Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  “Well, some contrary punk wants me to ‘party hard’ but also ‘get out while I still can’. Sure wish he’d make up his mind.” Harry made an impatient noise, and I moved my phone around to spread the light. “There are some frozen white mushrooms that I wouldn’t eat if you paid me in solid gold dildos. Bat guano. Some frayed rope. And a condom wrapper. Two.” I moved deeper into the tunnel. “There’s water to the left; I don’t know how deep it is, and I don’t want to. Old plastic water bottles. More rope. And a half a rusty handcuff.” I felt the corner of my upper lip peel back in a grimace. “And now I’m thinking there must have been some creepy clown gangbang porn filmed down here. Would you guys get your skinny asses in here, please?”

  Harry reached for the iron gate across the doorway and it swung open at his touch. He was too much of a gentleman to point out that it wasn’t locked, and that I’d squished through the grim little crevice like a dollop of foul-mouthed frosting into the nastiest Twinkie ever for nothing.

  I indicated the low doorway. “Mind yer melon. We’ll explore a bit, talk to some ghosts, get murdered, and make it home in time for Matlock, sound good?”

  “Okay, we’re in,” Scarrow said, rather unnecessarily, bringing the dogs with him.

  The wind picked up, slamming the gate hard. Scarrow and I jumped together, bumping shoulders. Harry’s reaction was the irritated twitch of his thrice-pierced eyebrow.

  “From now on, nothing will go wrong,” I said.

  The storm outside picked up all at once. Snow whipped into the tunnel through the bars on the gate and the little crawl hole, pattering to the floor.

  “Except the blizzard,” I amended.

  Thunder rolled overhead.

  “And the thunder-snow,” I added.

  At the far end of the tunnel there was a loud crash and a foomph, and the meager moonlight that had been there disappeared.

  “And the snow caving in.” I turned up the brightness on my phone’s flashlight; it flickered and died. “Oh, come on.”

  “We’re not alone,” Scarrow said. He pointed his flashlight into the darkness. “This way.”

  “Sure, yeah, we should really go check on that oogy noise in the dark tunnel during a poltergeist outbreak. “ I frowned under my ski mask. “Meathead.”

  Scarrow pointed to his chest. “You callin’ me a meathead?”

  “It’s literally all I have left to say to you.” I glared and moved away from him, muttering under my breath, “Brings me to a haunted tunnel in the dead of night to get murdered in an ugly marshmallow exposure suit. Because that’s how I want my corpse to look.”

  “How would you prefer to look when you die?” Scarrow asked.

  “Less like a manatee.” I modeled the suit for him in a slow turn. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” One of the dogs yelped, and it echoed down the tunnel. “See? Fido agrees with me.”

  Scarrow let the dogs off their leashes and they started sniffing around, wagging their tails, giving Harry a wide berth. I’d never seen dogs capable of ignoring a revenant before; Scarrow was, if anything good could be said of him, an excellent trainer. The priest got out various gear from his pack and started a sweep. He informed me that he was getting no EMF hits at all. I moved deeper into the tunnel, doing my best not to roll my eyes.

  “Well, Harry?”

  “Forgive me, ducky, I feel no presences with us at this time.” He swept the tunnel with a gaze full of distaste. “Above, I was certain that there were spirits, but now I sense nothing.”

  One of the dogs was nudging something with his snout and made a snuffling noise. Frog and bat bodies littered the floor in the middle of the tunnel, frozen, just as Scarrow had said. Other, more professional preternatural scientists would use the term “teterrimous” to describe the pile of frozen frogs, but that’s just fancy talk for “foul and fucked up.”

  My science kicked in. “Frogs don’t freeze in winter. The high glucose in their blood acts like antifreeze.” I squatted. “These poor things look deflated. And why did the bats not migrate to a more suitable cave or tunnel if they couldn’t hibernate here?”

  Scarrow was staring at Harry with shrewd eyes, head cocked to one side, calculating. “Britney was able to see three specific, reoccurring ghosts in this tunnel; Old Man with Flowers, Train Engineer with Hat, and Limping Boy. Perhaps these spirits do not like the atmosphere in the tunnel tonight.”

  Harry drew himself up to full height and gave an insulted sniff.

  “This shit is five different kinds of crazy,” I said, checking my phone battery. I had charged it fully before coming; it was so flat now it wouldn't even display the low battery warning. I tucked it in one of the zippered pockets of the snow suit, took my backpack off my shoulder, propped a knee in front of me so I could put my bag on it and not the icky ground, and rummaged. “It’s a good thing I brought Smarties; I’m gonna need the extra smarts.”

  “That’s what you need,” Scarrow said. “Sugar.”

  “I brought lots of candy. I stopped at the Bulk Barn before we came. Candy helps me think. I’ve got Fuzzy Peaches, Hot Lips, Bottle Caps, Pop Rocks. Why don’t you want to use an Ouija board?” I held out a candy bar. “Big Turk?”

  Father Scarrow came to an abrupt halt. “I told you not to bring one of those here.”

  “Got a problem with Turkish delight?”

  “You brought an Ouija board.”

  “Would I do that?” I said, offering him a little box of candy. “Nerds?”

  “If you use a scrying board you throw open a portal to the other side loudly enough to alert every single spirit in the area to our presence.”

  “And the poltergeist responds by taking a double shot of crazy?”

  “We must be subtle in our approach,” Scarrow said.

  “Tell her that,” I snarled, rolling up my ski mask to my brow ridge. “Are these bruises subtle?”

  “There’s no way to tell who’s going to come, but if you’re asking for spirits, you’re going to get one,” Scarrow told me. “You just have to hope that the right one is listening.”

  “You are,” Harry paused to weigh his words dramatically, “misinformed.” Harry turned away from Scarrow as though he had expected nothing better. “There are ways to contact a specific spirit, ways that would never have been imparted to the likes of you.”

  “The likes of me,” Scarrow repeated, and I heard the edge creep into his voice. “You, a man who made a pact with a devil, dare to look down on me?”

  Harry allowed himself a smile of superiority. “Kinship of the Departed imparts to the revenant answers to questions you would not have the wisdom to ask. The dusky wings of death part to give the revenant a glimpse of the enigmas of the soul and spirit—“

  “The soul and spirit are one and the same,” Scarrow said.

  “I have no doubt that you believe so,” Harry parried, happy to dance with the holy man, “but you are not entrusted with the many secrets of the dead, priest, mysteries you are neither worthy of nor entitled to.”

  “Boys,” I said. “Stop cock-fencing and focus. This is about speaking with the ghosts. You two are going to have different approaches.”

  “We need to be careful,” Scarrow warned, making the clear decision to ignore Harry’s taunts. “Inviting spirits parts the veil. Once parted, you can’t just change your mind. It’s like hosting a party. You may very well get uninvited guests bent on causing trouble.”

  “Well, if assholes crash your party, you call the cops. What do you do if a rowdy spirit crashes your invite?”

  Scarrow shook his head. “That’s precisely my point. There are no ghost cops who will deal with the intruder.”

  “Can’t your dogs scare them off?”

  “My dogs find ghosts, they don’t chase them off.” The dogs in question didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. One had settled in a bored sit near the gate. The other was lapping grungy water from the rill along the side of the railroad ties.

  “So how do you dism
iss an unwanted ghost?” I said, and the Blue Sense abruptly roared to life.

  I had to work hard to keep the sudden insight off my face, and Harry turned his back on the priest to give me a surely-you-felt-that stare. And I had. Father Scarrow most certainly did not want us to dismiss any ghosts, which was odd, considering he was passing himself off as an exorcist, and getting rid of unwanted spooks, specters, and spirits was pretty much the definition of the job. Sending lost souls to the light and to perfect peace, that’s what he’d always claimed. Saving those who could be saved.

  I tested him. “So, no scrying board?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” One of the dogs gave a nervous yelp at the anxiety in his master’s voice, and Scarrow settled him with a soft noise. “Too dangerous.”

  Harry coughed into his gloved hand and read my intentions through the Bond. He gave me a slow nod and a broad, theatrical wink. I didn’t know exactly what he had in mind, but knowing my Cold Company, I knew it wouldn’t be subtle.

  I asked, “If we do run across ghosts here, we should talk to them and then… not release them?” Into the light and eternal peace where they belong. Right, holy man?

  The priest struggled with his apprehension for a moment then dismissed my question with an irritated wave of his hand. He pulled a little rag doll out of his pack and shook it a little. Its red yarn hair fell into place around accusing eyes of brown bead.

  “Whatcha got there,” I asked, “Raggedy Damned?”

  “A lure, if you like. The last time I was here a child’s spirit was lingering, probably the one Britney called Limping Boy. I might entice him to appear with this.”

  “We’re not here to play with creepy dolls or the ghosts of children. We’re here to talk to John Briggs-Adsit,” I said, but what he was doing had gruesome appeal; it was almost mesmerizing. The doll had arresting beaded eyes, and its neck had lost some stuffing, so the head hung askew, tilted to one side as if it had been hanged. Hearing a goofy pitch creep into my voice, I said, “No. Don’t do it.” I let out an involuntary meep of delighted faux-horror. “Don’t put the dolly in the mud!”

  Scarrow sighed at my theatrics and set the rag doll against the brick wall in a relatively dry spot. “We can just leave this here with an EMF meter and video and you don’t have to worry about it. My side project.”

  “Dear Diary: Father Scarrow put the dolly in the mud,” I whispered to myself and left him to his project, following where Harry was strolling, waiting for my Cold Company to make his move. He was holding the edges of his coat close to his body so they wouldn’t brush against anything dirty. I stood for a moment in my muck-smeared coverall with my arms crossed and just looked at him, smiling. “What’s wrong, Harry?”

  Harry did a charming half-turn, letting his coat fan out like an opera cape, and I sensed it was time for the big show. “You know, something has been niggling at my conscience.”

  You have a conscience? I thought, and tried not to grin. “Oh?” I prodded helpfully. “Would this have anything to do with that thing that we were discussing before? That you’re super sorry about and need to confess?”

  “Oh, yes.” He performed a proper drama-king sigh. “If only I could unburden my soul’s darkest secrets and release this inner turmoil that weighs upon me…” He paused to give the priest the long side-eye.

  Scarrow clearly wasn’t buying it. “You’re not asking me to hear your confession, surely? Here? Now?”

  “One wonders when one would have a better opportunity, Little Father,” Harry said. “Do you not trust my pipistrelle to watch the dolly for you? It does not seem an arduous task, no more so than her usual ganderflanking about.”

  I scowled at him and shuffled closer, my snowsuit going schlerp schlerp schlerp, having added grit and muck to the wet. “Ganderflanking better be a good thing, dead guy,” I said under my breath. “Or I will hug you like Swamp Thing.”

  “Besides, you may, in fact, have a point, Mr. Scarrow,” Harry went on as though he hadn’t heard me. “Kinship of the Departed may be inhibiting the spirits here, instead of inducing them to come forward. If the two of us were to step outside with the dogs, we could clear the atmosphere for MJ and she would have a better chance at contacting Captain Briggs-Adsit.” The gaze he leveled at the priest was a challenge. “Of course, if you wish not to hear the darkest secrets of a creature of my advanced age, I would completely understand; few would have the stomach for it.”

  “Balls,” I interjected. “He obviously means balls. Or maybe he's like Elian, and prefers the term huevos or cojones.”

  Scarrow considered his EMF reader in one hand and the digital recorder in the other.

  I repeated sadly, “The Ferengi would say you haven't got the lobes. I know a bunch of ways to call you a dickless chickenshit, dude, even if my Klingon is rusty.”

  Scarrow scowled and slapped the device into my gloved palm. “Fine. Take readings. Listen, this is what an anomaly sounds like.” He pressed a button that said “Test” and it made a little noise like voof-whoosh. “Keep the video running. Do temperature sweeps. If you get a drop of more than ten degrees—“

  “You guys are right outside,” I soothed. “What could go wrong?”

  Harry hesitated at that and gave me a worried frown; he hadn’t considered what I might actually do when he’d offered to distract the priest. Now, he wasn’t so sure. I shooed him away.

  The minute the iron gate closed behind the dogs, Scarrow, and Harry, I abandoned the digital voice recorder and the exorcist’s video equipment, and took the EMF reader and my backpack to the dark end of the tunnel where the snow blockage was settling in packed clumps to allow scant moonlight to filter in.

  At this end, the railroad ties and the ground both sloped down until they disappeared under the water. I unzipped the bag and took out the Ouija board, putting it on the ground. The thrifty Mr. Merritt had saved some of Lord Dreppenstedt’s money and got the off-brand one; a “Wee-Gee Fun Board.” I set the EMF reader on an angle next to the wall. There didn’t seem to be any anomalies, but that wasn’t really my focus.

  I knew Harry wanted me to attempt to make contact with John Junior, and he was probably right, but the temptation to try what Britney had tried, to see what Britney had seen, was just too strong. Perhaps John was the key, but Mama-Captain was the big fucking problem here. She would have to be dealt with. I pulled out my canister of Morton’s salt and drew a generous protective circle in the mud. Next came the spray paint. Mr. Merritt had bought me glow-in-the-dark in sparkly pink, because apparently he thinks I’m a twelve-year-old girl. Considering I was wearing a My Little Pony nightshirt the other night, I supposed that was fair.

  I shook the can and sprayed “John Briggs-Adsit has swamp dick,” on the wall. Then I added, “John’s syphilis is so bad, it has crabs.” I underlined the it, in case anyone got confused. Then, “John’s syph-crabs have the Clap. Double-Extra Clap. Got it from the whores. Whore Clap.” Okay, so I'm no Banksy. I was still sincere.

  I felt like my inflammatory statements needed more oomph, but the thick air was filling up with aerosol propellant and I could barely breathe as it was. I started humming and singing, “Mother Briggs-Adsit… I’m mocking your baby… I’m being disrespectful… Hey, lady… do you hear me, Mama-Captain?” It was a wonder I hadn't gotten a songwriting contract from a record label. This was some catchy stuff. I decided to go back to what had worked in Nowland's apartment, set to the jaunty tune of, “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” “Ol' Johnny boy, your broken toy,” clap clap clap clap! “dicked every whoooooore in Jersey...” There may have been hip thrusting for emphasis.

  There was a sound at the entrance of the tunnel, and I squinted to see if the boys had been drawn to the yard by my milkshake. I didn’t see anything until my eyes fell on the rag doll.

  It wasn’t sitting against the wall anymore; it was laying face down with its little cloth legs spread. I didn’t take my eyes off of it as I squatted by the Wee-Gee Fun Board box, removed a glove, and ran my
thumbnail around the lid to break the paper seal. I took the board out and unwrapped the plastic on the planchette, all without taking my eyes off the muddy doll.

  Its fabric dolly face tilted like a snake rearing up. I felt my eyes go wide. The doll’s face was streaked with mud in a grotesque parody of tears, or maybe the lead singer in a Scandinavian death metal band. It tilted an inch to look at me.

  “It’s not looking at me,” I whispered to myself. “It has beads for eyes.”

  Like an eel making a slow turn, the dolly swam through the mud until it was a slow little cloth torpedo aimed right at me, then stopped and waited.

  “Oh, is that right?” I asked. “You mad, bro? You wanna go?” I put the spray paint down on the crumpled backpack and made come-at-me fingers at the dolly, totally channeling Morpheus from The Matrix. “Good luck with that. You’re a toy. I’m a fucking freight train of disaster in a tunnel full of dead shit. Wait, what was my point, there?” The doll jerked forward like a fencer feinting. I squealed a little, grabbed the planchette, and pointed it to the HELLO position on the board. “Is that you, Mama-Captain? You’ve smacked me around enough today. Hold onto your spectral titties and get ready for a craptastic shitstorm of magic.” I stuck a hand into my backpack to retrieve my sage, a match, and a toothpick. “We end this now.”

  The air began to swim, and I wondered if I was just high from the aerosol in the spray paint can, or if there were more ghosts wafting around. I didn’t have to wonder long. One I took to be Tall Man with Flower came forward from the miasma, and then dissipated. The EMF reader was set to go voof-whoosh in the event of an anomaly, but it went bee-boop instead. I didn’t have instructions for bee-boop. I had been waiting for voof-whoosh. What the hell did bee-boop mean?

  The air got colder in front of me so I lowered my ski mask; my breath coming from the nose holes fogged. I hurriedly struck the match and lit the sage, smudging the air to rid it of any angry, dark entities. Several tendrils of the ghostly vapor shied away from the sage smoke, while others reached out for it. I kept one eye on them and one eye on the dolly that was again creeping my way. Belatedly, I wished that I was part chameleon so I could swivel my eyes in different directions.