be done.
The wind rose up hard against her, lifting her hair straight up and stinging her eyes. As she blinked rapidly to clear her vision, she lost sight of the trapped spirit on her finger.
He laughed, a harsh and bitter sound, thinking he had won at the last moment. She caught her right wrist with her left hand, held it steady, focusing every scrap of energy she had left in her into keeping her hold on Williams’ ghost.
“No way,” she told him. “No way do I let you out to cause trouble in my town again. Misty Hollow belongs to the living. You need to go now.”
Never! he shrieked in her mind. I am eternal! I am Nathaniel Williams! I will have vengeance on the descendants of those who did me harm!
“Not where you’re going.”
She concentrated, searching for him down along the way, reaching out to feel for him…searching…
And then she found him.
The little dark bit of energy was moving backward along the line of an angular arc, a line that intersected three others right there. Tilting her finger down, then up, moved him back into place.
Still he struggled, and fought, and used the winds against her. It was a struggle, and she was exhausted already.
With one final turn of her wrist, the spirit of the Pilgrim Ghost rolled down a last twisting curve and into the beautifully worked rose on the ring.
She felt his scream in her bones. It was a painful and terrified sound, the sound of someone who knew they were going to die…for good.
It almost made her feel sorry for him. Almost.
No. Not really.
The ring had been cloudy with the mists dragged into it with Williams’ spirit. Now, at the end of the exorcism, it shone brightly. More brightly than mere silver ever could. It was a celestial light, a light of purity and peace, pulling the evil that was Nathaniel Williams to his final rest agains
t his will, kicking and screaming against Darcy’s spirit.
It hurt. A lot. She held on to the bitter end, feeling everything she had draining away from her. Everything that was left in her. If this didn’t end soon, she might get sucked in, too, and be lost forever.
It was a price she was willing to pay. She didn’t want to, but if that was what it took to keep her friends safe, then so be it.
Even as that thought came to her mind, the rose on the ring flared. It shone of its own accord, separate from the ring. It was a red light that Darcy saw, and as she watched the petals of the red rose blossomed to their fullest, like a living thing. Flecks of light lifted away from it, an effervescent glow, and Darcy knew she would never see anything so beautiful ever again in her life.
The light on the band slowly faded, ebbing away, leaving only the light of the rose. Then even that lessened by degrees until all that was left was the ring. A simple, beautiful silver band.
Nathaniel Williams was gone. Darcy had won against the darkness.
Collapsing face first against whatever passed for ground here, Darcy shook her head and managed a faint smile. “I am never, ever doing that again,” she said. Then after a moment, she shrugged. “Well. Unless I have to.”
Letting herself go, she drifted away from the endless depths of this in between space, slipping back to her real body, waking up slowly to the land of the living once more.
When she did, she smelled smoke.
Chapter Eleven
In her vision, while she had been locked in deadly mental combat with the Pilgrim Ghost, she had seen two of the candles in her circle knocked over. It turned out that was exactly what had happened.
She woke up face down on the carpet. Down here, there was still enough air to breathe, although it was getting smoky and hot even this low to the floor. Somehow Nathaniel Williams’ spirit had managed to actually knock her body around. She ached all along both sides. Her spine felt like it had been bent backward. Her skull ached. Other pains hurt less, but still argued for her attention.
Putting her hand up in front of her face, she looked at the ring in wonder. It had been amazing to see what it could do. It kind of scared her now, knowing what it was. All this time she had worn it because it connected her to Aunt Millie. She never could have guessed that by giving it to her, Millie would one day save her life.
She coughed, and inhaled a harsh breath full of heat and little specks of ash. That was when she realized she was in the middle of a blazing inferno.
The mayor’s office was on fire. The candles that she had so carefully set in place in their holders had been knocked down, setting first the rug and then the nice wooden furniture and then the books in their shelves on fire. She had lucked out when the fire spread to the back of the room first. It was a miracle that she hadn’t died from smoke inhalation already, or from being burned alive.
Now that would have been a terrible thing to wake up to. Sensing it was still a possibility if she didn’t get moving, she forced her wobbly legs to stand her up and she staggered to the door. It had been knocked off its hinges, and the edges of it were already being lapped at by flames.
Out into the hallway she stumbled, the smoke from the room behind her roiling up along the ceiling in all directions. She coughed again, wondering if she had time to get a fire extinguisher. Didn’t the Town Hall have a fire alarm?
She looked for one quickly, shuffling quickly up the entry hall, sure there must be something like that near the main doors. If there was, she didn’t find it. There was nothing to see except a round, white clock near the entrance that told her the time.
11:59pm.
That gave her a moment’s pause, until a loud whoosh showed her that the flames had eaten their way out of Helen’s office and were now hungrily feasting on the wood paneling of the hall.
Jon. Where was Jon?
Edging past the growing flames as fast as she could, she found him right where she had left him, near the door leading into the meeting room. He was awake now, and she could have cried tears of joy if the air wasn’t so dry and smoky. She fell against him where he sat on the floor, throwing her arms around his neck. It was all she could do to manage that. She was exhausted. Completely spent.
“Darcy?” He blinked at her, feeling at the back of his head repeatedly. “What happened? Did we win?”
An involuntary laugh that she couldn’t stop bubbled up from deep inside. It felt good, to know she was alive and that, yes, they had won. The Pilgrim Ghost was no more.
Behind her, something exploded with the sound of shattering glass.
Right. They were in a burning building. Tender moment later, save themselves from fire now. “Jon, we have to go. I’ll tell you all about it later but right now we can’t be here.”
“Why?” he asked groggily, letting her help him to his feet, and helping her in turn. “What’d you do? Burn the place…down…”
His eyes widened as he looked down the hallway.
“Oh.”
“Long story,” she told him. “Just trust me right now when I say we have to go.”
She put her shoulder under his arm, although it was a question in her mind which one of them was worse off. Together, they helped each other step by step down the hall, carefully watching the slow spread of the flames.
Until the wall next to Helen’s office blew out in a gush of red and orange fire that rolled like a ball across the floor and up the wall on the opposite side.
They both stumbled back, realizing they couldn’t leave that way.
Unfortunately, that was the way out. Darcy’s mind put together what that meant in a split second.
It meant they were trapped.
“There must be a back door,” Jon said, raising his voice to be heard over the crackling roar of the growing conflagration. “I’ve never looked for one, but there must be something, right? A window or something?”
Darcy remembered being in the meeting room. There were no windows there. There was the wide open floor, and the low stage, and she did not want to die in a burning building when the outside world was literally three feet on the other side of the wall she was standing next to!
Jon suddenly dropped like dead weight to his knees. “Jon?” she asked in a panic. “Jon, what is it? Are you all right?”
He nodded, but his eyes looked blurry and his grip on her arm was weak. “I’m still a little out of it, I guess. I can’t…um, think. Darcy…?”
She forced her weight under his arm again, and pushed with all her might to get him to his feet. He moved only because she helped him do it, and she had the sickening feeling that he was going to pass out again. Worse, she knew she would do the same thing if she stopped to rest for even a moment.
“Jon,” she said to him, making sure he kept his attention focused on her. “You have to help me, okay? I need you to stay with me because I can’t do this on my own and I need your help, all right? Are you listening to me? Jon!”
“I hear…you…” he said, right before his eyes closed and he sank back to the floor, unconscious.
“No!” Darcy yelled to no one in particular. “No! Jon, get up!”
He wouldn’t answer her. His eyes rolled back into his skull and he twitched, but that was all the response she could get out of him.
The fire raced closer, devouring the aged wood and wall paneling. The molding along the ceiling and floor and doorways was consumed like fine delicacies and each bite brought the flames closer to them.
Frantically she took hold of him from behind, hands in his armpits, and dragged him along the floor into the meeting room. It was too much for her battered body to take, yet she did it anyway. She would do anything it took to save him. There was no other option.
The fire made it to the doorway when she was only five feet into the room. Darcy looked around, saw the walls and the stage and the ceiling and absolutely no way out at all. There had to be some way. There had to be!
“Darcy.”
From behind the stage,
where an alcove had artfully concealed a door, Helen Nelson stood with her hand out to them. She was ragged, her clothes torn and her hair a mess, but Darcy could see in her friend’s eyes that she was herself again. The curse of the Pilgrim Ghost had been lifted.
“Darcy,” Helen said, “bring him this way.”
“I can’t!” Darcy sobbed. “I can’t, Helen. I don’t…I’m not strong enough.”
And then Helen was at her side, taking one of Jon’s arms while Darcy took the other, and together they fled the burning structure as it came down around them.
***
Two long hours in the dark cellar as the Town Hall burned above them would always be one of Darcy’s least favorite memories.
It had saved their lives, though. Her and Jon and Helen. Looking at it that way, she was grateful that Helen knew the back way down through the meeting room. The back door that led outside had been on the other side of the building, as it turned out, past where the worst of the fire was, so it was good that Darcy hadn’t wasted time looking for it. Helen had arrived just in the nick of time.
She just didn’t remember why she was there.
Wrapped in a rough woolen blanket on the back of a fire truck, Helen shook her head again. “I remember going to your house for dinner, Darcy. I remember being worried about you and Jon and coming to find you here. But I think I must have taken a knock to the head inside or something because a lot of it is fuzzy. Or just not there.”
Darcy figured that was probably a blessing for her friend. She didn’t have to remember the more horrible parts of the last two days. Darcy would never forget them. She stood huddled next to Jon, the two of them sharing one blanket, silently communicating their love and support.
The EMTs had checked Jon out and declared it was just a bump to his head. He’d probably have more dizzy spells in the days to come, and there would be an awful knot there for a while, and an x-ray at the hospital over in Meadowood probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, but for now he had been allowed to sign off from any treatment.
