Wraith

by Phaedra Weldon

  I felt a chill and shivered.

  “They rule the realm of the Abysmal,” Steve said, and held his hands at his sides. “The world between the spiritual and the physical. They can see the physical side of life, yet never touch it. And they can see the ultimate ascendance, and never achieve it.”

  I got the feeling at that point that Steve knew a lot more than what he was telling us. But at that moment I wasn’t paying attention to anything except that wonderful smell.

  “Zoë?” Mom said. “What are you doing?”

  Doing? Nothing. I’m just pushing my face into Rhonda’s hair. So niiiice…

  “Zoë! Stop!”

  I stopped at the sound of Rhonda’s voice. I realized too late what I’d been doing.

  I was on my knees, my hands gripping Rhonda’s exposed wrist. And she was fighting me.

  And losing.

  Euphoria…orgasm!

  I let it fill me, surround me, strengthen me—the taste of the living!

  Until something very sharp struck the side of my face. I let go of my prize—

  I felt myself fall at that moment. And again I was back in my body. I was looking at Susan. She was dressed in a blue corduroy dress over a white turtleneck.

  She was watching television, and her eyes were glazed. Drugged. I knew she’d been drugged. And on her face… The death mask.

  But I couldn’t quite make out the room—where she was—but I also knew there was someone else in the room with us.

  Rai’s gnomish face blocked out my vision, and I cried out in surprise.

  Suddenly I was looking up into Mom’s face, and Rhonda’s, and they looked scared as shit. Well, Mom looked pissed.

  “Keep away from her. Just do it,” Mom said.

  Do what?

  I was on the floor again and pulled myself onto my hands and knees. Yow…I felt good. And there was that smell again.

  “She’s changing…”

  “Rhonda, light it!”

  Light what? I pushed myself onto just my knees. Mom stood in front of me, smelling all sweet and good, but looking like Darth Vader himself. She had a white candle in her hands and lit it with her finger? Wow…when did Mom start doing that?

  “I bind thee! I bind thee! I bind thee!”

  I was abruptly on the floor, unable to move, pinned to the hardwood by an invisible pressure. Panic came and went as I wondered if I would eventually disappear or sieve through the floorboards.

  I think the latter bothered me more, as I was sure there were all manner of creepy crawly things under the floor. Ew.

  I wasn’t sure how long it took before I heard a terrible, familiar rumble.

  “Are you sure she’ll be safe in there?” Mom screeched.

  “Calm down, Nona,” Steve said.

  What? Put me in what? I turned my head to see what the fuss was about—and nearly came unglued. Facing me was the dragon statue, smoke curling from inside its open mouth.

  I screamed. A silent cry for help.

  No dragon came at me. No beast intent on chewing me up like that morning’s Cheerios.

  No…only smoke. It moved like the sooty mist of the Wraith’s world and enveloped me in soft, feathery caresses. I closed my eyes as the mist became flesh and folded me into the arms of the dragon.

  29

  I went in screaming—

  —and I came out screaming.

  With absolutely no memory of the time between.

  Yet Mom said it was Thursday afternoon. Thanksgiving.

  And I instantly craved buttery mashed potatoes and pressure-cooked green beans.

  Light came through the shop’s windows with a subdued intensity—it was still overcast outside. I hadn’t noticed that nearly all the leaves had fallen to the ground from the hardwoods outside. Everything had a monochromatic look to it, one of the first signs of winter, even though the pine trees in the backyard would stay green.

  I stood at the window, a ghost of my former self. Literally. Odd how I’d spent the past few days avoiding the dragon, only to be welcomed by it and obviously nurtured.

  Weird.

  I put my hand to the window. The glass was cold, smooth. No, not a ghost. A solid ghost.

  But all in all I felt—wrong.

  I turned and saw the exposed pentagram on the floor with the dragon at the center. The candles smoked, and I smelled the obnoxious odor of sulfur.

  “Zoë, you back now?”

  I turned to my right, where Rhonda stood. She still wore the same smudged makeup and clothing she had when I’d arrived here with Daniel. I nodded. I motioned for a pen and pencil.

  She brought me her laptop with a blank file up. I took the machine and sat on the floor. I was only mildly surprised I didn’t zap the electronics of the machine itself. Unless that didn’t happen when I was corporeal.

  I’M SORRY I TRIED TO EAT YOU.

  Rhonda knelt on the floor beside me but kept a discreet distance. “It’s okay—Nona and I figured it was simply your self-preservation kicking in. You need strength, and normally you get that through food and water. But since your body’s still MIA—”

  Then I turned to a new food source.

  Souls.

  “It’s really my fault.” Steve appeared by the fireplace. He looked better, though not as bright as usual. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and I wasn’t sure if that was from me or from worry over Tim. “I shouldn’t have shown you what you could do.”

  I typed. I SORT OF ALREADY KNEW HOW.

  Mom came down the stairs then. She saw me and smiled. “I see Rhonda’s idea to stick you in the dragon statue worked. We charged up the pentagram last night and fed it juice with the statue in the center as a conduit. You feel better? You look much better.”

  I shrugged. So that was what’d happened. And I had no memory of it at all. To me, it was as if I’d just gone to sleep.

  Mom nodded. “Good. That way Rhonda and I don’t look like food.”

  Astral kibble.

  “You’re sort of like an ethereal vampire.” The goth chick beamed.

  I frowned and mouthed the word “ethereal”?

  Nods all around, even from Mom, who stood in the center of the room, holding the laptop and reading. “You’re no longer limited to the astral, Zoë, that’s just it. You’re part of the greater picture now, which makes you powerful, and it makes you vulnerable. Before you were seen by the Ethereal/Abysmal but you couldn’t really be touched. Now you can be.”

  Did not like the vulnerable part of that statement, but given my present situation, I believed it. Didn’t like the touched part either. I pointed to myself and gave them both a palms-up. I was curious about my physical condition.

  When the impromptu sign language failed, I grabbed back the laptop and typed in my question.

  Rhonda answered. “You should be okay. This Rai dude is in your body, or was. And as long as it gets juice from some sort of soul and presence, you should physically be all right. Now, I can’t say whether that’s healthy for your body on other levels—let’s say Rai taints your body somehow.”

  Taints? Great, so now my body is going to be all oogy.

  Mental note: Lysol for the Wraith, kills possession germs dead.

  Mom sat on the couch. She looked at me and her lips formed a firm, thin slit beneath her nose. She wasn’t happy. “You should have stayed home, Zoë. You should never have left this house.”

  I know, I know. Blah, blah, blah. Too late for stating the obvious.

  Heh…maybe it was good that I didn’t have a voice, ‘cause that would’ve just rolled off my tongue.

  THEN I WOULDN’T HAVE ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Rhonda nodded. But then again, she wasn’t blinded by motherly anxiety either. “Look, this is all quaint, but we have two larger problems here. One, we need to get Tim back, and two, there’s a little girl out there being used as a pawn between two major assholes. Anyone got any idea as to what we can do?”

  Type, type. YOU FORGOT GETTING MY BODY BACK. She narro
wed her smudged eyes. “You tried getting back in since you came out of the dragon?”

  I drew in on myself. Truth told, no I hadn’t. Didn’t want to try either. Not without actually seeing myself first. The three times I’d slammed into Rai in my body hadn’t been bad, but I’d felt dirty. Used. And a bit upset at being rejected by my own flesh and blood.

  It was hard to describe. Especially when one was limited to paper and pen. A writer I’m not.

  “No.” My mother moved forward. “Don’t even think it. If you get back in that body, you’ll be even more vulnerable. And they’ll have you, not just your shell.”

  I realized at that moment that a lot of Mom’s stern behavior came from worry. In a clearer situation, her baby had been kidnapped and was being held who-knows-where and having who-knows-what done to her.

  But my world wasn’t so clear, or cut-and-dried. No, my world was as choppy and fucked up as they come.

  I pulled up the laptop again. WHERE IS DANIEL?

  Rhonda and Mom looked at one another, but didn’t speak. Okay, that bothered me. I looked at each of them and glared for emphasis. Not as effective as…oh…a scream. It was real simple guys—you tell me now or I’m out that door looking for him.

  Well, that’s what I’d have said if I could.

  Rhonda broke first. “He called about a half hour ago. He said there had been a lead in the case.”

  I glared at her. Tell me or I’ll give you the Wraith evil eye. Absently, I wondered if there was such a thing. After all, I was the harbinger of death and life.

  Wow. I had a cool title like a superhero.

  Type, type. LEAD?

  “Apparently Rollins uses a few of the buildings down off of Tenth, near Georgia Tech. It’s where he does a bit of his prerecording for his shows on Sunday morning. A studio setup, really. The building and studio are owned by a company called First Sons, Inc. They own a lot of real estate in the city and lease these buildings to Rollins’s televangelist empire.”

  I moved my index finger in a circle, indicating to keep talking.

  “Captain Cooper had surveillance set up on all properties used by Rollins, just in case. Daniel said there’d been activity at this one pretty early this morning.”

  DID HE GO THERE?

  Mom spoke up. “We don’t know, dear. But you’re not.”

  I looked at her. Like hell. I was going wherever Daniel was and Susan Hirokumi could be. I knew they planned on trading her back to her father; but in kidnap cases, I was sure the statistics were bad that the child survived.

  Or so I’d seen on television.

  I don’t know why, but at that moment I thought of the skulls I’d been seeing on people’s faces. DeAngelo, Mitsuri, and even Daniel. And on Susan Hirokumi.

  I couldn’t let that little girl die. I asked about the image and what it meant.

  Rhonda gave me a grave look. “You’re a Wraith, Zoë. And Wraiths appear to people who are dying or will die soon. If a Traveler sees herself, or a Wraith along the way, it means their death is near. As for being a Wraith in the Abysmal sense—it’s like you’ve heard several times now—you’re a harbinger.”

  SO IF I SEE A SKULL ON SOMEONE’S FACE, IT MEANS THEY’RE GOING TO DIE?

  Mom and Rhonda nodded.

  Rhonda backed up. “You didn’t see one on us did you?”

  I shook my head and grabbed up the pencil and legal pad by the couch. The laptop was too taxing. DANIEL.

  I scribbled again. SUSAN.

  I stood and let the pencil and paper fall to the floor. I had to go to him—but how? And where?

  “Stop, Zoë,” Mom was saying. “You can’t go.”

  I glared at her. There wasn’t any point in threatening Mom. Besides the fact that a good Southern-born woman never threatened her mother, I was just damned scared of her sometimes. Like now, when she looked all mean-like.

  But I couldn’t stay here. I needed to check and see if my body was vacant. I needed to find Daniel. I couldn’t let my cute cop die, now could I? We hadn’t even boinked yet.

  Mom turned and grabbed up the dragon statue. What the hell? “Zoë, I’m sorry. But I can’t let you do this. It’s too dangerous.”

  Rhonda stood and backed away from Mom. “Nona—what are you doing? You can’t hold Zoë here that much longer. She needs to get back in her body.”

  But Nona wasn’t listening. “I can hold you in here, where you’re safe. I won’t lose you, Zoë. I can’t lose you—not like I lost your—”

  My what? I took a step closer to her. My father? Christ this is no time to go all mysterious!

  But Mom had turned and grabbed up a book of matches on the counter. She set the statue down before fumbling with the book in her haste to light one of them.

  Rhonda turned to look at me. “Get back in your body!”

  Aye, aye! I looked down for my cord. And it was visible! At last! Was this a sign that my body was no longer occupied? Who the hell cared right now?

  Mom had a match lit.

  I concentrated and closed my eyes just as she touched the match to the dragon’s tongue.

  I felt myself melt away—but to my body or to the statue—I’d know when I got there.

  30

  AFTER being a free spirit, so to speak, for a while, having a body back was sort of like putting on a comfortable, well-worn winter coat.

  In July.

  It was comforting on the one hand because I felt protected again and not so exposed to the elements. But then again, it was just damned scratchy.

  The room I found myself in was another office. The lights were out, but afternoon sun filtered through blinds in the windows. It was almost as opulent as the one Rollins had in his house. The back and right walls were made of the same floor-to-ceiling windows. Rollins’s desk, a replica of the one in his home office, sat sideways in the right back corner.

  Same cross and world logo in front as the desk in his home. Along the wall was a black leather couch.

  This is where I was. And I was on my back. I blinked several times, moved my arms up to where I could see them. I still wore the green kimono, though it was bit dirty along the sleeve edges. There didn’t appear to be any of the normal pain I was accustomed to when I came in through the cord, so to speak.

  Was this a side effect of my new Wraithy status as well?

  I moved slowly and propped myself up on my elbows. I wasn’t bound as before. There weren’t any kind of tethering spells on my ankles. So—why leave my body unattended?

  “Because I’m supposed to be watching it.”

  Marymotherofgod!

  If I could talk, I’d have squeaked out a noise to set off any alarms in the building. I turned to my left, where a matching leather chair sat beside the couch.

  In it slouched a very pale, ghostly image of Rai.

  Uh-oh.

  I sat up and stood, one fluid motion. Oh, there was an instant of dizziness, but only because I got up too fast. He held up gnarled hands. He also looked like he was breathing really hard. I knew I sort of simulated breathing in astral form, but didn’t really. I’d often wondered if I could like, move OOB underwater for a while and watch the fish.

  Hadn’t tried it, as I’m deathly afraid of water.

  That whole drowning thing.

  “I can’t hurt you. I can’t even maintain control of your body. It took all of my energy just to keep it ready and healthy.”

  Well waaah. I was really upset for him.

  I also wished like hell I had my voice so I could chew him out. “I can hear you, Zoë Martinique. Quite clearly.”

  Uhm…that’s right. I forgot you could.

  “Yes.”

  I pursed my lips. As a bad guy, are you here still so you can tell the good guy—that would be me—what your insidious plan is?

  He smiled at me. It was absolutely the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. All teethy and cheeky. Yuck. “Wraith—there is more working around you than you could imagine.” He shrugged. “But, as for now, this much
yes, I can tell. It is why I’m still here, and expended most of my energy to maintain your physical health.”

  Okay, that was like…vague

  Maintain? Why? What the hell are you?

  “Ah.” He nodded and looked like a teacher pleased with a student. I had to remind myself this was the man who had been in Hirokumi’s office and so rudely absconded with my body! “I was once like you, not a Wraith, but an astral Traveler. I called myself a spirit walker. There aren’t many in this world.”

  I nodded. Yeah, got that.

  Rai seemed really talkative though. “I abused my power on many levels during my life, until one day I lost time. I lost my body. My cord was severed, and I remained between worlds. Not living, nor dead.”

  Oh ooogy.

  “I have no real standing on the Abysmal plane. I am nothing. A servant to Phantasms and their Symbionts. I’ve worked for bogeymen and chimeras. I am an aberration. Phantasms would soon as destroy us as suffer us to live.”

  Phantasms. That word just kept popping up.

  “Hirokumi called upon my help long ago, and I have remained in his service because it gave me hope, and a purpose.”

  Hope?

  “Hope that one day, with Hirokumi’s help, I could transcend, and know eternal life.”

  Wait. I held up my hand. You’re basically a bodiless astral Traveler. And you possess bodies and do Hirokumi’s bidding so that one day you can, like, disappear, like go to Heaven or something?

  He nodded.

  Okay, just making sure I was still on the same avenue here. Please, go on.

  “But because I’m not a Symbiont I can’t possess bodies for very long. A Symbiont would use the body’s energy to survive. When I am inside a body, my energy is taken by the host.”

  Damn skippy.

  So you’re pooped because my body sucked your energy? He nodded.

  And I feel okay—except for this slight headache—because it’s sort of like what happens when I release a soul.

  “You’ve learned much.”

  Yay. Go me. What I’m not understanding is—Hirokumi’s plan was to kill me. So, you kept my body. Why didn’t he kill me? Just you know, shoot me?