The Ghosting of Gods

by Cricket Baker

  Where is the saint?

  I start toward Elspeth, but Willy appears, blocking my way. “You’ve made me very angry,” he growls. He plucks a small glass bottle from an inside pocket. More holy water?

  No. It’s the hourglass he stole earlier from my pocket.

  Crystals roll inside his ribcage. Without thinking, I plunge my hand inside Willy’s chest and grab a crystal. I yell as it burns my hand, but I keep a hold on it. The scene projects.

  A holographic Chastity stands on the platform. She’s calm, but Poe, who stands manifested beside her, is not. He’s angry. “She’s the one who did this to him,” he shouts at Chastity. I can hardly recognize him. I’ve never seen such rage on his face. Such grief.

  “I’ve done all I can,” she answers. “She’s the only one with the skill to sew him back together.” She holds out her hand. Elspeth steps into view and takes the offered hand.

  What the hell is this? This never happened. My stomach falls. I realize that this is a scene from the future. But whose crystal is this?

  Suddenly, I know.

  It’s Elspeth’s, the one that was stolen from her grave.

  My hourglass appears in front of my nose. With a twist of his boney fingers, Willy snaps it in half.

  I’m aware of falling, of Elspeth’s crystal falling from my hands. The manifested scene before me vanishes, and in its place an iron ghost gallops onto the platform, into the sand of my broken hourglass, which glitters pure white, like snow falling down. An image of Chastity, raking flakes of skin from her hair with long, graceful fingers, comes to me.

  The vortex takes me, suspends me over the platform. Elspeth screams Saint Thomas’s name, but he’s gone. Her fingers scrabble for the knife she dropped earlier. Crazed, she rushes at my body that lies below me on the platform.

  Leesel is screaming my name, trying to make her way through the throng of tunnelers. Ava comes from behind and scoops up Leesel. They’re going to make it. Whether through the exodus tunnel, or in the wake of my ghost, they’re going to make it home.

  I begin to spin.

  Once on the platform, Ava rushes to my body. Elspeth turns on her.

  The vortex breathes me in, blows me apart.

  64

  identity lost

  Emmy doesn’t meet me.

  The graveyard is vast, or small, depending on your perspective. Only one headstone in the distance interrupts the flat wasteland. The sky is gray, the earth is gray, the stone is gray. Wind whistles by at high speeds, unimpeded by trees. Nothing grows here. Nothing lives. No angels guide me…I walk on my own toward the grave because I am drawn to it, like always.

  It takes me a long time to get there, and not any time at all. My name isn’t carved into the stone. Instead, it’s written in pencil on a sheet of paper and tied on with thread. There are no dates.

  What the hell?

  I pull off the paper, crumple it, toss it away. It rolls and bounces in the wind toward the horizon. My vision is really good: I can see the paper miles in the distance.

  Turning back to the tombstone, I see that engraving has appeared in the stone.

  Phantom

  I wish Emmy would come for me.

  Instead, my doppelganger appears. Now there are two of us.

  “I’m glad I’m dead,” I say.

  Near us, an upside down tree bursts into flame. I watch, mesmerized by the flames. I’m confused. Where did the tree come from? Its hefty roots grow up and fan out into the sky. Leaves sprout here and there from limbs that coil above and below ground like a sea serpent. Crystals abound, most of them half-buried.

  Gravestones erupt, cramming the landscape.

  My doppelganger calmly watches the tree burn. “They weren’t meant to be buried,” he says. “It’s all upside down.”

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. You seem to have forgotten.” He points at the tombstone where my name is missing.

  “This isn’t heaven, is it?” I ask.

  “Does it look like heaven?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t? Oh. You have something in your eyes.”

  My eyes do feel itchy. I reach up and touch them. They’re completely matted up. I don’t understand how I can even see. I rake my eyes, pulling out threads the way Saint Thomas would do.

  Oh. I get it. “I’m a ghost now,” I say.

  My doppelganger doesn’t answer. He merely gazes at me. I look away, and suddenly I realize grass has grown beneath our feet. Thick, green, soft. I’m barefoot. Suddenly, I feel as calm as my doppelganger looks. It’s nice here. The breeze waves the grass, hypnotizing me. But where is Emmy?

  “You aren’t staying here,” he tells me. “It is not yet your time. You will go back.”

  “No. I feel peaceful. I don’t want to go back.”

  We sit in silence.

  “Blessed are the poor in ghost,” my companion says.

  The feeling of peace leaves me. I remember.

  I remember everything.

  Emmy in the crystal. Memento Mori. Possessing ghosts. Identity tags. Missionaries bent on haunting my world. Willy with Emmy’s crystal. Collapsing in the grass, I struggle to breathe. “I didn’t save her. She’s trapped in the crystal. That’s why she’s not here, isn’t it?”

  “Only phantoms reside in crystals.”

  What does that mean? “I can’t live with myself,” I tell him. Wait. I’m dead. I’m dead and it doesn’t help.

  “You can’t live with yourself?” he repeats. “Do you mean there are two of you in that body?”

  “What?” I think of how I asked Elspeth that very question. “Are you saying I’m possessed?”

  “Of course. You are confused over your identity, constantly trying to decide whether you are special or bad. You are neither. Perhaps a few more threads need to be removed.” He reaches forward and plucks another thread from my eye. “Deny thyself. Surrender Jesse. Give up the ghost.”

  “I gave up the ghost when I died.” No. That doesn’t make sense. I am a ghost now. Aren’t I?

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.” Suddenly, I feel a weight at my neck. My back hunches over. I look down in horror. This isn’t heaven. I’m in hell.

  Chains. Identity tag.

  Shame. My secrets will be revealed.

  I gaze inside the crystal and review my life, the story of me, Jesse. Helpless to stop myself, I narrate. Looking up at my mother’s face as she rocks me, playing with Poe who wants to attract vampires, stealing his prized batting stick, peeking at Emmy for the first time—she opens her eyes and looks right at me, lying so that the bully at school didn’t know she was my sister, kicking the dog when it wouldn’t stop barking, sharing my cookies with Emmy, having sex with Ava after Poe cried to me about how he loved her, Mom’s death, fighting the school until they agree to enroll Emmy…

  “Surrender,” my doppleganger suggests.

  “No! This is who I am. I have to face it.” I continue to gaze.

  My voice grows hoarse with the telling of this story. It comes to me that I don’t want to tell Jesse’s story anymore.

  Silence.

  Surrender happens.

  I scratch at my eyes. I can’t see anything in the crystal. It’s empty.

  The chain breaks. All the burden comes off my body, just as it did when I sat in the haunted chapel as it twirled in the vortex. Wind rolls away my crystal ball. I let it go.

  “Who are you?” my doppelganger asks me again.

  Something stirs inside me. Relief. Freedom. “I am. Jesse was only a story I experienced. But it was awful. I did bad things. I was afraid of who I was, of what I was. I frightened myself.” I gaze at my doppelganger. “Who are you?”

  “Your Higher Self. The Holy Spirit. Sometimes known as the Holy Ghost. The Presence.”

  I ponder this, but it’s difficult. I’m disoriented. This is not as I expected. “I’m supposed to have an offering for you. The witch�
�s broom.” I think, trying to remember. “Chastity gave me her skin in a bag, but I don’t have it with me.”

  “Surrender your ghost. That was Chastity’s meaning. Her skin is symbolic of her ghost. The offering has been made. Of course, you didn’t have to die first.”

  I lie in the grass. It’s heaven. Suddenly I realize something important.

  “You’re an exorcist,” I tell him. “It’s been you all along, using me to perform exorcisms. And now…I am the one who’s been exorcised. Of my story. Of my identity. Right?”

  His eyes are so peaceful. This calm my doppelganger possesses…it’s familiar. “The Exorcism of the Holy Ghost,” he agrees. “Otherwise known as the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Your false identity is dissolved. Melted, like the wicked witch. The ghost is a mere phantom.”

  “But what I don’t understand is why you said I didn’t have to die first.”

  “Emmy tried to tell you, but you misunderstood. Blessed are the poor in ghost. Die before you die. The world is left by discarding false identity and remembering who you are. It isn’t left by death—Memento Mori unknowingly reflects this truth. Ghosts aren’t allowed in heaven. The ghost must be given up. On that Saint Thomas did not lie. Why wait to die? Break the chains, drop the identity. Ghost to God.”

  “Poe would call that blasphemy. Only Jesus is like God.”

  “Many teachers have been accused of blasphemy, even insanity, for proclaiming Truth. Can Truth be contained in words? Let us try. Ye are gods. Deny thyself. The kingdom of God is within you. God is one. I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” My doppelganger touches my chest, where the identity tag once was so heavy. “I Am.”

  “You’re like Saint Thomas and Elspeth, using verses of my religion.” I stare into the distance. Blooms swirl in the sky, fluttering down to cover names on gravestones, like they don’t matter. “Jesus was basically God, in human form. The point of my religion is who he was. Not who I am.”

  “Tell me. Who are you?”

  My mouth opens to answer, but I stutter. I know now that I’m not Jesse. I never was. My doppelganger waits for an answer. I try to give it. “I’m…I am…”

  “Yes. All of you is God, though please understand, you are not all that God is. Does that ease your discomfort? Brace yourself. You’ve not even begun to conceive God. Very few on your world ever have. Do not be afraid. You will see. The veil is not completely removed, but threadbare is an improvement.”

  Ah. Touching my eyes, I feel the threads that remain.

  “You must go back,” he reminds me.

  “Wait, I haven’t gotten to see Emmy.” I bow my head. “If I have to go back…please, can you tell me how to be with Emmy? Without being dead?”

  His response comes inside me, in my mind. If you want to find her, you must give up the ghost. Let go the past. Be present. Be Presence.

  I lift my face, another question on my lips, but he’s gone.

  My perspective has changed. Somehow, only one of us now reclines in the soft grass. I guess because Jesse is gone.

  Utter calm envelops me. It’s familiar.

  I am present. Jesse is gone.

  Temporarily. Part of me needs to go back. I only wish I could remember this…but I will forget. When I go back, the phantom will seem so real. It will possess me and seem to be me. I want to remember…but it’s harder to separate ghosts from the living. Death of the body helps. That’s why I could empty the crystals of the tunnelers. Doing so with the living…that’s another thing. The living resist the surrender of their identities. Usually to the death.

  I have to go back. It will be hard. The body is injured. I know this, yet I am calm.

  Jesse’s ghost will find me.

  And Poe and Leesel are grieving. I will, too. But now…now I am calm.

  No more thinking. No past. No future. Just my Presence. Ironic. I played hide-and-seek across Memento Mori, seeking the Presence, and I had it all along.

  I am the Ghost. I am present.

  I am Presence.

  Look no more far than your own back yard, Emmy liked to say, taking wisdom from Dorothy, her favorite character.

  Emmy.

  The one I knew as my little sister comes to me. She’s the Ghost too.

  “Do you know Jamison?” she asks, balancing on her tiptoes as she whirls.

  I imagine the boy who stoned my sister. His sin surfaced in me when I picked up the stone in the City of Sacrisities square. I feel compassion. His story was painful too. I think of it, of all that happened in the past.

  Willingly, I let that past, that small story, go.

  “I do,” I answer. “He’s the Ghost.”

  Threads come loose from my eyes and drift away. Emmy looks more beautiful, more real, than ever. Yet she doesn’t really look like Emmy.

  “Oh,” I breathe, as realization, as recognition, surprises me with such undeniable force that my vision brightens into perfect clarity.

  Oh, Father in Heaven, I know her.

  Not as Emmy, which was only a story.

  I know this soul. I’ve always known this soul. I always will. There is no beginning, no end, to my being with this soul.

  We embrace.

  “But I have to go back,” I tell her.

  She twirls. “You don’t need death to cross over,” she sings into my mind.

  * * *

  Where am I?

  The grass is soft beneath my hands. There’s no past. No future. Just presence. Presence. Who I am.

  I Am.

  It seems unbelievable that while in a body I was consumed with Jesse, with who he was, whether he was good or bad or special or worthless. I took it all seriously. I believed Jesse was all that I am.

  I laugh.

  Sooner, or later, I’m ready to roll the stone away. A vortex appears below me, twisting with dizzying speed, consuming the soft grass and all the world around me…and beneath me.

  I fall.

  65

  he is risen

  Chastity carries me high, her face to mine, weeping, beautiful, and I use all my strength to breathe in. As soon as I do, I’m all the way back in my body. And then I can’t see at all.

  Pain.

  “No, you must not make a sound,” Chastity whispers to me. “We’re followed. They must believe you are dead.” Every step she takes is excruciating for me. I whimper. Poe is there too, because I hear his voice behind me. He’s telling Chastity to quit talking to me, that I’m dead…

  Chastity lowers me to a table. The pain is so bad my breath catches, I can’t breathe, I will die from the pain…

  Another familiar face leans over me. Elspeth.

  “Chastity, please, I don’t trust her,” Poe is begging. “She killed Ava Lily…”

  No. Please, God, no.

  Grief.

  Blackness.

  66

  frankenstein

  Chastity is the only one who doesn’t hesitate when I ask for a mirror. I try to reassure everyone that I won’t break down. After all, I can already see the scars from Thomas’s knife on my arms, legs, and torso. They’re bad—thick, raised, and dark compared to the skin surrounding them. I expect the worst. I think I can handle it. But then I see my reflection in the mirror.

  The room is silent.

  Turning my head, I try to see everything in the small mirror. My neck is a mess of cross-stitches. Flesh swells purple, pulling the stitches tight. Infected? My face is not as bad, but two long cuts on my right cheek and forehead are sewn together with a thread too thick to have been used on somebody’s face. I am the result of a scientist gone mad with her sewing needle.

  Saint Frankenstein has had her revenge for what I did to Saint Thomas.

  “It’s not so bad,” Poe says. His voice cracks on the words.

  Earlier, Poe recounted events for me. The vortex descended on the City of Sacristies square and took us all. I was dead upon arrival in our world, slashed by Elspeth, who ran away. She came to our world embodied, never having fulfil
led her wishes of suicide. The vortex caught her too quickly. Chastity appeared in our world. Hunted down Elspeth. Fearful over the chains she must have forged by slashing my dead body, Elspeth agreed to Chastity’s demands to repair the damage, damage that even the seer couldn’t heal.

  Chastity let Elspeth go once the surgeries were completed. “She is not guilty for what she did to you,” Chastity told me once Poe finished the story. “It was written. It was Fate of your choosing.”

  So says the seer. “But where is Elspeth now?” I asked.

  Chastity claimed to not know. “Elspeth has powers of which you never learned,” she said. “She hides from me. I would not have hunted her down if she had not allowed it.” And then Chastity told me what Poe couldn’t.

  Ava died trying to pull Elspeth off my body. Poe believes her ghost is here with us.

  My world is haunted. Haunted badly. Willy botched it with his threads harvested from ragged ghosts. Loosing his threads caused the vortex that carried us to Memento Mori, and the vortex that brought us home. The sky is black, the winds constant. My town is decimated with haunting.

  My concern is not for Emmy. In my dreams, she has come to me, told me she’s safe. The crystal never contained her. Not ever. It only had a ghost, and Emmy’s not that. Ghosts aren’t real. I am sure in this knowledge, though its source evades me, and I don’t really understand it. But the knowledge gives me a measure of peace.

  I can’t communicate with Emmy. Not at will. Only in dreams, when she comes to me. I’m not much of a medium. I have many questions yet for Chastity.

  At least Willy doesn’t have my Emmy, as I’d thought. I wonder what the iron ghost has done with him. My memory is sketchy, but I have an image of Willy snatched away by a hand covered in a mesh of metal. I hear pummeling hooves when I think of it.

  My reflection makes me ill. No one will have to guess twice that Saint Frankenstein worked on me.

  I’m a monster.

  “The scars are still healing,” Chastity says. Gently taking the mirror from me, she puts it away.

  “Do you remember anything, Jesse?” Poe asks me, his eyes bright. “From when you were dead?”