Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  The ectoplasm was colder than ice water, and plunging my hands into it might have been the most disgusting thing I’d done since watching a zombie-revenant hybrid devour its own coffin-birthed fetus, still dangling from the umbilical cord. The sink goo wasn’t as thick as it looked, more like gravy than gelatin, and, as I fished around, my fingertips brushed something hard under the swampy fur of my hat.

  I pulled it out of the sink and turned it to face me, pinching my lips together tightly. My heart had started an uneven jig against my ribcage, fluttering unhappily. I placed it on the counter top to the left of the sink, shoving aside some crusty dishes. My hat lay across the top like a deflated toad beret on the world's ugliest and most emaciated mime. With two fingers I pulled the hat off the skull and it slithered back into the sink.

  “Hey, Longshanks,” I called out. “Evidence ate my hat! I'm gonna need a receipt and a stiff drink.”

  CHAPTER 21

  HE DIDN'T BRING either thing I'd asked for. His heavy tread hurried toward me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my sad prize. Thickened ectoplasm clumped in the pit of an eye socket like a snail pulled from its shell. I’d never eat escargot again. Not that I ever had, but this convinced me not to start. I'd probably have to swear off raw oysters, too.

  The skull had a hole in the top. Ectoplasm sluiced out the jaw and oozed from the nasal cavities. I desperately wanted to rinse it off, not just because I wanted to see it in greater detail, but because the bony visage before me had once belonged to a person, a rather important fact that was not lost on me. The slime, regardless of its otherworldly source, seemed an obscene, intimate defacement. I imagined someone handling my skull a hundred and fifty years after my death, and thought I might enjoy a show of respect. A bubble appeared in the ectoplasm in the nasal cavity from some air captured inside, and I couldn’t look away until it surfaced and burst silently.

  Schenk’s breath was unsteady behind me as he stood without speaking for a moment. I tilted my head back and got a great view of his Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively. Then he said, “I never liked that hat, anyway. I’ll get an evidence bag.”

  “Can I rinse this gunk off?”

  “Nope,” he said, and went to the front door, where he’d dropped his own bag of gear from his trunk. He was back a moment later, the bag held in front of him, opened delicately.

  I picked up the skull to drop it in the bag when the kitchen light blinked out, pitching us into relative darkness. The microwave went ding and started cooking nothing, the little plate inside churning around and around.

  I held the skull over the sink so it wouldn’t drip on the already grungy floor. “Leftovers?”

  The sound on the TV in the other room blared on for a second, and one of the Mythbusters screamed something about gaining altitude and then cut off abruptly.

  I set the skull down on the counter. The lights flickered back on with a buzzing complaint, first one long fluorescent tube, then the other.

  Schenk and I stood still and looked around the small space.

  “Hello?” I said experimentally.

  Schenk lowered the bag. The microwave stopped, beeped twice to tell us it was done, and went dark. He raised the bag, and prompted me with a look. I picked up the skull and tried to put it in the bag again. The lights above shut off and the TV blared. I caught the tail end of a cereal jingle.

  I put the skull back on the counter and the TV went silent.

  “A certain dead sassybritches does not want this skull to go in the bag,” I said.

  “It’s going to end up there sooner or later,” Schenk advised quietly. The overhead lights went back on.

  This time we were not alone; from the picture I’d stolen from Scarrow, I recognized John Briggs-Adsit, a full phantom right down to his boots. He was cowering on the floor in front of the fridge, his arms covering his head. He looked like he was crying, but no sniveling sounds could be heard.

  “Are you seeing this?” Schenk whispered.

  “He’s trying to distract us,” I guessed. “Sorry, Longshanks, I have to rinse this skull off. It’s more than him just not wanting us to put it in the bag. There’s something he doesn’t want us to see.”

  I plunged my gloved hand back into the sink and pulled the plug. It came up with a slimy, sucking noise, and I left it resting atop an old bowl of hardened spaghetti with a dead bug in it. The ectoplasm began to drain out noisily in gulps and schlorps, and I ran the hot tap to coax it along. Schenk made an uncertain noise but did not order me to stop; he was far too busy staring wordlessly at his very first apparition. I sensed he wanted to back away, but was resolutely standing his ground.

  I ran my gloves under the tap, wishing the water would warm up. The pipes clanked and groaned and the drain gurgled, choking on the sludge. I rinsed the skull, and then rinsed my gloves a second time, swishing the gunk off the sides of the sink.

  “He’s watching you,” Schenk said. I peeled the latex gloves off and threw them in the sink, drying my hands on a not-so-clean, fairly stiff dish towel hanging from the bar on the stove.

  “Well, unless he’s going to speak to us, he’s a distraction. What's it gonna be this time, Johnny? You gonna talk, or does Bugsy here need to get rough with ya?”

  I made shooing motions at the cowering, spectral soldier, and he fled like mist blowing past headlights, disappearing near my hands and reappearing in a stuttering, strobe-like fashion further away. I'd seen Harry shadow step, flying from shadow to shadow faster than any mortal could move, but this was different, like watching an old movie with a bunch of frames missing. Schenk followed, digging out his phone to take a video clip. I paused, letting Schenk get a good, long view of it, and then herded the spirit into the hall closet where he appeared again, crouching among a half-dozen pairs of mud-crusted sneakers. When I was confident he’d stay, I slammed the door. On Schenk’s wrist. He bellowed impressively.

  “Sorry! Shit! Sorry. Sorry. You stay in there,” I told the ghost, who promptly faded. Above the last trail of fog in the air was a beat-up Montreal Canadiens jacket with an envelope protruding from the pocket. I snatched it up. Scarrow’s pictures, smeared with a single splotch of ectoplasm.

  “Aha!” I closed the closet door again.

  Schenk cradled his injured paw and showed it to me with a thunderous glower. “I don't think a door is going to stop a ghost, eh?”

  “Sorry. Lost my head in the heat of battle. Sorry.” I told whoever still wanted to listen to me, “Tough it out, soldiers. Look, I bet these are the pictures Barnaby stole from Father Frisky when he was swiping the skull.”

  “I find it hard to believe that ghost killed both my victims when you scared him into a closet by shaking your finger at him.”

  “I have awesome finger guns, man.” I sifted through the photographs, wandering back through the kitchen, Schenk on my heels. One of the photos was similar to the carte de visite I’d taken from Scarrow; Mother and John Briggs-Adsit, 1864. Mother wearing a crystal vial necklace and holding a giant wooden spoon.

  “Hunh,” I said. “Maybe Barnaby wasn’t just looking for ghoulish collectibles. He was curious about this ghost, too.” For some reason I found the spoon in Mother Briggs-Adsit’s hand mesmerizing. “Harry saw this same spirit dude in my room at North House. He was cowardly, crouching, flinching. Definitely not aggressive. He just dicked with the plumbing and fucked up my plans for a nice, hot bath.” Schenk didn't need to know about the exceedingly steamy shower that I got instead.

  “Maybe this skull belongs to one of them?”

  “I can tell you right now, it’s not his mother’s skull.” I went back to the sink and re-gloved when Schenk almost absently handed me fresh latex. “Look at the long, narrow nasal cavity, the rounded supraorbital margin, heavy bony glabella.” I showed him between where the eyebrows would have been, and then swept the forehead with gloved fingers. “Backward slanting forehead.” I stroked down the jaw. “Square mandible,” I ran my finger behind the area where his ear would have be
en. “Large mastoid process. This skull belonged to a man.” I looked at the top of it, “Look at that hole at the top.”

  “Gunshot?”

  “Nope. Skull rot.” I turned it to the light. The top of the skull seemed thin, fragile, like it had been eaten away. “To be specific, these holes were caused by bacterial damage. I’m no forensic anthropologist, but I have seen this before. It looks like the late stages of the neurosyphilis.”

  Schenk was flipping through the folded notes and yellowed papers that had been carelessly crammed in the envelope with the pictures that Father Scarrow had carefully collected. “Captain John Briggs-Adsit, Cannoneer 34th New York Independent Field Battery, First Division, 9th Army Corps, A. P. discharged 8 APR 1864 SCD.”

  I nodded sadly. “Syphilitic Chronis Disease,” I said. “Good ol’ pecker flu from houses of ill repute. Here, we have neurosyphilis; you’d see this kind of damage in time.” I poked at the irregular holes in the top of his skull, and then spotted a series of fine lines and frowned. “But not this.” I brought the skull as close to my face as I dared and angled it into the lamp light even more. “This is blunt force trauma. Right here.” I pointed at a spot. “See the radiating fractures?” I tilted it to peer inside the holes at the innermost layer of the skull. “The skull is actually three layers, two hard layers sandwiching a spongier one.”

  Schenk made an affirmative noise to tell me he knew this already. “This trauma was forceful enough to shatter all three.”

  “Keeping in mind that John’s bones were previously damaged by the neurosyphilis, this may not have been an intentionally lethal blow.”

  “After two hundred years I’m sure the bones would have taken damage.”

  “Like I said, I’m not a forensic anthropologist, but I’d like to have someone who is look at this skull, the sooner the better.”

  “Have to run it to Hamilton,” Schenk said, holding out a larger evidence bag. “What are you thinking?”

  “Spit balling an idea or two,” I warned him, in case he was taking my word as an expert opinion, which it was not. “Some later side effects of the syphilis would have been troublesome for someone like Mother Briggs-Adsit, who, according to Father Scarrow, had a notoriously bad temper. Her grown son could have become frustrating to live with and care for: incontinence, confusion, psychosis… What if she hit him?”

  He pointed to the picture. “With her giant wooden spoon?”

  “Spoon of Doom. With a skull weakened by neurosyphilis like this, he could have been killed without her meaning to.” I thought about it. “If he was killed unintentionally, he may not have understood what happened. His confusion may have caused him to linger after death.”

  “And after her own death,” he said, “Mother remains to care for John’s spirit with her own.”

  I sighed. “And then these idiots stumble on the wrong grave.”

  “Couldn’t have happened upon a worse pair to disturb.”

  “Not only do they take her necklace, they take her son’s skull.”

  “To use as a decoration.”

  “Britney had kinder motives. Contact. Discovery. But if Mother Briggs-Adsit thought Britney was investigating the manner of her son’s death…”

  “Guilt. Shame.”

  “Followed closely by anger.” I shook my head. “A disaster waiting to happen. We need to find that necklace.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  Then I guess I team up with Father Spankass and work together to exorcise a homicidal poltergeist? “One thing at a time, Longshanks. Can I put the sound on the TV?” I asked. “It’s creepy quiet in here.”

  “Shouldn’t we be listening for ghosts?”

  “Fuck ghosts,” I said, picking up the remote control. “They’re here. We’re here. We know it, they know it. I’m done listening. You mind?”

  “You’re the paranormal exp—“

  Something hit the back of my hand, knocking the remote into Schenk’s bristly chin. His head jerked back but he made no complaint save a frown.

  “See that?” I pointed at Schenk so the spirit would notice him. “That’s a cop that cannot even handle it right now. So knock that shit off.”

  Schenk glowered at the room and then went back to search the bedroom again. I turned the TV to the local weather channel and stared at the everyday, mundane joy of a perfectly normal storm report.

  The meteorologist said merrily, “Tracking this latest storm’s approach with that wide cold front coming down from the arctic, the blizzard conditions extend all the way into Pennsylvania and north into the Muskokas. Here in the Niagara region we’re expecting between twenty-five and forty-five centimeters of lake effect snow by the end of Friday and into Saturday morning, with some of the worst weather picking up again Sunday afternoon. Expect winds gusting up to eighty kilometers an hour, and temperatures hovering around minus five before wind chill, but it’s going to feel a whole lot colder than that, folks. With much of the region already blanketed by the week’s accumulation, and drifting snow and whiteout conditions making driving treacherous, authorities are asking that people stay in their homes and off the streets unless travel is absolutely necessary. We may be looking at a record snowfall this weekend. Of course, as always, our friends in Buffalo will be worst hit by this storm, with a snowfall totals for the week approaching a meter…”

  I went to get another Twizzler or two, sticking the licorice in the corner of my mouth. There was a chance that Scarrow was wrong about the poltergeist being free of demonic influence.

  “Just to cover our butts, let’s find out if we’ve got a demon in the house. Ready to show me some love, asshole?” I asked around the candy, fetching the twine from the grocery bag.

  I took the handkerchief-wrapped ring out of my jeans pocket. I forgot all about herbs and smudging and candle magic, and made a twine loop from which to hang the hoop of metal. If I were treading a pure-white, right-hand path, I’d be doing this without the influence of Asmodeus, Father of the revenant line and Demon King. However, using darkness to flush out darkness made a whole lot of sense, in that “summon bigger fish” kind of way. Maybe He owed me a favor; maybe I owed Him one. Either way, I knew I had a sliver of His attention, especially when I was being intentionally, magically naughty. Harry would cluck and flutter about tainting my soul, but I was becoming increasingly comfortable that some stains, even Clorox and Woolite wouldn't be able to get out.

  “This is how I roll, cocksucker,” I told the empty room, hanging the ring out on front of me like I was fishing. “I may look little and soft to you – just a warm, mortal meat sack waiting to be drained. But I’ve got bad friends in dark places who owe me big favors. Like this guy. Does He smell familiar?” I swung the ring around in the corners of the room and back into the closet, inching the door open on its track. No ghost. No poltergeist. No demon. I sniffed the closet air for sulfur, brimstone, burnt sugar, singed molasses, absinthe, all scents that preternatural scientists could reliably associate with the unnatural. All I smelled in there was sneaker stink, mildewed fabric and — familiar cologne? I sniffed at the Habs jacket. No cologne. I lifted my face to the air and the smell got lighter. It wasn’t Harry’s 4711. I lowered my nose to my own shoulder and gave myself a sniff. Old Spice. Combat Butler’s scarf. Duh, Marnie.

  I closed the closet and held the twine up so that I could stare through the ring. I imagined flames roiling along the interior, as though I could draw them up from Hell to do my bidding. “Water by water meet fire by fire; Turn you, demon, to face the pyre. Show yourself, and kneel before the servant of your King.”

  If there’s one thing demons don’t like, especially lesser demons, it’s being reminded of their place. Human beings are free and eligible for redemption and eternal peace. We live. We thrive. We improve. We become. Demons do not. Demons are stuck. Demons don’t get better with age or practice. Demons cannot fix their state or evolve or free themselves. If there was a demon here and I taunted it... well, I've done dumber shit. R
arely, but definitely dumber.

  “I am,” I whispered, my eyes darting around the room to see if it made any difference. “I will transcend. The hands of the Blessed Mother and Her Mighty Consort openly await my own.”

  Nothing.

  I glanced at the picture of John Briggs-Adsit and his mother, and tried a new tactic. “Hey Mama-Captain! Your son dicked every whore in Jersey—“

  An invisible force thwapped me in the face with my own Twizzlers, candy whips a ribbed, licorice scourge. For a moment the air fogged, and I felt a push of cold fingers digging into the right hand side of my throat. I slapped at it and shrank away, holding up my demonic ring as though it could repel whatever was trying to touch me.

  “Or maybe he didn’t! Maybe he was a very good boy who got the syph by accident.” The hand holding the twine got very cold, like I’d stuck it out the window into the winter wind. “I mean, I can’t see how that’s possible. It was probably from all his whore-dicking, but—“

  The blast that followed was blunter, a ghostly backhand crushing my lips against my teeth. The force of it made me stumble into the closet door and whack my head.

  “Knock it off you frosty old twat. Your kid was soft in the head in more ways than one, but don't think you can pull that shit on me just because you're made of smoke and snot.”

  “You talking to me?” Schenk leaned out of the bedroom to look down the hall at me.

  “No.” I winced, using my left hand to cup my sore face. I took the ring off of the twine and put it back in my pocket, tucking it under my sweater. “I just got pimp handed by Casper the Unfriendly Ghost's bitch of a mother, I think.”

  “Rough joint, eh?” Schenk said.

  My phone chimed and vibrated in my back pocket, announcing a text, and while I dug it out, I drawled at Schenk, "No, this is great. I wish this was a hotel. I’d stay here every night. The room service is kinda punchy, but at least there's hot and cold running ghosts."