Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  “You’re going to catch the cold deep in your bones, tonight,” I told Harry. “You should go home.” My upper lip was still throbbing from getting cold-cocked by the ghost that afternoon, and I thought we could both use an evening at home in front of the fire, cozy in the Winter Room, browsing the books and enjoying one another’s company. There came a point in every investigation where I felt I’d taken too big a slice of the pie and I longed to withdraw, call it quits, circle the wagons and protect what little safety and sanity I had. My I-Don't-Wanna meter was edging towards that redline.

  My Cold Company knew it, too. “Soon enough,” he assured me. “I would not be so ungallant as to abandon you to the night again, especially after yesterday's watery misadventure and your tumultuous afternoon in that disgusting little urchin's abode. After some shadow-chasing with our host, I shall rush home to hot bath and heavy robe, the comforts of home, to apricate in the warm care of my fair sweetheart... only, you will have to change. I packed several lovely nightgowns for you.” He nudged my leg with his. “I think the chocolate silk would be appropriate.”

  “Distraction. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

  He gave a little caught-out shrug, and the Bond informed me that getting up to something was only the beginning of what he had in mind. Unf.

  “Play nice,” I warned, but wanted him to do anything but once we had some time alone.

  The teasing sparkle was again in his eye and he dropped me a wink.

  “Suppose we do meet this spirit, again, Harry. The soldier.”

  “If you’d allow me to counsel you in this matter, ducky, I would suggest that he may be our greatest confederate.” He blinked quickly and said, “Poor choice of words, I’m afraid… poor sod. Let us pretend I said ‘ally,’ lest we offend the chap.”

  “An ally against his own mother, the slap-happy poltergeist?” I thought of Harry’s descriptions of our soldier-specter, crouching on the floor, shrinking in the corner, and seeing him for the first time myself, first a film, strengthening to a shadow, and then banishing him into the closet with a single finger. How easily I'd made him flee. Easier than shooing a fly. “Why is he so scared? You know, besides the fact that he’s maybe been pulling a Norman Bates with his charming mother.”

  “We must ask him.” He tapped my gloved hand on the bench seat while Mr. Merritt navigated a poorly-plowed stretch of road. “And Norman Bates is not a fair comparison; Bates murdered his mother. I assure you John Briggs-Adsit never harmed a hair on his mother’s head.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance, remembering the hole in John’s skull. I hadn’t mentioned any of the evidence to Harry; since I’d started working for the PCU I’d kept more of my work to myself, as much as that was possible given our Bond, as a matter of habit. “Do you think she might have hurt him?”

  “His current sense of self, as I perceived it, was scrambled by the muddle of being lost,” Harry said. “’Tis not easy, being lost, and spirits become confused, but if you were to tell me that, near the end of his life, he had cause to fear his mother, I would not be surprised in the slightest.”

  “How do we get through to him? He’s been appearing to me, so he’s got something to say.”

  “Relate to him as you would to any living person,” Harry said softly. “I must not, myself. It is best that I keep my distance. If he cleaves too strongly to my sympathetic presence through Kinship of the Departed, he will never move on to the light, and will be Earthbound for all eternity. That is a frightful fate for an innocent soul, and one I do not wish to add to my litany of damnations.”

  “How will I relate to him?” I said with a discouraged sigh. “I don’t know what his life was like. I’m not a Civil War buff. I don’t know what his situation was, other than a few sketchy facts and some guesswork. What am I gonna talk to him about, how syphilis is a major bummer? I certainly can’t chat about my life, or how my extra-large Tim Horton’s cup won’t fit in the microwave for reheating. Maybe we could bond over how much we disappoint our mothers. That'll be a hoot and a half, I bet.”

  Harry stared at me for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not to shake me. I hadn’t realized how serious the moment was becoming until he looked at me like that.

  Then, after a brief, tight pursing of his lips, he spoke slowly and deliberately. “Good Heavens, woman, he’s dry of life and cold beyond anything anyone in the physical realm can imagine. Yes,” he said in answer to my glance, reading my doubt through the Bond, “even I cannot imagine, nor could I express it sufficiently, the final, illimitably icy touch of Death. Your Johnny doesn’t remember trivial nonsense like meat and wine or tea and toast. He remembers only those bright, savage moments that impressed upon his soul, what sheared his heart in two, what lifted him up, the sweetest and most painful parts of life, the most important things he’s lost: loyalty, fidelity, connection. Seeing the swell of his first child in his wife’s belly. Hearing a small voice call out for him in the night after a bad dream, his child’s giggle at a silly joke. The sigh of a woman beneath him. He remembers what it is to be flesh and blood. He remembers what it is to love.”

  I saw the flash in his eye and felt through the Bond a moment of envy, clamped down tight; a ghost, a man who had been gone for two hundred years, still knew how it felt to love, could access that feeling. Harry could not. Those who receive the gift of immortality are denied the pleasure of love for all time. Even after he was eventually ash, Harry’s spirit would not linger, not like this one, not with any sort of awareness or ability to feel. He had lost love forever. Harry opened his fists, looked down at them in surprise, and showed them to me as if amazed he had tightened them in the first place. “This is how you will reach him, my angel. Do not threaten or chide. Do not mock this man. Remind him of love. Tell me you will do this for him.”

  “Of course, Harry.”

  “Promise me, now, ducky. It may be far more important to reach John than it is to cajole Mother.”

  I looked down at my leather gloves and felt inadequate to the task as I digested this. “You feel John is the key, not the killer poltergeist?”

  “Yes,” Harry said firmly. “Your priest is fair support in this, and may, in the end, be responsible for ridding the area of the poltergeist. However, the spectral remnant of John Briggs-Adsit is but a broken shadow of the man he once was. Give him the opportunity to rise, to stand like a man, to regain strength and pride, to go into the light knowing that he deserves to be there. He will, if he can, help you banish his mother. He fears her now, but this was not always so. Something terrible has happened to create this scar upon him. You must help him. You must. The exorcist cannot.”

  Again, I pictured Adsit’s bacteria-rotted skull, the tell-tale fracture, the slow ooze of ectoplasm from the nasal bridge. “Why me?”

  Harry smiled enigmatically and looked out the window at the snow streaking by. It hadn’t stopped snowing since I got to Canada. It was like the country was having a snit fit about my return. Harry repeated, “Remind him of love, my Own.”

  “I’ll try. Love’s not really my strong suit.”

  “And that is my greatest failing as your companion,” Harry said.

  I turned to look out the window into the snow-swirled darkness, pressing a fist into my belly to quell the fit of mirth that was no doubt in my future. “This priest gives me weird feelings.”

  “I would be dead shocked if he did not,” Harry told me.

  “I’ve met priests before. They never made me twitchy and floaty and giggly.”

  Harry let one pale hand land on my knee and he gave me a pat there. “A pure and uncorrupted priest does not speak your language; their words become white noise and do not penetrate your defenses. This defrocked rake sees you, and sees through you. He has all your weak points pegged and your defenses lowered. That terrifies you, even as it draws you in. Your strongest defense mechanism, your humor, rises to the surface to distract you. The Bond, in turn, swells to remind you that your Talents and pow
ers are conditional on your remaining my Own. This conflict causes those jitters that your mind is misinterpreting as jollity. Rarely do you take serious issues seriously, my love. You prefer to smartass your way through life’s hard spots.” He crooked a thrice-pierced brow. “Redemption embodied stands before you, and you have one foot on the dance floor with him. The rest of you is reacting to how ridiculous that idea would be.”

  “So you’re saying my giggle fits are the Bond’s defense to the priest’s dirty offers to have me switch allegiance?”

  “There are many built-in mechanisms you would not have yet experienced, ducky. I am pleased this one is working so well, and continues to remind you of your place as my DaySitter, my Bonded One, my advocate, and my salvation.” He patted me again, this time his touch a promise. “I shall, tonight, do my best to augment the Bond’s efforts.”

  “Gee, I dunno, Harry,” I drawled. “If this case were any funnier I’d likely bust a rib. Can’t you just flash me some wang if I start laughing? Sober me right up.”

  “By my troth, love, I’d have thought that, being offered his manhood, your — ahem — other proclivities would have won out by now. Imagine how pleased I am to discover that you have some measure of control, however subconscious it may be.”

  I shot him a sour smile, but Harry had returned to staring out his window at the snow. I could see the reflection of a satisfied little twist of a smile in the glass, and he pushed something foreign through the Bond in my direction that might have been pride.

  The street lights at the old parking lot near the canal had been broken by local drug dealers who didn’t want their nighttime commerce illuminated. When the hearse pulled into the lot, several wary, slouching shadows moved back to their vehicles but didn’t get in, giving only the smallest bit of ground to our obviously not-cop trio. When we didn’t leave, they stared, feral pairs of eyes from beneath hoods and ball caps assessing who we were, what we intended, with calculated precision. Harry got out of the car, uninterested in what he saw as insects milking blood from the populace; they were not a thousandth the predator he was, and he prided himself on having character and class when he drained. When I unbuckled and joined him, Harry’s attitude toward the dealers changed. He let his irises shift from soft, human grey to high-polished chrome, and turned to flash the dealers a warning, fang-filled glower. Car doors slammed and we were alone a minute later.

  “You enjoyed that,” I accused with a shrouded smile, watching Scarrow’s car approach through a soft snow.

  “Not nearly as much as I shall enjoy this,” he promised. “If he shows me the slightest offense, I shall demand satisfaction, and will find it, by the Lady’s honor, as Jonson did with Spencer. Must one confirm that you are ready to stand as Second, or may one assume?”

  I massaged my forehead through the balaclava. “If you’re talking about dueling pistols at dawn again, weirdo, I’m gonna slug you in the bahookie.”

  “You will do no such thing, and I do not appreciate your sass.”

  “You love my sass,” I retorted. “Now behave.”

  Father Scarrow approached, wearing a black parka and weighted down with a heavy backpack. In his hand he had a black book bristling with paper sticky tabs on all three unbound sides. He nodded at me. “Nice ski mask.”

  “Thanks. Remind me to Google 'Jonson and Spencer' later.”

  “Only if you remind me why we are doing this at night like a couple of crazy people.” Harry moved around the back of the hearse into the red glow of the taillights and the priest flinched. “Oh.”

  “Brought some back-up,” I said. “So keep your crucifix under your coat, please. Father Renfield Scarrow, this is my companion, Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Scarrow?” Harry lifted his top hat off his head briefly and offered the slightest of bows, really more of a nod to satisfy the requirements of his personal code as a gentleman and the demands of courtesy.

  Scarrow nodded. “Ah. The vampire.” He waited, seemingly to see if the V-word would cause offense. I expected it to, considering the way Harry was wound up and ready to rumble, but Harry had other ideas. A felt a ribbon of mischief dance through the Bond to tickle at the outer edges of my senses.

  “Good evening, Little Father,” Harry purred. “The Bible is a nice touch.”

  Scarrow held it up in one hand and smiled. “I thought so.”

  “And if one might inquire as to the well-being of your loved ones, how does your flock? All tucked in safe and warm?”

  “Safe, yes,” Scarrow murmured, narrowing his eyes, perfectly aware that he was being toyed with. I thought he’d add “safe from the likes of you,” but he resisted the urge. The Blue Sense started jittering around the exorcist, and his excitement struck me as every bit as optimistic as Harry’s. He believed they were evenly matched, and Father Scarrow was confident he could keep pace with any chase that Harry might give. I'd been on some of those chases, as the hare and willing prey. Unless Scarrow had some rockets affixed to his boots, it was no contest. Harry against a mortal was a bigger mismatch than his Ferrari versus my Buick.

  If I knew Scarrow’s excitement, Harry did as well. It didn’t show on my Cold Company’s face as he stepped closer. “One wonders how they will manage without their good shepherd on this dreadful winter night, when the wind is enough to freeze one’s marrow and the chill positively chews away the cheery brightness of one’s soul,” Harry inquired.

  “A wise shepherd keeps both eyes on the wolf,” Scarrow said, “and trusts the lamb to God’s hands.”

  Point: Father Cheekyass. Scarrow in turn advanced on Harry. It was just two steps, but his chin was up, and it was enough to make an impression. The dogs went nuts in the back of Scarrow’s car, their breath fogging the glass, spittle hitting the window in front of snapping jaws. Harry held his ground, one hand on the door handle of the back of the hearse, but his smile faded into a tight twitch of lips. He inclined his head to accept a truce, but what I felt through the Bond was a shift; Harry had expected to be able to intimidate the holy man. Perhaps his earlier run-ins with priests had gone much differently. Ren Scarrow wasn’t a conventional man of the cloth. But then, I could have warned him about that.

  Scarrow turned to me. “Did you bring better boots?”

  Harry coughed to say told you so, or something with a similar sentiment but a lot more syllables.

  I looked down at my Doc Martens. I could already feel the cold through the unlined leather. If I ever came back to Canada I’d buy a new pair of lined ones, but for now, I'd suck it up, or maybe just lose some toes. "I'll be fine."

  “Snow’s up over your calves,” Scarrow said. “They don’t plow this road past the factory turn-in.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I repeated.

  “You’ve got a hole in the knee of your jeans,” he pointed helpfully.

  “It matches the hole in your head,” I said. “Worry about your own knees, pervert.”

  “I don’t want you to get frostbite.”

  I opened my mouth to say something filthy about where the frost could bite him, but Mr. Merritt was still in the hearse idling behind me, and I already owed him close to a bazillion dollars for swears. “It’s barely frayed. Can we get on with this?”

  “He shouldn’t come,” Scarrow said, indicating my Cold Company, who was reaching into the back of the hearse for something that looked like a big white sleeping bag. “His kind is not welcome.”

  “Why don’t you plug your—“ I eyeballed Mr. Merritt, then glared down at the priest’s zipper to indicate what I imagined was a crampy man-vag. “Nose.”

  Harry touched my elbow and handed me my backpack and the white thing. It was a snowsuit, the puffy one-piece kind that kids wear to build snowmen in the yard and hardcore outdoorsy types have for sightseeing in Antarctica. It had a thick black zipper that ran from the crotch to the neck. I examined it with all the lip-curled enthusiasm of Gordon Ramsey inspecting a grease pit that specialized in yesterday's coffee and
cockroach turds.

  Harry ignored my distaste and motioned for me to put it on while he explained, “I think what your lad means to say is, in the event that we should meet belligerent apparitions, Kinship of the Departed makes this trek a perilous one for me. While I think the possibility is a remote one, I appreciate his apprehension, though I shouldn’t like him to trouble himself with concern for my well-being.”

  I shoved my boots into the leg holes of the one-piece suit, thinking if they got stuck I could use that as an excuse to ditch it. They slipped right through. I handed Harry my pink parka and slid my arms into the snowsuit, zipping it up to my neck. Harry tossed my coat into the back of the hearse, slammed the doors, and motioned at me to click up all the unnecessary, lifejacket-like buckles. I looked like the Michelin Man's wife and felt like Randy from A Christmas Story, hardly able to put my arms down and more than ready to whine about it. The shiny fabric went schlip schlip schlip between my thighs when I walked; I was really glad Batten wasn’t here to see and hear it. If he harbored any Mrs. Stay Puft Marshmallow Woman fantasies, those were going to remain vigorously unfulfilled by Yours Truly.

  Scarrow fetched the dogs from his car, holding their leashes tightly as they kept all their attention turned towards Harry and made unhappy noises in the backs of their throats. Despite their anxiety, they kept their heads down and low, staying at Scarrow’s heels. Harry said a few quiet words to Mr. Merritt, who was to relax at a nearby coffee house for an hour or so and then circle back to pick us up here with hot beverages. I batted my lashes at Harry’s butler through the eye holes of my ski mask, who mouthed espresso and gave me a little questioning smile through the glass. I nodded rapidly and held up two fingers for a double shot. Mr. Merritt gave me a wink that reminded me of my Grandpa Matts before pulling away and heading for the canal bridge.