The Ghosting of Gods

by Cricket Baker

  I have to protect her.

  Tunnelers race in all directions in the driving rain. Leesel disappears from view. One of the skeletons advances on me. Behind him I see Ava and Poe sliding rapidly through the mud, on their backs, toward ruptured graves.

  Tunnelers are going to take them underground.

  Ava screams about Saint Frankenstein, but they aren’t listening.

  As the advancing tunneler leaps like a wild animal at me, I shout as loudly as I can to be heard over the racket of rain and wind, thunder and clacking.

  “She’s in the shed!”

  I’m shoved to the ground. The tunneler juts his forehead to mine, clacks abusively, bites me.

  “Saint Frankenstein. She’s in the shed. We brought her to you!” I scream again, but he hits me. Again and again. A blow twists my head, burying one eye in the mud, and I try to see if everyone I care about is gone, underground, but my vision is blurred. “Saint Frankenstein. In the shed,” I repeat.

  The blows end and I lie in pain. I feel myself lifted. I open a blurry eye. Danny is holding me up.

  Elspeth is screaming.

  She’s conscious. I watch as they drag her from the shed. Thrashing like an animal, she calls for me. “Jesse…help me, help, please…” They pull her to an open grave. She strokes frantically at the watery mud, but like a swimmer attacked by a shark, she submerges with an abrupt jerk.

  Danny kneels beside me and strokes my hair. He clicks Morse code, and I realize he’s trying to get me to see something.

  It’s Poe. He’s pulling himself back out of a grave.

  “Ava and Leesel,” I say to Danny. “Can you save them?”

  Danny disappears into the earth. I cleanse mud from Poe’s face while he clings silently to me, trembling. “Jesus, Poe,” I say. “Jesus. I almost lost you.”

  Moments later Danny reappears, hauling Ava and Leesel above ground. They’re alive.

  Apparently, the tunnelers were satisfied with our sacrifice of Elspeth, their Saint Frankenstein.

  I turn aside and get sick.

  The storm worsens. We take shelter in the shed. Sleep.

  In the morning, Poe is gone.

  55

  bulging sacristies

  The City of Sacristies.

  Sharp steeples levitate in the gloom. As we pass through the warped gate and enter the city, I hear faint cries of flagellants behind bells that toll, low and resonating. But it’s different than George and Bethany’s town. There’s no soot. As if the people here don’t use fires to keep warm. It’s cold here. Metallic cold.

  Did Poe come here? Why would he leave us?

  I know why. He’s horrified by me.

  The construction is so crowded that we walk single file. I watch the back of Danny as he leads us through the winding paths of the City. He’s covered in a robe, hiding his skull deep in a cowl, bending forward like a penitent monk.

  Danny wrote in the mud that Poe left on his own. It’s hard to believe Poe would do that. But I hit him. I hit my best friend. Ava is mean to him, and Leesel ignores him. And then I hit him.

  What’s wrong with me?

  I search for him in every face we pass, but like Danny, these people walk with hunched backs, in postures of anxiety. Not one denizen of the City meets my eyes.

  Hundreds more walk single file as we do, along the slim paths formed between high walls. I look up at the howl of another flagellant, this one louder. Closer.

  A cage is built into the cathedral wall. Up high.

  Ava sees it, too, and grabs hold of my hand. “Oh, God,” she whispers. Holding Leesel’s hand, she pulls her in tighter. “Don’t look up, baby.”

  Flagellants clasp prison bars, seeming barely able to hold up their emaciated bodies. They could be skeletons except for their skin. One of them notices us looking up out of the crowd. Reaching through the bars, she stretches her fingers out to us.

  She yodels in pain, grimacing as the bitter wind peels thinned hair back from her face.

  I collide with a denizen. “Keep your gaze down,” he growls. “Don’t look inside the sacristies.”

  Sacristies? The cages are sacristies? I’m offended at the idea. Sacristies are rooms for holy artifacts or priestly vestments, not self-torturing psychopaths. I look at the man who growled at me.

  Half his face is obliterated with the wads of threads he wears for eyes. “Sorry,” I mumble, lowering my face.

  He doesn’t move out of my way. “Do you want to become one of them?” he asks. “A cowardly beast? Keep your face down. Their despair is contagious.”

  He steps aside, trailing chains over cobblestones.

  So dense as to appear living, I marvel at how real he seems as he darts around other pedestrians. How many around me are also ghosts? Examining the edges of robes around me, I see that about one in three drags chains.

  That’s why the City is so cold.

  We hurry to catch up with Danny.

  Cages—sacristies—sloppily annex, at varying heights, the stone walls of the cathedrals. Flagellants fill them all. But does one of the hundreds of bulging sacristies contain the Holy Ghost Incarnate? Shoving my fists beneath my armpits, I trail after Danny on stiff legs. Ava pulls at my arm, takes my hand. Her fingernails dig into me when another flagellant cries out.

  I realize legions of ghosts inhabit Memento Mori. Many are attached to skeletons. Others have been loose, like the ones knocking about in George’s dwelling. But here, in this City…I can feel the haunting. I hear it. Even smell it. It’s the smell of cold. Moist cold. Yet static charges the air.

  Denizens hide their faces deep inside their cowls, but electricity floats their unkempt hair so that it pokes free of their robes, twitching. That’s not all that floats. Threads drift on the cold air, like the ones I got in my mouth. Shuddering, I think of matted ghost eyes.

  Missing cobblestones cause everyone to stumble like drunks.

  “Another fool come to seek the Presence,” a woman grumbles as she presses against a wall to let me pass.

  Whatever Presence is here, it can’t be a Holy Ghost.

  Where is Poe?

  Danny skips across puddles, the white of his skeletal feet briefly escaping the hem of his robe with each small leap. With everyone’s gaze cast downward, it doesn’t take long for a denizen to notice what he is.

  Pointing at Danny with a grubby finger, a small boy yells. “Don’t let it touch me, Uncle!”

  The boy is red-headed and resembles Jamison. I squash an urge to backhand him.

  His uncle, scrawny and afflicted with a gruesome skin rash, turns to see the source of his nephew’s tears. Following the line of the boy’s pointing finger, his eyes widen at the sight of Danny, who has inexplicably dropped his cowl to reveal his skull.

  The tunneler’s jaw is dropped slightly, as if smiling. He holds up his palms. Bows his head.

  “No!” the uncle screeches.

  Denizens take in the scene and lower their heads even further, if that’s possible. I lose sight of the uncle as he scoops up his nephew and vanishes into the hysterical crowd. Hidden doors in stone walls become apparent as denizens flee. Many choke, as if on the verge of vomiting, as they push past me with quivering lips. Their disgust with Danny seems hinged on terror.

  Only the flagellants are silent. I look up, see them in their cages, gazing down on us, their wasted bodies shifting in the winds.

  A bell tolls.

  Danny calmly moves on. He finds a nook emptied of cobblestones. Pulling a broken stick from inside his robe, he writes in the mud.

  I turn—voices are approaching.

  Danny slips past me and approaches the small crowd that faces us. They grimace at his appearance. Without breaking his easy stride, he enters their midst. They part, let him by. “Where did it go?” they ask us.

  I see the top of Danny’s skull, slowly bouncing along as he skips away.

  Strangely, the angry crowd can’t figure out where he went. They disperse, mumbling in confusion.


  The mud is so wet as to barely hold the shape of Danny’s letters, but I read his message.

  pass courthouse leave City by north gate

  Leesel places her hands on her hips. “We better get going. Everyone knows we’re here. They could accuse of us anything. Elspeth says those who live behind gates are frightened, and therefore dangerous.”

  I smudge Danny’s lines so no flagellant can peer down and read them. “Let’s go.”

  After wandering in circles for several minutes, we discover a path that soon widens, leading to an area of the City where hundreds mill. Silver coins change hands, goods are accepted, and all of it is in utter silence.

  No one seems to pay us any mind. They’re too busy with their shopping. We blend into the crowds.

  “Where’s the courthouse?” Ava asks, craning her neck to see.

  Denizens dart in and out of premises marked bread or shoes or books, though their bags appear mostly empty. Farther along another cathedral rises, but this one houses no flagellants, much to my relief. However, contorted faces gape from stone, their chiseled features creating realistic portraits of suffering souls. Pointed arches showcase large-winged angels with scythes for feathers. Slits of stained glass are broken.

  I glance at the entrance to the bakery. Enormous iron rings matching the width of the door serve as a knocker. My stomach grumbles. I wonder why there’s no scent of baking bread.

  A courthouse?

  Rows of slender columns and lancet windows mark it as structure of significance. I start toward it when Ava elbows me. “Head down,” she says.

  Ah. The uncle with diseased skin is heading toward us. Luckily, he veers to the left, toward the courthouse. He yanks the little boy behind him. They disappear inside huge wooden doors as another bell tolls. At the sound of its ringing, people drift out of shops and brush past us, quickly heading inside the courthouse.

  Ignoring Ava’s protests, I shake her off and go to have a look inside. I can’t help wondering if Poe would go there. For help.

  The ceiling is vaulted, and paintings smother the walls—depictions of people gathered around coffins, smiling. I hear a gavel, followed by a voice calling out Town hall meeting to begin. After that the voice lowers and I can’t make out what’s being said.

  There must be two hundred of them in there, easy. At the sound of another gavel strike, robes drop to the floor. A hefty woman passes out capes; everyone puts one on.

  Leesel comes up behind me and snickers. “Elspeth told me about this,” she says.

  Stunned, I watch as people pull small jars from their bags. They begin smearing shiny black stuff in their hair.

  “Scary-wary vampires,” Leesel says, and I shush her as she starts giggling again.

  Candle-laden tables attract queues of vampires. I can read a few of the signs on the tables from where I stand. One says stalking duty, another doctrine details, and one more advanced fear tactics training. The man attending this last table has a mutilated face. No one lines up for his services.

  A couple of vampires leave the crowd and stop just inside the entrance, not three feet from where we’re hiding behind a pillar.

  “What we should be doing is electing someone to play the part of Holy Ghost Incarnate,” says one of them. “Someone of pale complexion and appealing stature. Perhaps Leonard?” She absent-mindedly runs a hand through her hair, scowls at the black residue left on her fingers, and wipes it off on her cape. “These rumors of revolution are disturbing. Did you hear of the numerous tunneler sightings today? It’s all caused by that absurd headline.”

  Her companion grunts. “So you believe the Ghost lives?”

  “I believe the Ghost never lived. How, then, could it die?”

  “Let them hear you, and you’ll be stoned for blasphemy.”

  “Pooh,” she says. “I’m not the only one who feels this way. Half this City has lost their religion. The others imprison themselves, an outward manifestation of their caged minds. I would scream too, if I believed what they did. You’ll not see me searching for a savior.”

  “You’re too practical for that.”

  “Of course. I’ll be at the bonfire tonight. You?”

  He nods. “Not that I believe…”

  They move out of earshot, holding down their capes against the wind until they wander back inside the courthouse.

  Leesel pulls me away. “Let’s go,” she says. “Danny may be waiting on us. I like him. I don’t want him to think we’re not coming. And…” She bites her lip.

  “And what?” I prompt her.

  Leesel gestures toward a group of children playing in what I would call the town square, around a wooden platform. “They’re taking turns looking at one another’s hourglasses. It reminded me of mine. And Mommy’s.” She pulls me and Ava up the street. “She threw hers in the snow, but I retrieved it. Now I don’t know which one is mine and which is hers, but one of them is almost out of sand.”

  Ava snorts. “Leesel, you know that’s superstitious nonsense.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mommy. If someone stops us, and demands to see our hourglasses, they may insist that one of us dies.”

  Looking alarmed, Ava picks up speed.

  Something about Leesel is bothering me. I realize what it is. “Why did you bother getting back your mommy’s hourglass, Leesel?”

  She holds up her arms for me to carry her. “Elspeth says they work,” she admits, cupping her hand to her mouth so that only I hear.

  “What do you mean?”

  Matter-of-factly, she answers. “It means one of us doesn’t have much time left.”

  56

  believers in exodus

  Leesel’s cold, detached belief in the hourglass’s power to predict death unnerves me. It makes it hard for me to doubt. So I pull out my own hourglass, which I’ve kept for no good reason. Sand continues to flow in one direction only, no matter how I shake the hourglass.

  What’s weird is how a clump of sand in the middle has slowed the falling of sand. It’s almost entirely clogged.

  I pocket the hourglass.

  Just outside the north gate, we gaze up a steep road that eventually leads to a misshapen mansion. Isolated from other structures, it overlooks the town. My first thought is how Poe would love the looks of it.

  Where is my best friend?

  Leesel chatters about science and numbers, but I can’t pay attention. I try to think like Poe. What would he do? Would he have knocked on a door in the City and asked for help? What would they have done with him?

  Danny suddenly leaps out of the trees. Squealing in delight at his appearance, Leesel runs to him. He bows to her, and she gives him a hug.

  He points at the road where he’s scratched another message for us.

  the mansion of clocks

  William’s place.

  It can’t be a coincidence.

  “Have you seen Poe?” I ask Danny.

  He shakes his head. Motions for us to follow him. I stand still, wanting to go back to the City.

  “We’ll find him as soon as we can,” Ava tells me. She takes my hand. “But first we have to do this. Okay? Then we’ll find Poe.”

  “Maybe Poe made it to the Mansion?” I ask. I’m crying and I don’t bother hiding it.

  “Sure, Jesse. Maybe he did. Let’s go see.”

  I jerk my hand away. Ava takes it again, and I let her keep it.

  Danny leads the way. Leaves and dead grasses rustle in the early evening breeze. Exhausted from our journey, it’s a challenging hike up the vertical road. At last we stand before the Mansion. Vast, it stretches high into fog that blurs its severely pitched roof. The structure of the house is utterly bizarre and complicated. I can’t tell how many floors there are because nothing lines up and windows are one on top of the other. Undersized balconies protrude like malignant tumors, some against a solid wall. It’s old, dark, and rotted where stone meets wood. The whole thing doesn’t even stand up straight, but impossibly leans in three opposing directions. As if
it might split apart.

  If Poe were here, he would burst into spontaneous poetry.

  Girdled by a wrought iron balcony, a window perfectly reflects the sinking sun.

  My attention is drawn to barren tree limbs scratching at the Mansion. A tunneler wearing wool scooches along a branch like a caterpillar. Having gone out as far as possible without breaking the branch from the trunk of the tree, the skeleton reaches out a fist to rap on a window.

  “Someone’s coming up the road,” Ava whispers. “No, not Poe,” she adds, yanking me backward. We hide behind a bush, while Danny crawls directly into it, never minding the thorns. The ground here is too rocky for writing. Danny arranges pebbles to spell three words.

  believers in exodus

  Sheep with tunneler hands, knees, and feet crawl past us. Noticing one of their brethren in the tree, they wave him down. He obliges, and together they vanish around the back of the Mansion.

  Danny picks tiny red berries from around thorns and gnashes them between what teeth he still has. This results in bloody stains around his mouth, giving him an alarming appearance. He cranes his neck to look down the road leading to town, then turns his attention back to the Mansion, casually tossing more of the berries into his mouth, reminding me of people eating popcorn at a sports event. Berry skins stick to his ribs. Now he has measles; he looks more repulsive than ever. Peace and calm emanate from him.

  No more tunnelers disguised as sheep come up the road. It’s time to get this done. So I can find Poe. “Let’s go,” I say.

  “Danny,” Ava says, “Will you stay here with Leesel? We’ll be out as soon as we can.”

  Leesel stomps her foot. But Ava gets a look on her face that shuts Leesel’s mouth.

  “We’ll hurry,” I assure Leesel. “Stay hidden. Do you promise?”

  Danny nudges her, and she nods her head.

  By the front door is a notice with small print, advising patrons that the Mansion of Clocks is going out of business. There’s a sale. As we step up to the door, Ava squeezes my hand. The door swings open by itself.

  57

  the voice box

  It’s dark inside. Smells of incense. Feeling the floor with my feet and grasping at empty air, I shuffle forward with Ava close beside me. I don’t like her touching me.