Ghost in the Canteen (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 1)

by Rasmussen, Jen

  “And what did you want to say about Cyrus?” His voice hadn’t changed, but his eyes looked harder.

  “That I want to hurt him,” I said simply. “And I heard I might have that goal in common with you.”

  Drayne picked up the bottle and topped off his goblet. A fruity but slightly metallic smell rose up as he poured. He didn’t offer me any, sparing me the need to be rude. I wasn’t about to drink anything a fiend gave me.

  His Adam’s apple dipped down and up like a fishing bobber as he swallowed. When he came up for air at last he asked, “Heard where?”

  “From Cyrus himself. He talked about you.”

  “When was this?”

  “I was his student.” It wasn’t quite an answer, but it had the advantage of being true. I decided to tell as few outright lies as possible. There was something too penetrating about his wet stare.

  “I see.” Drayne leaned back, tipping his chair onto its back legs, and drank again. He seemed to be waiting for me to say more.

  “As you’ve probably noticed, I’m alive. And I’m stuck here. And everything is Cyrus’s fault.”

  “So you want revenge.”

  I nodded. “And I guess you do, too. Thought we might be able to team up.”

  Drayne raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “I can see why you’d want to team up with me,” he said. “But why would I want to team up with you? What skills do you have that could be of use to me?”

  “Oh.” I was at a momentary loss. I’m awesome at ping-pong. I’m lucky with parking spaces. I can recite whole passages of Jane Eyre with one hundred percent accuracy. None of these seemed very impressive in the current context. Finally I settled on, “He trusts me. He’d open his door for me.”

  “So you could get me close to him.”

  “I think I could, yes.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. There was a small but unmistakable twinkle in Drayne’s eye. “Does he know you’re here in the netherworld?”

  “I think so. But he doesn’t know how I really feel about him.” That was probably true. I didn’t even know how I really felt about him.

  Drayne gestured at the chair opposite him, his smile broad, his teeth small and perfect. There was an openness and childlike delight about that smile that made him look even gentler and friendlier. He’s buying it. I felt a rush of relief.

  Which was not good. Relief is one of the many emotions that make me disposed to babble.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m Lydia, by the way.”

  He inclined his head and sipped his drink. “And you know my name.”

  “I’ve never heard the name Drayne before. Where did you get it?”

  The hand holding the goblet stopped on its way back down to the table. “I beg your pardon?”

  There was nothing scary about the way he said it. He just seemed kind of surprised, or maybe confused. “I mean, is it a family name?” I asked. “Or a nickname for something?”

  “A nickname?” Still in that same baffled tone. I thought he must not know the word.

  “Short for something.” I should have left it at that and gotten back to Cyrus. It was stupid, talking about names for this long. But I was there to stall him, after all, and small talk is easy. Small talk is supposed to be safe. So I went on, “Like, if your full name is too long or complicated to say.”

  Drayne’s face clouded over. He rose abruptly, shaking the table. A few drops of deep ruby liquid spilled from his goblet. “Does Cyrus really think I’m that much of a fool? Do you?”

  I blinked at him. “Um.” He continued to stare darkly at me, waiting for I did not know what. “No. Of course I don’t think you’re a fool. I just figured you hadn’t heard the word nickname before. It’s kind of a modern term, isn’t it?”

  I had no idea what I’d said to piss him off so badly, but I didn’t have time to wonder about it, because just like that, my windpipe snapped shut. While I struggled for air, my body rose from the chair and began floating gently backward. Like riding on a cloud. Nothing threatening about it, except for the inexorable path toward to the fire. I looked over my shoulder, grabbing at my throat now as if there were hands around it that I could move, and saw the flames flare up in greeting. They were red. Not the orange-yellow of normal fire, but bloodred.

  Drayne was muttering. I couldn’t quite hear or understand most of the words, but something about the cadence, the sounds I caught, sounded an awful lot like the way Jeffrey had spoken. Then I distinctly caught something like ka-rosh, and I knew it was the same language. My panic rose. Bad things happened when someone spoke to me in that language.

  At that point, the best I was hoping for was that I’d pass out from strangulation before I got tossed into the fire. Fire was definitely the worse of the two. I was only inches away from both when I was vaguely aware of a crash somewhere to my right. I was dropped unceremoniously at the hearth, but the hold on my throat didn’t loosen. Through the black dots swarming in front of my eyes, I saw shapes moving by the table: Drayne, his very large personal assistant, and Tom, brandishing something small in his fist that I hoped was Cyrus’s knife.

  I struggled to get up, fell again, then just lay there as a shriek rang through the hall that nearly drove me mad to hear. There was an unspeakable stench, a hundredfold the intensity of the one I’d smelled when I came in, blood and sulfur and smoke and rotten meat. Between the screaming and that smell, I could hardly stand it. And then I couldn’t stand it. I started to gag, and everything faded to black.

  NINE

  * * *

  Lydia.

  The sound of my name seemed to be coming through a tunnel.

  Lydia.

  Low and deep. I must have been underground.

  “Lydia.”

  This time it came with a shake. An earthquake? No. I opened my eyes. It was Tom’s baritone, and it was him shaking me.

  “What happened?” My own voice sounded hoarse, and my throat felt like it was on fire. I sat up. My whole body hurt. I was beside the hearth in Drayne’s hall. One arm and part of my hair were actually in the fireplace, maybe a foot from the fire. I snatched them back and turned to Tom. “Did I faint?”

  He gave me a small, relieved smile, but his face was ashen. “I guess so. I almost fainted myself.”

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  The smile vanished. Tom stood up and started wandering around the hall, pausing here and there to examine the tapestries. He seemed even more restless than usual. “Drayne’s gone. Are you all right? Will you be able to get up and walk?”

  I rubbed the bandage on my cheek. The flesh below it was sore; I’d fallen on that side. “I have a headache, and my throat hurts, but I’ll live.” I expected another lecture on how my head and throat only hurt if I thought they did, but he didn’t say anything. I stood up and found myself steadier than I expected. “When you say gone, I hope you mean dead,’’ I said.

  “I do. I found Cyrus’s knife in the kitchen, and I stabbed him with it.” He glanced at me. “It was unspeakable.”

  I was about to challenge that and ask him for details, but something about his wide eyes and twitching hands stopped me. He just looked so shocked. Shell shocked.

  Oh, Tom honey, if you’ve got some kind of PTSD from that war, please be able to get it together. Please be okay. I’m not feeling so hot myself and I’m not sure I’m strong enough to drag you out of here.

  I looked around the hall. “I don’t see his body.”

  “No, it... sort of disintegrated. After.”

  “Okay. What about the other guy? His personal assistant?”

  “He ran off when he saw what happened to Drayne.”

  “Who was he?”

  “No idea.” Tom walked over to me and took a plain brown folding knife out of his pocket. “Do you think Cyrus will settle for this as evidence that Drayne is dead?” He extended the blade; it was slick with black blood.

  “He’ll have to,” I said. “It
’s not like we can bring him Drayne’s head.” Tom put the knife back in his pocket, and I sighed. “So I missed the whole fight. The most excitement since we got here, and I slept right through it.”

  Tom’s eyes got hard. “There’s nothing exciting about killing someone.”

  Nice going, Lyd. That’s the way to soothe a traumatized guy. “I’m sorry. I, um, hide behind wisecracks a lot.”

  “So I noticed.” He sounded completely, utterly sick of me.

  I felt my face heat up. “Well, we all have our coping mechanisms, don’t we? If I actually talked about all this seriously, I’d turn into a blubbering mess and be no good to anyone.”

  “That so?” He didn’t even sound annoyed now. Just bored. He walked over to the table, picked up Drayne’s bottle of fiendwine, and sniffed at it.

  My embarrassment turned to anger. It was irrational, not to mention a huge jerk move, to get mad at him at a time when I should have been helping him pull it together instead. I still look back on it with shame. But what can I say, I’m a jerk sometimes. And I couldn’t understand what he’d just been through, not then. I would find out for myself eventually, and when I did I would remember that day in Drayne’s hall and wonder how he’d managed to put up with me instead of just stabbing me with Cyrus’s knife.

  “Of course it’s so!” I pushed him in the back of the shoulder, hard, although it felt like pushing a wall.

  He set down the bottle and glared at me over his shoulder.

  “I am trapped in a world governed by laws I don’t understand,” I said. “As far as I can tell, anything at all could happen to me at any second, and it’s not likely to be good. And I’ve already met several people here who would enjoy watching me suffer and die.” I was talking faster and louder as I went, as if that would force Tom to pay attention, but he had already turned away. “And I have a little boy at home who depends on me for everything, and I might never see him again! And he’s so young, if he grows up without me now he won’t even really remember me.” A sob was trying to block my throat, but I shouted right around it. “I’ll just be a picture he passes in the hallway on his way to breakfast! A throwaway line during a toast at his wedding! Wish she was here, too bad she got sucked into the canteen with all the dead people and they ate her alive! And would you please stop pacing like a caged animal for one freaking second?”

  “I AM A CAGED ANIMAL!”

  “I KNOW THAT! I know I’m being an asshole!” And I did. Years of screaming matches with Kevin, thoroughly analyzed with self help books, had taught me to face my inner truth during an argument, and recognize my own agency. I swiped tears off my cheeks. “I know you’re the last person I should expect to sympathize with any of this, because you’re in pretty much the same situation, and I’m the one who put you in it. But I’m just saying. If a little smartassery keeps me on my feet, let’s just roll with that, okay?”

  He stopped in front of me and crossed his arms. “Okay.”

  I ran a shaky hand through my hair, my hysteria spent, and waited for him to say more, but he just went on looking down at me, his expression unreadable.

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Come and help me.” Tom turned and went through one of the doors beside the fireplace, and I followed.

  We walked into a kitchen with a large, round fireplace and shelves lining every wall. There was a back door, which I supposed was how Tom had come in, and an open entryway on the right side of the room. I took a quick peek through the latter and saw what appeared to be a bedroom.

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  “It looks like Cyrus’s remnant wasn’t the only one Drayne had.” Tom pointed to a shelf behind me, where there was a small jumble of objects that on closer inspection turned out to be a stained handkerchief monogrammed with the initials KTR, a tiny dog collar, a pair of dice, and a ticket stub that was soft with age and impossible to read.

  Tom opened a trap door in the floor, then got down on his belly to look inside. “I want to look around before we go,” his muffled voice said.

  “Okay, but be careful poking your head into dark places!”

  He sat back up, one hand holding his hat on. “Just onions and potatoes.”

  Following his lead, I started rummaging through the shelves. There seemed to be a lot of wine, along with other things you’d expect to find in a kitchen: crockery, flour, pots. I was struck, while looking through it all, with how limited the human—or fiend—imagination seemed to be. Here was a world they could make into anything at all, but everywhere I looked I saw things that were normal and familiar. Given the chance to build anything, most people seemed to more-or-less rebuild home. Right down to the greasy counter tops, in Cyrus’s case. But I guessed that made sense, when you considered that the people in the canteen had gotten there because they refused to leave home in the first place.

  There was no pocket watch. “Let’s give the bedroom a try.” Well, that was an unfortunate choice of words. But Tom gave no indication of noticing the possible dirty interpretation, which was equal parts relieving and insulting.

  The other room held a gigantic bed surrounded with curtains made of hide and piled high with furs. I swatted away a mental video of Drayne conjuring animals just to kill and skin them. Stop acting like a hysterical little girl. How many times do you need to be told you can’t conjure animals?

  There were two large wooden chests at the foot of the bed. I looked sideways at Tom as we knelt side by side, each opening one. His color had come back sometime during our argument, and he looked perfectly calm and focused now. I looked back down into the chest.

  Remnant. I hadn’t given much thought to the word before. I pulled out a doll, a music box, a postcard from Chicago, and piled them gently on the floor beside me. I thought I recognized the doll, but I couldn’t remember the name of the apparition it belonged to. Sure, because it’s just a job, right? Do you think carpenters and plumbers remember every tool they ever used? Except of course these weren’t tools. Remnants. These were people’s earthly remains, as much as, maybe even more than, a body in a coffin.

  My eyes teared up as I picked up a plain gold wedding band. I remembered how filled with hope I’d been on my own wedding day. Joy and excitement and panic, sure, but more than anything else, hope. Someone had put on this ring with hope too, so much hope that they couldn’t let go of it and move on. And now they were stuck here, and their ring was lost to them. I could understand Drayne wanting Cyrus’s knife, but what use could any of the rest of these things possibly have been to him? Did he only keep them from people out of spite?

  Tom closed the other chest with a disgusted sigh and began roaming the rest of the room. I half listened to his tapping on the stone floor and paneled walls, looking, I supposed, for hidden spaces.

  “What did the engraving on your watch say?” I remembered holding Tom’s watch, running my fingers over something etched into the silver. “It was about being a hero, wasn’t it? Was that because of the war?”

  “In a way. Clarence gave it to me the night before I left,” Tom said. “And Clarence never gave anybody anything. Not that he wasn’t kind, but when he got his hands on any money, he tore through it in what seemed like seconds. Our father had to put him on a strict allowance. He was always borrowing from me.” I looked up to see Tom shake his head and laugh. “The fights he and Flora used to have about money. I almost felt guilty for listening in.”

  “Almost,” I said. “But not enough to stop doing it.”

  Tom glanced at me, his happy-remembering face clouding over. I opened my mouth to apologize, but he saw it and waved me off. “No, you’re right. I thought I had a right to be there, with my daughter. But I didn’t, did I? It was a violation.” He frowned over the word, then nodded and repeated it. “A violation.”

  Well shit. I’d only meant to tease him. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “You didn’t watch them when they were in th
e bathroom or having, you know, couple time, right?”

  “Of course not!” Tom turned away, but I could see the back of his neck turning red.

  “Well then, I don’t think there was any harm in it. You were like a guardian angel watching over them.” What was I saying? Of course there was harm in it. Apparitions weren’t doing anybody any good, not themselves, not the people they haunted. The natural order of things was to move on. I’d based a very large portion of my life on these concepts. And now I was doing a complete one-eighty, what, to make Tom feel better? Wouldn’t a real friend tell him the truth, make him face the dark side of hanging on, to help him let go? Maybe. All I knew was that I hated it when he sighed like that, and I liked it when he smiled. “They were lucky, to have you love them so much.”

  Tom squatted over a chipped and cracked corner of the floor as though he hadn’t heard me, and I went back to the chest. (A battered copy of Little Women, a gold-plated cigarette case, an ornate beer stein.) But after a minute he cleared his throat and said, “You’re already our hero. That’s what Clarence had engraved on the watch. I guess he wanted me to know I had nothing to prove out there. In the war.”

  “That was very sweet of him.”

  “Yes, it was. Our parents...” Apparently satisfied that there was nothing hidden under the stone, he stood up and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Well, they were made of stern stuff. It wasn’t often anyone in our family let anyone else know they were good enough.”

  “No wonder it’s so special to you,” I said.

  Tom only nodded.

  The last thing I pulled out of the chest was a tiny pair of baby shoes, dipped in bronze. I started crying for real then, thinking of whoever had once treasured this child, and of the child I treasured at home, and of the children I had lost.

  But not just you. Tom’s lost children, too. I didn’t want him to see me have another breakdown, so I focused on keeping my sniffling quiet as I piled the remnants back into the chest. Maybe now that Drayne wasn’t here anymore, people would come and claim them. Tom could tell everyone he knew that we’d found a stash. Word could get around.