by Leo Hunt
Nothing. What I’ll do if the ghosts do appear I have no clue.
“Don’t make me wait!”
There’s a sharp rapping at the front door. My spine fizzes, like it’s been filled with electrified ice. My throat tightens. Ham starts to yelp in the kitchen.
“Who is that?”
Whatever’s at the front door doesn’t answer. Peering down the stairway into the hall, I can see a dark human shape, silhouetted beyond the door’s pane of rippled glass. I’ve met five of the eight ghosts.
What’s waiting beyond the door?
Did Dad really summon a demon?
There’s another flurry of knocks. I make my way down the stairs, one step at a time. The figure outside grows closer but no clearer. The morning is overcast, the dim light coming into the hallway almost feels like dusk. Ham yowls behind the kitchen door. I realize I left my meat skewer up in my bedroom, although what good it would do I don’t know.
My hand closes around the doorknob.
I take a breath.
I swing the front door open.
“Elza?”
“Are you all right?” she asks. “You look terrified.”
“What are you —”
“I waited for you all of yesterday. You were supposed to come to my place? What’s going on? Is your Host here?”
There’s a light drizzle falling. She’s wearing muddy combat boots and a black wool peacoat that looks like it was cut for someone twice her size. She gives me an impatient look.
“Am I talking to myself? Look, my hair’s getting wet. I’m coming inside.”
Elza pushes past me into the hallway.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “There have been, like, developments. . . . I haven’t been able to come by. I didn’t get your . . . how do you even know where I live?”
“Internet,” she snaps. “Your house feels haunted. Incredibly haunted. I don’t even like standing in the hallway. What happened?”
“Elza, I don’t know how safe it is for you to be here.”
“Nor do I. I thought this would keep me straight, it usually does”— she holds up the stone that she wears around her neck — “but feeling what it’s like in your house, I don’t know.”
“What is that?”
“Wyrdstone. Has a naturally occurring hole. They’re very rare. Druids used them to ward off evil spirits. Is that your dog I can hear in the kitchen?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Well, are you going to let it out?”
I lead her down the hallway and open the kitchen door. Ham leaps up at me, dragging his paws down the front of my pants.
“Big dog,” Elza says, taking a step back.
“He’s a deerhound. Down, boy. Calm down.”
“Hmm. I was expecting a terrier or something. Hello,” she says to Ham. She grabs his head and starts rubbing the skin behind his ears. He grumbles with joy. I walk into the kitchen, not sure what I’m going to do. What does Elza want? Can she actually help me? What am I going to do about Mum? She’s lying above us right now, trapped in sleep.
“So this is it,” Elza says behind me. I turn around. She’s still petting Ham, but she’s looking at the kitchen table, at the Book of Eight.
“Dad’s legacy,” I say.
“Now, your dog is bigger than I was imagining.And yet the fabled book is smaller. It’s practically pocket-size.”
She pushes Ham away and picks up the Book. Her fingers start to work at the clasps.
“Elza, I’m not sure if —”
“What’s wrong?” she says.
“It’s just the book is delicate and —”
“No, what happened? You look completely hollowed out. You look like someone died.”
“It’s Mum. The Host tried to take over yesterday afternoon. This ghost, the Shepherd, he tried to trick me and kill me. Then they did something to her. . . . She won’t wake up.”
“Oh, Luke . . . is she —?”
“No. She’s alive. Look, I’ll show you.”
I take Elza upstairs, with Ham trotting along behind us. I let us all into Mum’s room. It’s exactly as I left it: Mum’s tribal masks still hanging on the walls, her books about ley lines and communication with angels still on her bookshelf. There’s a single slipper on the floor, halfway between the bed and the doorway. It looks lost.
Elza steps past me and moves toward the bed, looking at the enormous spiky star on the far wall. She’s still wearing her boots, and they leave small dabs of mud on the carpet. She looks up at the ceiling, then kneels down and lifts the sheets on Mum’s bed, looking into the space beneath it.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking to see where the spell is coming from. I imagine it’s produced by the obvious mark on the wall, but you never know. There’s nothing under here, anyway.”
“Can we remove the mark?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, we could try, but you won’t be able to wash it off. A mark like that, it’s more than paint. Maybe if we took the wall out with a crowbar. But even then . . . I’d be worried about your mum if we did. It might make things worse.”
“Do you know how to break the spell?” I think it’s a measure of how much my life has changed that it doesn’t even sound like a stupid question anymore.
“No,” Elza says, “not really. When it comes to magic, I’m like someone who can turn a TV on but doesn’t know how to build one. I have a wyrdstone and I can make hazel charms, but I don’t know why they work. I just know they do.”
“So you can’t —”
“I can’t wake your mum up, Luke. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know how to start.”
Ham is standing beside Mum’s bed, sniffing eagerly. He starts to nuzzle at her pillows and whine. I look away. My eyes feel hot and swollen.
Elza looks at my face, frowning. I don’t want her to see any of this.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You’re about to cry.”
To my surprise Elza steps forward and wraps me in a tight hug. She smells of cigarettes. I rest my chin on the rough, damp wool of her coat. I barely knew her two days ago, and here we are, embracing. Even with my eyes blurred by tears I start to smile. I don’t know what Holiday would make of this. After a few moments, Elza slaps me hard on the back and lets me go.
“I think that’s how you rugby boys handle emotions, right? Lots of backslaps? Someone downs a beer? I didn’t bring any cans with me, unfortunately.”
“That’s more or less it,” I say, dabbing at my eyes.
“I don’t want to spend any longer here than we have to,” she’s saying. “This house isn’t secure, and I don’t think I can make it safe for us to work in. I still think you should come across to my house in Towen Crescent. Bring your beast as well.”
“Wait, what? I’m not leaving.”
“Luke, I get that you’re very worried about your mum. I’m worried, too. But realistically, the best chance you have of doing anything for her is not calling a doctor, and it’s not sitting up every night next to her bed until Halloween. The best thing we can do is try to get the Book of Eight open and find out what’s inside. Find something that’ll help us.”
“I don’t even know if I want to open that book. The Shepherd, when he opened it up, the stuff I saw inside was —”
“Well, I don’t think we have another choice. And I’m not staying here — they’re probably listening to every word I’m saying. My house is warded with hazel charms, so uninvited spirits can’t enter. The best thing you can do now is get everything your dad left you and bring it to my house immediately.”
“I can’t just leave Mum here.”
“Then she’ll die,” Elza says. Her eyes are muddy green, the irises wide and dark. Her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “She’ll die. You’ll die once they find a way to break their bonds. We all might. But today she’s alive, which suggests to me that if they were going to kill her, they already would’ve done it. She’s your blood, your mother,
and that can be important for some types of magic. I think your ghosts have some plan for her, and the sooner we find a way to stop them, the safer she’ll be. I can keep your book at my house without raising suspicion, but even if we put your mum in a wheelbarrow or something and take her over there, the first thing my parents are going to ask is ‘Why is there a woman in a coma lying in our spare room?’ and I won’t have an answer for them. She’ll be off to the hospital before you know it, and hospitals aren’t good places. Lots of people die there, they’ll be full of spirits. The walls between here and Deadside will be thin. Bad place to be come Halloween. The best thing you can do for her is leave her. Come with me. Now.”
I look at Mum, at her bronze hair, her lined, worried-looking forehead, the sheets dipping and raising ever so gently as she breathes in her sleep. Ham butts at her pillows. They could come back and kill her right now and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I have to learn to use the Book. Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean I won’t come back.
I drag my gaze away from Mum and look at Elza, thin-lipped, arms folded, a wet strand of hair trailing over her face.
“Well?” she asks.
“All right. We’ll try this your way.”
“Good,” she says. “Because, honestly, I need to get out of this house right now. I feel like I’ve got a nosebleed in a shark tank.”
I go into my bedroom, grab all of Dad’s papers, and shove them back into the document wallet Mr. Berkley gave me. Elza is in the hallway with the door open, holding the Book of Eight in one hand and Ham’s leash in the other. I don’t know how long this is going to take, and I can’t leave him here with nobody to feed him.
I notice the raincoat I wore to Berkley’s office hanging in the hallway, and it nudges at my memory. So many things have happened since Monday afternoon, and I’d forgotten some details. I dip into the inside pocket and bring out the metal case full of Dad’s rings.
“What do you make of this?” I ask Elza.
“We’ve got company,” she says, ignoring me. She gestures out through the open door.
I put the rings in my backpack, alongside my keys. I look out through the door, to where she’s pointing. My stomach lurches. A woman, dressed all in white, stands at the end of our driveway with her back to us. She’s still as a stone, despite the rain, and I notice her dress doesn’t move as the wind blows.
“You know that ghost?” Elza asks.
“New to me,” I say. Hopefully she’s come to apologize for the behavior of her colleagues. Which, admittedly, seems unlikely.
“We don’t have to go past her,” Elza says. “Fastest way to my house is out back, through the fields.”
“I want to know what she has to say. She can’t hurt me. Can she hurt you?”
“Not if the wyrdstone holds.”
I lock the front door behind us, and we make our way down the driveway. The gravel crunches under my feet, and rain hisses at the hood of my coat. The bare trees by our gate move in the wind. Their branches are black webs against the sky. Ham flattens his ears against his head as we approach the ghost. Hearing our footsteps, she turns.
It’s two spirits, I realize: a woman and a baby. The woman is wearing what looks like a wedding dress, white and ornate, with a full veil that obscures her face completely. Her feet are bare, but her arms are swathed in extravagant silk gloves. The second ghost, the baby, is wrapped in a well-washed blue blanket. Not one inch of its body is visible, but I see the blanket shifting as something moves inside. I’m amazed, as always, by how utterly real the ghosts are: every bobble and nub of fabric on the baby’s old blanket is clear and sharp to my eyes.
“What do you want?” I ask the woman.
“I am the Oracle,” she says. Her voice is soft and low, calming. “I bear the Innocent.”
I glance at Elza. Her eyes are fixed on the ghosts, taking in every detail.
“What have you done to Mum?” I ask.
“I bring omens, Master,” the Oracle replies. “I have tasted the wind. I have observed portents in the flight of birds.”
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” I say.
“You will shake hands with an ageless man. There will be no lines on his palm.”
“How do we open the Book of Eight?” Elza asks.
“You will walk the shores of an ocean of tears.”
“I’ve got the Book and Dad’s notes, and the Shepherd’s going to be sorry he even looked at my mum,” I say. “Tell the Host that.”
The Oracle doesn’t respond. The baby, the Innocent, makes a small sighing noise from within its blanket. I suddenly don’t want to be anywhere near the ghosts.
“We should go,” I say. Elza nods.
The Oracle steps aside. We make our way through the front gate. Ham flattens himself against me, shying as far away from the ghosts as he can. The woman’s veiled head tracks me as we leave.
“These omens I have received bode ill,” the Oracle says.
“Yeah, well,” I reply, “I could have told you that.”
Towen Crescent, Elza’s neighborhood, is a part of Dunbarrow I’ve never had a reason to visit before. It’s a fairly recent development, stuck right out on the northwest edge of the town, and Elza shows me a shortcut across some of the sheep fields behind my house. The houses were built between the smoke-spewing industrial estates and the highway, so the Crescent doesn’t have much in the way of central Dunbarrow’s tourist appeal. It’s a borderland, somewhere you go if you don’t fit in with the rest of our town. It makes sense to find Elza living out here.
“What did you make of that?” I ask as we walk.
“Of the Oracle? Never seen anything like it. Ghosts are never that keen to talk to living people. Your Host isn’t shy.”
“Do you think that was her baby?”
“I hope not.”
“What about her prophecy? Do you buy any of that?” I ask.
“What, that she can see the future? I doubt it.”
“So you believe in ghosts, but not psychic predictions?”
“I don’t ‘believe’ in ghosts, Luke, and neither do you. I can see them. When I see someone’s prophecy come true, I’ll accept that as fact as well. Until then, I’ll have my doubts.”
The roads are deserted, the pavement dark with rainwater. The houses are pebble-dashed with steep orange roofs, the gardens cluttered with evergreens and the anemic stalks of telephone poles. Elza’s house, number 19, is at the end of a cul-de-sac, right on the edge of the Crescent. The front of the house boasts a small unkempt lawn, a stone birdbath, a few shrubs.
The house’s hallway is cramped and dark; most of the floor space is occupied with various plastic boxes, stacks of bathroom tiles, and planks of wood. The wallpaper is dark brown, the carpet is scuffed earthy red.
“Excuse the mess,” says Elza without a trace of shame. “We’re still in the process of unpacking.”
“How long have you lived here?” I ask, unleashing Ham, who follows her into the kitchen.
“About twelve years. Mum and Dad both blame each other for how it looks around here. I think for either of them to start unboxing things now would mean they were admitting defeat. You might meet them later, I don’t know. Mum’s working, Dad is off for a fortnight, bird-watching.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. He was laid off last month, so now it’s away to the lakes whenever he can. He loves it; he’s in heaven. Every day is the weekend for him. Practically springs out of bed. It’s quite sickening.” Elza shakes her head with mock disgust. She’s set the kettle to boil.
“No kidding.”
“Sorry, am I boring you?”
“Not at all,” I say. “It’s just . . . you know. Bird-watching.”
“My father happens to be extremely passionate about observing British birds. I hope you’re not trying to cast aspersions on his interest, about the lameness or pointlessness of such an activity, because I would be offended on his behalf.”
“It’s totally
a cover story. Your dad’s a crack dealer. He goes off to London to resupply.”
“That would delight me. Anything but the truth. He used to take me with him when I was younger. Hours of sitting in a hide, almost motionless. No music. No sweets, because if you rustle too much, birds won’t settle. Plus there’s always some Roman legionary who died out there and you have to watch him wandering around with a Pict’s ax stuck in his head. It was torment.”
“Huh. Mum’s gotten keen on birds recently. They’d probably get along. Do your parents have second sight?”
“No,” says Elza, pouring water into her teapot, “they don’t. They got pretty worried about me, how I just wouldn’t grow out of having imaginary friends. I took my pills for a few years, but the dead people didn’t go away, and I realized there was nothing wrong with me. It was everyone else who couldn’t see things right.”
“That’s rough.”
I sit down.
“It’s life,” she says. “I don’t blame them for it. What would you have done? Second sight is hardly a recognized medical condition.”
“What I still don’t understand is how you were born with it, and I’ve only just developed it. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Which part?” she asks. “Your story makes more sense than mine. Dominion over a Host of spirits binds your soul to theirs. You’re closer to Deadside than other people are; they’re pulling you into it, as if you were tied to enormous helium balloons. As soon as you signed that contract, you started to get pulled upward, or deathward, whatever you want to call it. I’d be more surprised if you couldn’t see ghosts. Me, though, I’ve never known why. Best I can do is maybe there was a witch or necromancer somewhere in my family, centuries ago. My parents are totally normal.”
“It might be genetic, like a recessive trait. Is there any research into this stuff?”
“What do you think?” she asks.
“Why not? You could win a Nobel prize for this, easily.”
“I mean, how do you even go about proving your premise that second sight exists? Ghosts are harder to prove than you think. And necromancers are usually a secretive bunch. Your dad was a bit of an anomaly on that front.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. The TV show and all. Why do it?”
