The Ghosting of Gods

by Cricket Baker

  Ava appears confused, but she nods anyway, because she trusts me. I don’t know why. I don’t trust me. I don’t know why I blurted out a desire to see the seer. It was an impulse. The words just came out of me.

  Poe doesn’t give in as easily as Ava. He protests. “Not a seer, Jesse,” he insists. “What would Priest say?”

  I know what Priest would say, but I don’t care. The priests have left me empty. I need something else. Maybe a seer can give it to me. Maybe Elspeth. Is she truly a spiritual prodigy? Or is she insane? It’s clear that the coven considers her to be both these things.

  I’m intrigued.

  I don’t want to steal Leesel away. Not yet. Not until I steal spiritual knowledge first.

  Hannah takes Ava and Poe by their hands and leads them away, back to our hut. I turn to Ruth. “What is this about?” I ask.

  She grabs my arm. Her confident demeanor has cracked. She’s trembling. “Go. Find out why Elspeth wants you so badly.”

  26

  peeled skin

  Leesel pulls out a knife.

  “What’s that for?” I ask, startled.

  It’s a huge relief when she actually responds. “Marking our path.” Slashing at a tree, she cuts a crescent moon that bleeds white sap. She cleans the blade on her robe. “We have to be lost to be found, but then we need to find our way back. I want to return to my work, quick like a bunny rabbit.”

  She plows ahead through knotted vines crowding the forest floor. It’s unsettling, watching her wield the knife. Our movements are noisy, making it difficult to hear if anyone is following us. I find it hard to believe I’ve been allowed to walk off with Leesel. But as far as I can tell, we’re alone.

  “Leesel. Wait.”

  With our rustling in leaves stopped, I hear the wind blowing through the forest canopy. And Leesel mumbling. She looks up, takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. When she opens them again, I see that they’re slightly bloodshot.

  “What did you say, Leesel?”

  She blinks, seems confused. “Oh,” she says. “Nothing you would understand. I’m puzzling through a defect in a formula taught to me by the coven. They didn’t know the defect was present. I pointed it out, and now I’m working on a solution. If I figure it out, they’re going to teach me more reality theory as a treat.”

  I can’t help smiling at the image of my little Leesel embarrassing a group of advanced scientists. “Impressive. You know I’ve always been so proud of how smart you are. More than that, I love you. Leesel, look at me.” Her eyes become unfocused. She’s looking through me, the way she does to Poe. I grab her; she doesn’t resist, but goes limp—a trick I’ve seen her use before when someone she doesn’t like touches her.

  Picking her up, I hug her to me, hard. “I won’t let you shut me out, Leesel. Tell me. Tell me what the coven has done that makes you forget how Ava and I love you.”

  She whines. I rock from side to side with her held tight to my chest. She struggles, and I loosen my hold on her. Pulling back, she looks me in the face, and she wipes away my tears.

  I only have her for a moment.

  Her eyes grow unfocused, and I let her down. “I’m taking you, Leesel. I have to get you away from them.”

  “No, Jesse. I belong here. No one bullies me. No one makes fun of me. The coven likes me.” Her hand slips from mine. She runs.

  Chasing her, I remember how fast she is, like a real little rabbit. It’s impossible how she doesn’t trip in the robe that’s too big for her. Circling, I try to head her off, but she catches sight of me and changes direction. I’m losing her.

  I hear her scream.

  “Leesel!”

  She doesn’t answer. I crash through the forest, calling her name, but there’s only the sound of my panting and the wind in the treetops. How did she disappear so fast?

  At last I find her, lying still, her eyes opened wide but unseeing, the only movement in her body the slight rising and falling of her chest as she breathes.

  We’re not alone. A figure hides behind a tree. A woman. She sways. It’s not like she’s dancing, it’s more like she’s in pain, maybe, and rocking herself from side to side the way I was doing with Leesel. Her face is submerged by a large cowl. Streaked blonde hair spills down over her shoulders—she must be a covenist, but there’s something strange about her.

  “Help me!” I demand. “I don’t know what happened to her. She was running just a moment ago. Maybe she tripped and hit her head…”

  Drawing the cowl back from her face, the woman steps into view. She raises a tentative hand in greeting, only ten feet from where I kneel.

  “Help me,” I say again. Snapping my fingers in front of Leesel’s eyes, I see that she’s not faking. I pick up her wrist. Her pulse is slow, but strong.

  “You are found,” the woman says. She stands before me in a ray of sun that pierces the forest canopy.

  Her face—it’s chapped, flaking. Flaking badly. As if she’s been burned.

  I gather up Leesel and back off.

  “Wait. Do not be afraid.”

  Her eyes are green, but strange. She gets closer and I see that all of her eyes are green. There’s no white to them. Yet she’s human, I can see that, but her skin, her eyes, the swaying even as she walks…it’s bizarre, alien. I recoil.

  Her timid smile crumples. She hunches, pulls the cowl back over her head. Sinking to the ground in an eerie liquid motion, she stares at me with eyes that don’t blink.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she says, in a voice that’s husky and breathless.

  I say nothing, but slowly back away.

  “I did not harm the girl,” she says. “This little one startled me, and I whispered words to still her until I could get away.” She brushes the hair out of her eyes, and the touch of her fingers across her forehead…peels up skin.

  I hold my hand over my mouth.

  Her face flushes red. She hides her face with the cowl. I barely hear what she speaks.

  Sleep.

  * * *

  Night.

  It’s cold, and flagellants scream in the distance. I’m on my back, in a heap of dried leaves. Sitting up, I find Leesel beside me. “Leesel.” I shake her. She won’t wake up. I check her pulse and find it normal. But I need to get her to Elspeth.

  Where are we?

  Walls of dirt contain us. Edging my way in a circle, I breathe deeply, trying to stay calm. Pale gray light falls over me, and I look up a tube to see a cloud blowing off the yellow moon. Branches lean in the wind, but I can only see the tops of trees.

  We’re in a pit.

  The disfigured woman’s voice is faint, somewhere nearby. I can’t make out her husky words. Has someone come for us? Elspeth. Elspeth surely has come for us.

  I jump, try to gouge my fingertips into the wall, but I only slide back down. Trying again, I lose my balance and fall, grunting. The pit walls are smooth with nothing to grab hold of to climb up. I estimate the top edge of the pit to be a good three feet above what I can reach. The walls are packed hard. I try to kick out a dent for a foothold, but the earth is like stone.

  The woman’s voice silences. I freeze. Listen.

  Eventually the flagellants shut up, leaving only the freezing wind to make me shiver. I think the woman is gone. God. She’s left us here, in this pit. I lie close to Leesel, wrapping myself around her to help keep her little body warm. I look up at the giant moon.

  Elspeth will come.

  Ava and Poe will make sure of it. They must be panicked by now.

  Smoke blows down into the pit. A fire pops. Crackles. The woman’s not gone.

  She’s naked and dancing, a silhouette in the moonlight.

  Her long hair, streaked in shades of blond and brown, is tucked behind her ears, and it drapes her slim shoulders and down her back to touch the ground. Taut muscles flex beneath her peeling skin as she moves to the rhythm of the wind. With eyes closed and her face a grimace of concentration, she slowly trails fingers over her shoulders, he
r arms, her stomach. The fingers move faster, reaching down her legs, to her feet, and back up again. “To be born again!” she suddenly cries out.

  Forming her hands into claws, she rakes violently at her body.

  Flakes of skin scratch loose, catch wind, float down on me like snowflakes.

  She gyrates. The expression on her face is intense, full of pain and ecstasy at the same time. Calf muscles harden, and she rises up on her toes, a ballerina. Lifting her face to the sky, she flings her palms up, straining, stretching.

  Skin pulls loose all over her body.

  I choke, fall back.

  She runs from my sight.

  The unseen fire pops, sending sparks whirling into the black sky. Overhead, trees lean hard in the gathering wind. Every detail is clear to me. The wisps of smoke, the petrified bark of the trees, the globes of white fruit. I’m intensely aware. My thoughts, the breath I exhale, the blood slipping through my veins.

  Thump. Pulled from my strange reverie, I see she’s returned and lies on her back at the edge of the pit. She pants like a woman giving birth. Methodically scratching her legs, belly, and arms, she rasps in a kind of chant. The sounds are strange to me. She arches her back and pushes herself along the ground, grinding the top of her head into the earth.

  My eyes never leave her as she circles the pit. Her chanting turns frantic.

  At last, she is free of her shedding skin. Kicking it away, the chanting ends. She rolls from the pit.

  I squat next to Leesel and cover my ears to shut out the woman’s weeping.

  27

  eden

  The moon slides across the sky, passing over and out of sight again.

  “Forgive me for placing you in the pit.”

  I startle. Her voice is so strange. She leans her head over the edge of the pit to look down on me. She’s on all fours, and still naked, but she looks completely different. Moonlight glints off her now deep brown, smooth skin. “She’ll sleep long,” she says, gazing at Leesel. “Come. You’re cold. The wind is bitter, but the fire is hot.” Gathering up her long hair, she holds it piled on top of her head. “You see how beautiful I am now. My skin is silky. Moist. Would you like to touch me?”

  “No.” I look away. At Leesel. “But please, I need to get her out of this pit. She can’t wake up.”

  There’s a brief silence in which I keep my eyes lowered. I hear the woman move away and come back again.

  “Hold Leesel up to me,” she says, and I wonder how she knows Leesel’s name. Did I say it earlier?

  Our captor has put her robe back on. Dirt crumbles, falling on my head from her leaning down over the edge. She lifts first Leesel, then me, out of the pit with ease. She’s freakish strong.

  I rush to Leesel, where’s she’s been laid near the fire. Her chest rises and falls with deep, even breaths. She seems to be okay.

  “Talk with me,” the woman invites. “Warm yourself by the fire. I tell you, the coven has exhausted the girl. Let her sleep.” She stands, motionless, several feet away from me, giving me some space. She’s not even watching me. Her unblinking green eyes search the forest around us.

  She has no eyelids. She can’t blink.

  “Are you expecting someone?” I finally ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  She sits cross-legged, across the fire from me. Dragging her fingers through her streaked hair, she brushes leftover skin from the strands. “Do you understand what the coven is doing with Leesel? She is not like them. She requires sleep, but the covenists have no patience for what they consider an evolutionary weakness. They are allowing Leesel only enough sleep to stay alive. That way she can get more work done, not to mention the fact that sleep deprivation is a useful technique in brainwashing. Elspeth wants someone to love.”

  She says this last about Elspeth softly, with kindness, as if she pities her. My reaction is different. If she’s telling the truth. “The covenists don’t have to sleep? But, I don’t understand. How can they keep Leesel awake? What are they doing to her?”

  “Drugging her. Leesel missed her evening tea, and so she sleeps. My whisperings don’t last so long. Her body has taken over, and is healing. No need to be afraid for her. She sleeps and will waken eventually.” She gazes into the forest again. “My name is Chastity.”

  “I’m Jesse. But maybe you already knew that. You knew Leesel’s name.” I wait for an explanation but get none. “You said that you had found me. Are you the seer?”

  “Look closely at the fruit of the trees, Jesse.”

  Heavy with fruit, the branch over my head dips low, and I reach for one of the white globes.

  “Do not touch,” she says, sharply.

  Drawing back my hand just as my fingertips tingle, I notice the gray cloud that moves within the globe.

  It’s a crystal ball.

  Jumping to my feet, I move beneath the tree. Crystal balls grow on limbs like ghostly apples. The balls are spots of fog in the trees all around us. “What is this place?”

  “A place to pick knowledge. A site to see prophecy. A garden to guard identity.”

  Knowledge. My heart thumps so hard that my breathing quickens. “Can you give me knowledge, Chastity? I seek Truth.”

  “You seek more than that. You are conflicted.”

  “I know what I want more than anything. Truth.”

  “And what of your sister? What of the crystals?” She points at the fruit of the tree beside us.

  Ashamed, I gaze at the crystal I almost touched. Images of skeletons flash in my mind—of tunnelers gazing into crystal ball identity tags. “Tell me what I should do,” I say, my words a prayer. I look to the strange woman, hoping she will be a channel for God speaking to me. “Tell me what truth will take away my grief.”

  “Shhhh. Listen.”

  Though she’s turned to the fire with her face down, I see how her eyes are locked on some point in the trees beyond the pit. Following her gaze, I mimic her intent not to be obvious. I expect to see Elspeth.

  She’s not there.

  “Look at the vines along the ground,” Chastity murmurs. She no longer surreptitiously spies on the forest, but stares into the fire, calmly stirring it with a stick.

  Moonlight scatters on the forest floor. Scrutinizing the twisting vines that grow there, I see movement in the shadows.

  “Something’s there,” I whisper.

  Chastity prods embers with her stick.

  Dirt sprays in a small explosion. Just as it does when I call forth a crystal ball. Moonlight and shadows shift. Startled, I now see glowing skeletal fingers. Slender bones play along a vine. They squeeze, and more bones pull up out of the ground.

  The tunneler is a blur climbing the tree. Scooting out on a limb, it taps one crystal ball after another, until finally it makes its choice and plucks a globe from the tree. Gently, it tucks away the ball in a pouch attached to its pelvis.

  Twigs snap as it rolls off the limb and drops silently, its own crystal ball momentarily floating in air by the neck where it’s chained. Another blur of bones, and the skeleton is disappeared, tunneled underground.

  “It’s gone now,” Chastity states, though I never noticed her look up from the fire.

  “Was it harvesting a crystal ball for another tunneler to wear?”

  “It was not.”

  Pain distorts her voice. Pain, and anger. Watching the forest, I wonder what transgression she believes the tunneler has committed. I return my attention to the fire. “There must be meaning to my being in this world. Can you tell me what it is? Do you know? Am I supposed to understand something about the crystal that contains Emmy? Am I supposed to understand why my sister’s soul is trapped in a crystal? If so, tell me now. Tell me something I care about. I don’t care about the skeletons.”

  “You’re wrong, Exorcist.” She sighs and holds me with her unblinking eyes. “Yes, Jesse, I know what you are. I know exactly what you are.”

  28

  missionaries

  Lee
sel murmurs in her sleep. Her thumb finds its way to her mouth, and she’s quiet again. Touching her cheek, I feel that she’s warm now. As far as I can tell she’s sleeping comfortably. Checking on Leesel is a welcome distraction while I think of what to say to Chastity. I can’t come up with anything. I’m afraid she knows my secrets.

  “How did you know I’m an exorcist?” I eventually ask.

  Her mouth twitches. “You are brave to admit your treason. As for your question, I know because I have watched you in virgin crystal. I have seen your fate, and my part in it. I saw what must happen.” She holds up a hand. “No. Let me finish. You need to hear what I must speak, and there isn’t much time.” Tossing her stick in the fire, she comes around and sits close to me.

  “So you know why I’m here?” I ask.

  “I know a story.” She stirs embers. “These tunnelers who pluck virgin crystal are missionaries. Members of a cult born here in Memento Mori, they pass over to altered worlds at will for the purpose of evangelization. They provided the means for your crossing to Memento Mori.”

  Missionaries. Crystal balls. Digging Man. Digging Man is one of these missionaries. Digging Man opened a way to Memento Mori, and we fell into it. But I need to know more. “What do you mean, they want to evangelize new worlds? They’re in my world now. I saw one of them. With priests from my own religion.”

  “Yes, I know.” She bites her lip. I get the idea she’s deciding what she wants to reveal to me. “Jesse, the missionaries—mostly tunnelers—are harvesting virgin crystal balls and planting them over graves in your world.”

  “But why?”

  “Worshipping the Holy Ghost of their religion, they prepare a world for their god’s arrival. They will haunt your world. To spread their faith, they plant crystals to catch the ghosts of the dead.Skeletons resurrect confused, and wish to see themselves as they once were. They cling to their identities in this way. Or, rather, their identities cling to them. By chains.”

  Impossible. Missionaries from another world, burying crystal balls to catch the ghosts of my world’s dead. I picture skeletons in my hometown sitting on ruptured graves, crystal gazing. Slowly, stark realization dawns on me.