by JL Bryan
"Oh, I know." Stacey stayed close behind as I walked through the back door. I'd been walking through that door for years, and I couldn't remember ever feeling so much uncertainty and doubt about what I would find on the other side. It certainly didn't feel like home anymore.
Inside the office, the atmosphere was cold. The little black-clad knots of twos and threes fell silent when I entered, watching me over their glowing tablet screens with flat, distantly curious expressions, like medical students preparing to watch a dissection—and I was the subject getting dissected. Hayden didn't even look up at me from his workstation, which was located directly behind mine.
The construction crew seemed to have left for lunch break, but they'd made incredible progress, throwing up the walls for Kara's new office and setting up wires, plugs, and light switches for the skeletal new room. Of course, there was now much less space in the main workshop area where we usually did everything that mattered.
"Ellie." Kara stepped forward from one of the remaining little knots of youthful dark-suit-clad invaders. Kara had always looked at me coldly, ever since I spoiled her assignment of hosting the spirit of deceased medium Ithaca Galloway, but there was usually some glint of hateful amusement in her pale-fish eyes. Not today, though. Even that tiny glint was gone. Her voice was like an iron boot crunching into snow. "Come."
With those two words, she entered Calvin's old office. I followed, Stacey close behind me. I could feel every eye in the graveyard-silent room watching us. Altogether, there were about half a dozen of the PSI transition team still hanging around, aside from Nicholas and Kara.
Nicholas wasn't anywhere close to Kara now, but instead lingered with the other people he'd been speaking with, and he looked stricken and pale in a way I'd never seen from him before. Though he was always pale, I suppose, being a native of a cold, rainy northern island. England was probably tropical compared to wherever Kara had grown up, which I imagined to be some sort of deep pit lined with mammoth bones out on a frozen tundra where the sun never rose.
Calvin's office had been stripped down, the carpet ripped out to reveal gray concrete slab beneath, the bare walls already painted a fresh coat of eggshell primer. All the personality had been gutted out. The room looked somehow smaller without Calvin's desk and cluttered bookshelves crammed inside. It was a hollow, lifeless space now.
"Just you," Kara said as I stepped into the room with Stacey right behind me. "She can wait."
"She can also be spoken to directly," Stacey said. "She doesn't have to be talked about liked she's not standing here right now. That kind of bugs her, actually."
Kara's bloodless-vampire eyes stayed locked on me, like those of a shark that has selected its next victim and has lost interest in all else but the kill.
It was actually pretty scary. I'm not sure Kara's presence had ever actually chilled or frightened me before, but suddenly it really did.
"It's okay, Stace," I said. "I'm the one who's been asking for punishment around here." I kept my eyes on Kara's. I had a weird feeling she would pounce on me, maybe start ripping my face off with her sharp little teeth, if I looked away.
"Well, that's a funny thing to ask for," Stacey said. "Why wouldn't you ask for a raise? Or a company car. Or a paid vacation, maybe a dental plan—"
"Stacey, go ask Hayden to train you on the new client intake forms," I said. "I'll be fine."
Stacey looked at me, saw I was serious, then shrugged and left. I closed the door behind her, but I didn't take my eyes off Kara.
Kara looked at me silently for a long time. Maybe it was only a minute or two, but that's a pretty long time to just stand there staring at someone. It was obviously a tactic designed to make me feel uncomfortable and nervous, but it still worked despite being obvious. Something was very different here. Whatever it was, even Nicholas and Hayden seemed cowed by it.
I imagined I was about to receive a razor-sharp, bloodletting sort of tirade. I wasn't even sure why Kara was giving me the courtesy of taking me aside before letting loose on me. It seemed like she might enjoy tearing me up in front of a room full of witnesses. Maybe I was supposed to be grateful for that tiny sign of civility.
On the other hand, maybe Kara was worried my own tongue would be too cutting, my own comebacks and insults too barbed, that she'd be outmatched wit-wise and I would be the one embarrassing her in front of everyone. Some little part of my mouth must have smirked at that passing thought, because Kara finally spoke.
"What is funny?" she asked. Her Russian accent was much thicker than usual. Maybe her usual, more polished and clipped English required constant effort on her part, and she was letting that slide for now, or maybe she was just trying to sound extra harsh and intimidating for my benefit.
"Nothing." I dropped my gaze to the floor and tried to do my best humble-peasant-before-the-queen look.
I'd been irresponsible by letting my feelings get the better of me. I could have quit the job, but I'd made the choice to stay until the current crises were resolved, and until I'd determined whether these new people were really going to protect my city against the legions of restless dead dwelling beneath its surface—or if they were going to bring new problems and horrors to town.
I reminded myself that it would be a bit difficult to follow through on my choice if I got myself fired with my generally insubordinate and hostile attitude. It was time to play nice so Stacey and I could get out of here and get back to work. I was willing to beg and apologize in the short term, as long as it was over with quickly.
"I'm sorry, Kara," I said, trying to look as mournful as I could about the whole unpleasantness. "I just got overwhelmed. By the new system. Yeah. Hayden was explaining, and I got overwhelmed, because it was all so technical and new. So that's why I took off like that this morning. That's all. You know what I mean?"
Kara continued looking at me, her face as stiff and unmoving as a plaster mask. She could have been a cadaver, she was so still. Not even her fingertips moved. The woman was brilliant at radiating cold into the room around her.
"Um...also, I didn't have a lot of information," I said, stumbling forward to fill the void of silence. Her little mind games really had their hooks in me. "So anyway, I've spent today eyeballs deep in research at the library, and I think I've come up with some pretty critical details about the case." I waited, but she still didn't respond. "So...if you want me to head back to my desk, I can get going on those forms again. I'll just ask the Ho—I'll ask Hayden if I have any questions. That's what you want me to do, right? I'm with you. Professional manager-employee conduct from now on. You got it. Okay?"
That all sounded fair and reasonable to me. I was backtracking on everything, doing what she wanted. Oddly, she didn't come back with a bright smile and a hug. Okay, I didn't really expect any of that, but a sneer to let me know she was listening would have been nice. Her silence and stillness bothered me more the longer they lasted.
"Okay, then, so I'll just head to my desk...just a regular worker bee here..." I moved back toward the door.
"Stop." Her voice was like an executioner's. For a moment I wondered whether Kara had ever actually killed anyone. Then I shook the thought off. She was just trying to scare me, I reminded myself. Her and everyone else in the building, apparently.
"Okay, I'm stopping."
"You are under my authority now," Kara said.
"I understand."
"No. If you understood, you would never challenge me in that way, with contempt, before so many of my subordinates." Kara might have appeared to be around my age, but at that moment she seemed much older, reminiscent of the days when Ithaca Galloway had possessed her. I wondered if that ghost's strong personality had left traces of itself stamped inside Kara.
"I am really sorry for that," I said. "It won't happen again."
"If you understood me, you would never have dared." Kara moved toward me, and I glanced at her hands, half-expecting her to be holding a weapon. Not a gun, of course. Kara was definitely the type to stab you slowly, may
be with a tiny jeweled knife. Or maybe even a dull silver spoon. Her hands were empty, though.
As I was about to discover, that hardly mattered at all. Looking back on it, I would have preferred if she'd just slapped me in the face, or even slashed at me with a pocket knife. A little cutting and bloodletting would easily have been less awful than what she actually did.
"I get it," I said. "Look, I'm really sorry, and I'll do whatever you want, really, I just don't want to get fired right now—"
"That is the problem." She loomed ever closer. Well, she didn't exactly loom in a physical sense, and actually she was no taller than me, but suddenly she seemed enormous, as if her presence was much larger than her body, filling the room and charging the air around me. My littlest hairs stood up everywhere. It was like being in the presence of a powerful ghost.
"What are you doing?" I definitely didn't intend for my voice to come out in the awed whisper that rushed through my lips.
"You think the situation is merely economic," Kara said. "You think the only punishment is a simple loss of wages. But our work is not ordinary. You understand this."
"Okay, true—"
"I am not meant to let you loose," she continued. "I am meant to integrate you into the hierarchy. To establish dominance if necessary. To make it clear that your loyalty is expected and treachery will be punished. Severing your employment would not be the end of how I would punish you. You will obey me, Ellie, or suffer a hell of your own."
"Whoa," I said. "I'm not sure if you're aware, but we do have certain basic, um, labor laws in this country, and you might be stepping over the line—"
She stepped much too close to me and placed her small hand on my throat, as if she meant to choke me. Her big, cold eyes gazed into mine.
"We work along the boundary," she said. "We stand in the shadows between life and death. You know this is no simple factory job, where you might walk away and be forgotten. You have too many secrets, Ellie. Secrets which we have acquired along with your firm. That makes them our secrets now."
"Okay, but you can just back off—" My hand was already raising, but I was resisting the urge to push her back or slap her away.
Her hand moved from my throat to the front of my face, clapping over my nose and mouth, her sharp little fingernails biting into my cheeks.
"Kara—" I began, and I started to push her away, but it was too late. I should never have let her get so close to me.
The pain stabbed in through my face, piercing through my sinus cavity like a long steel spike. I felt a sickening crunch as the sharp point of the spike slid into the center of my skull, skewering me.
A second pain erupted around my heart, as if all my cardiac tissue were suddenly twisting and ripping free of my chest.
I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see, and I couldn't understand what was happening to me. All I knew was the pain was everywhere and I was powerless to stop it. I was powerless to move at all.
Then, with a great wrenching pain, I felt myself rise into the air.
Telekinetic, I managed to think, through the awful ripping sensation inside my head. She's powerful...
I rose higher, approaching the ceiling, impaled on an invisible spike through the center of my being. The pain was so intense that I couldn't think at all, I could only look at the empty grid where the ceiling tiles had been removed, revealing wires and pipes above.
Then I turned, not of my own volition, and found myself looking downward toward the room below. Kara stood just beneath me, seeming to hold me up with the hand that had covered my face, but I knew it had to be telekinetic strength she was showing. There was no way she was strong enough, with that tiny body, to pick me up by my face and hold me near the ceiling.
The pain throbbed all around me, pulsing out from the spike of energy that seemed to hold me in place.
Then I saw, with a horrifying jolt, that Kara wasn't alone down there. A girl stood beside her, swaying wildly as if swept off-balance. A dark-haired, nerdy-looking girl. That was me, or at least my body, still standing beside her. But Kara wasn't looking at my body—she was looking at me, the invisible, cloud-like me that was trapped in her grip.
I watched in silent horror as my body toppled over and crashed to the concrete-slab floor. I couldn't feel any pain at the impact, but that just made things a little more terrifying.
My body was down there, unconscious. My mind was up here, suspended near the ceiling like a balloon, trapped on an invisible string tied to Kara's fingers.
Kara kept smirking at me. Now she'd dropped the cold death-mask attitude. Now she was doing something she clearly enjoyed.
"You should fear me," she said, her eyes bright with mirth. "Just as the others do. Because I can do what no else can. I can catch a ghost with my bare hands. And I can catch the ghosts of the living, too."
I moved closer and closer to her pale eyes, as if drawn in by invisible puppet strings on her fingers. I could have screamed in horror, but I had no mouth, at least not one that was currently under my control.
Kara had pried my spirit loose from my body, forcing me into an unwanted out-of-body experience, in which she apparently controlled me like a dog on a leash.
"I have allowed you to laugh at me long enough," Kara said. "This is your only warning. I could keep your soul, if I chose. I could slide it into one of your own ghost traps. Your body would die, for mysterious medical reasons, your heart stopped, but no evidence of murder, none at all. I could keep your soul in a jar on my shelf. When I grow tired of looking at you, I could bury you so deep, you'd be waiting for thousands of years for someone to find you. You would be trapped, unable to move on. That's the same hell to which you condemn souls you deem evil enough, isn't it? Complete isolation, perhaps for eternity. Do you think you're the only one who gets to play God, Ellie? No, no. I play it, too. And I play it much better than you."
I was beyond horrified by this point, beyond terrified. This was so far from anything I'd ever been prepared to experience. I was as soft as a jellyfish in Kara's psychic grasp, helpless, maybe clinically dead already.
She was a monster.
"You remember this, Ellie," she said. "Next time you want to disobey me. Next time you want to speak to me like a petulant child. Remember what I am, and how small and weak you are at this moment. Remember that I have seen all the way through your soul. And there wasn't much to see, honestly. You are even more dull on the inside than you are on the outside."
She seemed to pinch me somehow, deep inside my invisible, cloudlike form, and a fresh wave of pain wracked me.
"Now go back, and remember your place from now on, Ellie."
The room seemed to spin, and then I dropped. There was a sick, squishy feeling, and everything went dark.
I opened my eyes. I lay on the floor, my head throbbing, my insides feeling slick and greased like I was going to vomit. Kara's hand was pressed against my nose, as though she'd shoved my soul into my brain through my nostrils. I thought of Egyptian mummies, how they used a special hook to remove the brains via the nose. The brains would be put in a separate jar. That was exactly what it felt like Kara had done to me, only without waiting for me to die first.
I hurt everywhere, and I felt violently ill. Every muscle trembled. I tried to push myself up to all fours, at least, but didn't have the strength. I collapsed back to the concrete.
"So you understand me now," Kara said.
I didn't answer. Opening my mouth was a risky proposition at the moment, especially since anything that came spewing out would land all over my arm. I tried again to rise up.
"You'll feel better in a few hours," Kara said. "The sickness, panic, and paranoia is nothing more than your soul's horror at discovering its weakness, and your body's recovery from its temporary state of death."
"Ugh," I answered. That was about the best I could manage. My brain felt like mush and my face muscles all felt askew, like I wouldn't be able to speak correctly even if I could string together a coherent thought.
&nbs
p; "Now, back to work," she said. "Generate some billing with the new client."
Kara turned and walked out of the office. She left the door ajar, but did me the small mercy of flipping off the light on her way out, so the people outside couldn't immediately gawk at the sight of me lying on the floor, slick with cold sweat, trying not to throw up while I waited for my muscles to work again.
Stacey ran over as soon as the door opened. She scowled at Kara, who didn't even spare her a look on the way out.
"Ellie! What happened?" Stacey knelt beside me and touched my damp, clammy forehead. "You look sick. Are you okay?"
I took a few deep breaths before attempting to speak.
"I think..." I managed to say, my voice so low Stacey had to lean even closer to hear. "I think we may have underestimated Kara."
Then I let my head drop to the floor, and I closed my eyes for a minute. The room spun a bit less that way.
Chapter Sixteen
When I was ready, Stacey helped me to my feet and supported me with one arm. I shuffled along like an elderly person with a bad hip and a broken leg or two.
Kara had left the hollowed-out office in darkness. The workshop outside was searingly bright by comparison, like emerging from a dim cave into a sun-scorched desert.
I mostly kept my eyes on the floor as we limped the long, long way to the blue cargo van by the roll-up garage door. When I did look up, everyone seemed to avoid my gaze. The room was as silent as when I'd entered, but the mood seemed different. They clearly had some idea what I'd been through. Maybe they were feeling cowed, reminded of Kara's great power and how she could carry out the most horrific sort of torture. Or maybe they even felt a little ashamed at having any part in it.
Only Nicholas looked at me. His eyes were the dark amber color that indicated he was using the Sight, gazing into my soul. I can't say the attention was welcome at the moment, but as deep psychic violations went, it was a minor echo of what Kara had done. Philosophers and theologians have debated the existence and nature of the human soul for thousands of years. Meanwhile, people were peering into mine and even ripping it right out of my body. This was a whole new level of workplace harassment.
