The Ghosting of Gods

by Cricket Baker

  Tick-tocking.

  Dots of light appear and grow brighter as the volume of ticking increases. “Oh,” Ava says as candles materialize beneath what I realize are flames. She tries to grasp a candle, but her hand passes through it. No matter. The room brightens until only the deepest corners are in shadow.

  Blowing into my hands, I step over a piece of luggage.

  It’s amazing. Clocks cover walls like cells of a cancer. There are literally hundreds of them. Pendulums swing. As we inch our way around the deep reception room, different clocks bong at different times. Their timing is all off.

  All the hands of the clocks move counter-clockwise, making time go backwards. “Classic haunted house phenomena,” I say, thinking of Poe and how he would love this.

  I shout his name. Taking hold of my arm, steadying me, Ava calls out for Poe too.

  Ticktockticktockticktock.

  No answer.

  I don’t know where Poe is. He’s lost to me.

  I know where Elspeth is. In the ground.

  They’re in danger, and it’s my fault. I betrayed them both.

  “Welcome to the Mansion of Clocks,” comes a brisk voice from behind. “We’ll get acquainted in my office. You’re lucky to catch me. Come, getting to know the Mansion patrons enables me to find that special something you’re looking for today.”

  It’s a tunneler dressed in an unusual robe—it opens in the front and has an enormous hood, which hangs half-way down his back. As the tunneler chokes his neck in proper greeting and walks, I hear clicking. Wing-tip shoes peek out from beneath his robe.

  “Do you have Poe here?” I ask him. “My friend, he has white hair, green eyes—has he come here?”

  “No one here but me and the ghosts. Sorry.”

  Without waiting for us to respond, he turns on his heel, steps over a small coffin, and leads the way down a slanted hallway lit by dripping candles nailed right to the walls. Ava pushes to keep me going. We follow the skeleton into a back office. Flickering candles balance on piles of junk. The place is a wreck with loose papers scattered over the floor. Stacked crates leak a dark fluid that Ava slips in.

  The tunneler kicks aside a couple of busted up clocks on the floor—obviously George’s, with their little hourglasses to pin the hands of the clock—and sits at his desk. Ava and I take the chairs facing him.

  “I’m sorry for the chill,” he says, rubbing his gloved hands together. “I’m afraid the Mansion is haunted to the rafters. It was all I could get. No realtor would show a decent property to me. There’s excessive limestone in the construction. It crumbles terribly.” He shifts uncomfortably. “You look unwell,” he tells me. “I’ve given you a bit of a shock by speaking, haven’t I?” He strokes his neck where a ball of pale, shiny flesh is attached to the bone with strands of tendons. Just like the one we saw on the giant skeleton in the tunnels. Only this voice box makes perfectly clear speech.

  “No shock at all,” Ava says, her voice cracking.

  He leans back in his desk chair. “The voice box is unsightly, of course. But I refuse to pay for a more extensive flesh treatment. Saint Frankenstein’s rates are exorbitant, to say the least. I bartered a subtle scalpel to get just the voice box. An unsatisfactory voice box, as it gives me pain. I believe Saint Frankenstein now appreciates my dissatisfaction. If you seek repair for your chin, young lady, I cannot recommend the Saint. But I digress, and time is short. How can I be of service?”

  Poe must be in the City. I need to find him.

  “We’re here to find a man named William,” Ava answers. She’s pulls her hair forward to cover her withered face. “We’ve been referred by his brother, George.”

  The tunneler stiffens. Clocks tick erratically against his silence. Sliding a small black box across the desk, he settles it onto his lap. “I go by Willy now. So how is George?” he asks in a tired voice.

  I’m confused. “Your brother is…?”

  Ava elbows me. Plasters a smile on her face. “George is engaged to be married, actually,” she says. “You’re invited to the wedding. Of course, you’re to be the best man. Bethany especially wants you there. At the wedding.”

  Willy snorts. “Still just engaged? To Bethany, that incompetent and narcissistic wench with the fondness for the bulging personal history book? The Story of Me, indeed! George proposed four years ago. She was only a child. I suppose he’s putting off the marriage until his fortune is made. No doubt he’s sent you to deliver a message to me. Wonders where all his money is. Wonders why I dug up his garden.” He thumps the desk with his gloved hand, hard. “Am I right?”

  I shake my head. “I’m sure he…”

  “George doesn’t give a thought to the fact that I’m the one who took the risks, that I’m the one this happened to!”

  “Your brother was worried what may have happened to you,” Ava says quickly. “Your messenger hasn’t shown up for a long time.”

  The grotesque voice box creates a shrill laugh. Willy scrapes his chair back, stands with his black box, comes round the desk at us.

  We press back in our chairs.

  He thumps a fist to his chest, like where his heart used to be. “I’m the messenger. He’s such a fool. I disguised myself in a robe with a deep cowl and wore a mask. It was the only way for me to see my own brother and not have him squeal in disgust at my pollution.” Swinging an arm, his voluminous robe sleeve catches a stack of papers so that they flutter wildly about him. “But travel became too dangerous, even with me already dead. Memento Mori is no place for skeletons, it seems.” He laughs bitterly.

  Suddenly, I’m angry that Ava is telling lies. It has nothing to do with anything, it’s irrational, but I’m angry. I stand up. “You should know what’s happened, Willy. The truth is that your brother passed on. He beheaded himself to preserve his honor. Bethany told us. She told us he’s an iron ghost now. She told us before she died.”

  Willy becomes very still. Eventually he speaks in a calm, but clear, voice. “The twit. George is no iron ghost. It’s a lie that beheading oneself results in becoming such. Iron ghosts hail from across the sea. Where the lucrative channeling takes place. They have no business here!” He leans forward. Twitches. “You haven’t seen one in the City, have you?”

  “Iron ghosts? No, no we haven’t seen any in the City.”

  He twitches again. “So you spoke with George. Tell me, did he mention possessing a special clock?”

  I shake my head.

  Willy bangs his desk. “How selfish of him. And Bethany dead too, you say?” He opens his office door. “I need a drink. Badly. No doubt the two of you could use one as well. Come along. Then I may offer information that will surprise you.” His shoes click sharply as he strides down the dim hallway, carrying the black box beneath his arm.

  We chase after him back to the reception area and through a doorway into a dining hall. Several decanters of liquor fill a side table. Willy tosses his box on the dining table, picks up the largest decanter, uncorks it, hangs his jaw, pours.

  Chandeliers of candles cast flickering light over a table layered in ragged linens. Thirty or forty ghosts are seated, while others serve. Spoiled food fills platters. The ghosts are unlike any others I’ve seen with their sunken features and bluish tinge over their skin and hair. Their clothing hangs in strips. I smell smoke. Black circles polka dot their forms, as if they’ve been repeatedly burned by a giant cigarette.

  What did he mean about having surprise information for us? “Do you know something about Poe?” I demand.

  “I know nothing of Poe.”

  I get the idea he doesn’t trust us. I’ve got to hold things together. One of the ghosts brushes past me, and I motion in its direction as I attempt to make friends with Willy. “I never knew before Memento Mori how solid ghosts can be. Or how they have threads matted on their eyes. But…what happened to these?”

  Willy takes another drink and wets his robe to his waist. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never seen spooks before?”
>
  A young girl with long dark hair and eyes of balled thread smiles at me as she serves soup. She has no teeth. She struggles through the dining table to get to me. As she passes through the heavy oak her body fades, then gains back its solidity once she stands beside me, smelling acrid. “Stay with us,” she invites in a high-pitched voice. “Stay with us here forever.”

  I had enough of that sort of talk at the Asylum, District Eleven. “No thanks,” I snap. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

  The smile wipes off her face, much to my relief, and she flounces away.

  An older male spook with a handlebar moustache wraps his arm around her. “Don’t give that young man a thought, Carinna,” he growls. “He’s one of those grave-to-cradle types. You can smell it on him.” He points at me. “Think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you? Hmmph. You’re not fit for me daughter to lay eyes on.”

  A stout female spook rushes over and stands between me and Carinna. “Be gone,” she says to me. “I’ll not have me daughter crying out her heart over the likes of you.”

  “Uh, Willy,” Ava says. “Should we talk back in your office? About how to join the exodus?”

  A tiny grandmother-type floats forward, her feet a mere inch off the floor. She wrinkles her nose. “What do you think of his box of cartilage? Gives me the willies, it does.”

  Willy slams the decanter down. Liquor splashes over the side table and rug. “Spooks! Get lost. Go find your bones. Can’t you see I’m busy with the work of the Holy Ghost?” He burps.

  An old man pitches a moldy loaf of bread at his skull. “That’s not a bit funny telling us to find our bones, Willy! You know good and well we spooks have cracked bones, blackened and brittle and buried. Not that we’d be wanting to find ourselves in the state you’re in. No offense. We love you, we do.”

  Carinna cries. “You’re leaving, aren’t you, Willy? To evangelize with the threads?”

  “Spooks get their blue coloring from being electrocuted, hence their reference to cooked, brittle bones,” Willy says to us, ignoring Carinna. He shifts his skull, looking Ava over, slowly. “By the way, you’re a lovely young lady. I could use a new assistant. Must be experienced in travel between worlds, so you’re qualified, if only reluctantly. I could use the company…”

  “No…” Ava says, confusion on her face.

  “But why not? Apprehensive over another chapel ride? Though it’s not my intention to shame anyone, I confess that I heard screaming while hitching a ride on the roof.” He lifts his arms, sways his body from side to side. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to go home? Of course, it’s evolved a bit since we were last there, no doubt. More suitable for my kind. But then, you’ll be in my condition sooner than you think. Believe me.” He throws back another drink and turns his empty eye sockets on us. “Whatever is the matter with the two of you? Did I say something to offend?”

  58

  grave to cradle

  Blood pounds in my ears. “You’re responsible. You were there on the chapel, clattering on the roof.”

  William, a.k.a. Willy, doesn’t respond. Pulling a chair back from the table, he sits before the spook occupying it has time to get up. The two of them together form a ghost with its skeleton showing.

  “Get out of me,” the spook demands in a tinny voice, pawing at Willy. It looks up at me through Willy’s eye sockets. “Make him get out of me!”

  Willy holds a hand to the side of his head, where an ear used to be. “Hark! What’s that? Do I hear a rumble of thunder?”

  Spooks clutch one another and scream in terror; many of them dive under the table.

  Cords along Willy’s larynx quiver, creating a semblance of laughter. The effect is more like a screeching violin. My teeth grind. Repressing an impulse to kick loose his vibrating jaw, I remember why we’re here. Willy can provide our passage home. Angering him isn’t going to help. I need to get Ava and Poe and Leesel home. I need to find Emmy’s crystal ball and hide it, where it can never be chained to a skeleton like the one before me.

  Yet rage rises within me.

  Ava grabs my wrist. Slowly, I relax my fist.

  Willy doesn’t notice. He’s started in on a new bottle. “Yes, yes, I recognize you. The exorcist and his unlucky companions. Of course, it was necessary to remove you from the Promised Land. If only you could have minded your business, obeyed the prohibition against visiting cemeteries…it was for your own good…” He splashes liquor.

  “Then why are you offering to take us back?” Ava asks.

  “You, my dear. Not him.” He turns to me. “You resemble your sister.”

  My knees buckle.

  “I understand your obsession with her, of course,” he says. His voice lowers. “Do you think I can’t sympathize with your pain? I have lost. I have grieved. If only you weren’t an exorcist. Then you could have been a part of the new world. Heaven, as you call it on your world. Resurrection. Unfortunately, your aptitude is a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. You will not be allowed in the Promised Land. You will not go home.”

  “How do you know my sister?”

  “Why, I adore her as much as you do. I keep her.” He pats the robe over his ribcage. “Here, close to my heart. As you once did.”

  Ava looks back and forth between us. “What the hell is he talking about? Jesse? What does he mean?”

  Willy stands, knocking back his chair. “I mean that Jesse was careless. It wasn’t the first time. Be honest now, young man. You can’t lie to me—I have spent many hours viewing the life of Emmy. I know why she died. Very irresponsible of you, not caring more closely for one so feeble-minded.” He clicks his teeth in Morse code, involuntarily, I think, because he shuts his jaw with a snap and allows his voice box to speak. “And then you lost her crystal ball. It was like losing her again, wasn’t it? Yes, that’s exactly what it was. As an exorcist, you had no natural appreciation for the blessing of her presence as a ghost.”

  I throw off Ava. Raise my fist. “Where is it?” I demand. “What have you done with her crystal?”

  “With her. Once again, you fail to recognize the preciousness of the crystal ball. It contains her. All of her—her complete identity. But don’t fear. I know the location of her grave. I spied you digging there on several occasions, not only the day you lost her crystal. What a storm that was! Your world is haunting over quite nicely. But I digress. Undoing the evil you committed, I shall take her crystal with me on the exodus and plant it once more. I fear, however, she will not be judged worthy to retain the crystal upon resurrection.”

  Throwing myself at him, I’m suddenly washed over with cold. I fall to the floor, my body paralyzed. Spooks cling to me. Their blueness seeps into my skin. I can’t breathe. Smoke fills my lungs.

  Ava yells, attempting to remove the spooks from me, but of course she can’t grasp them.

  Carinna presses her face into mine. It’s like eating ice cream too fast—pain stabs my forehead between my eyes. “Leave Willy alone,” she screams, directly into my mind.

  “Grave-to-cradle blasphemer!” another spook cries, reaching into my heart.

  Willy wags a finger at me, swiftly turns, strides away.

  Spooks cry his name, letting me go. Coughing from the smoke in my lungs, I point, wanting Ava to go after him. By the time I stagger to my feet, it’s too late.

  The doorway has sealed itself into a wall. There’s no way out. Willy is gone.

  Spooks clutch one another and wail. “He’s left us!” One after another, they fling themselves at the wall, but they’re too dense. They can’t pass through.

  On the other side, Willy is calling George’s name over and over, sobbing. “My own flesh and blood,” he wails. “I tried to protect him from what I’ve become. And now his head is gone! The holy artifact is lost. Oh! The twit.”

  Ava strokes my hair, my cheeks. She kisses me. “You were completely blue,” she cries, hugging me so hard I’m having trouble breathing again.

  Grandmother Spook grunts as she attem
pts to extricate herself from the wall. All the spooks press forward, and the wall appears to fade with their touch. Grandmother cackles and grins as the wall softens, but grimaces when it hardens back, now as a door.

  “Come on,” I tell Ava. Reaching through the spooks, I twist the doorknob. “It’s locked.” I kick, but the door is thick, solid. Real.

  “Won’t do any good,” Willy calls from the other side. “Don’t worry. The Mansion changes. You’ll get out after awhile. When you do, show yourselves to the door. Find a town that will take you, if you can. One with a big gate, though what good does it do, as my dear brother used to say. Enjoy Memento Mori. Don’t worry. I’ll look after your world for you.”

  Ava and I press our backs to the locked door and face the spooks. There’s no other way out of the room. We’re trapped.

  “I wanna see him go grave to cradle,” says a boy spook in a robe much too big for him. “I never seen it done before.”

  Carinna tugs on her father’s sleeve. “If he’s unable to reincarnate, may I have him, then, Poppa?”

  Poppa thinks it over.

  “Ava?” I squeak.

  Two spooks approach us with rope. Real rope. “How does he do it?” one of them asks. “How does he re-in-carn-ate?”

  “I don’t know,” the other answers. “Let’s watch and see.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Does he get a new ghost with the new body?”

  Spooks cackle, miming my terror. They don’t notice the appearance of an archway with a door. A door that is cracked open.

  “On the count of three,” Ava whispers.

  We barrel through the spooks. Some are more dense than others and put up more resistance, but overall we catch them by surprise and get to the door before they realize what’s happening. I slam it shut behind us, turn the key in the lock.

  Spooks thud against the door. “Your ghost is sick,” they scream on the other side. “Sickly wickly, sickly wickly, sickly wickly…”

  The hallway we find ourselves in on the other side of the dining room door is long, dim, and ends in a closed door. I push it open; the pungent smell of old books overwhelms me.