Unholy Ghosts

by Stacia Kane

  Her palm felt stiff when she flipped the light switch in her bathroom. Maybe Doyle was right. Maybe it was even sort of nice, to have someone take care of her. No one ever had before. She should stop being so cranky and suspicious, and relax. Isn’t this what normal people did, help one another?

  She laid a towel over the toilet lid and started gathering all of her medical supplies. Debunkers often found themselves in attics and crawl spaces, or climbing through airshafts. Injuries were common. A few years ago Atticus Collins even got bit by a rat.

  Odd, then, that this cut got infected, when she usually took such good care of her wounds. But then, being locked in a dungeon for almost twenty-four hours and being bathed in raw sewage wasn’t exactly conducive to healing.

  Her knives were in the kitchen, but she decided to grab a razor blade instead. The sharper the edge, the less it would hurt. She ran the flats of the blade over her tongue, just to make sure there wasn’t any residue left on it. There was. The muscles in her cheeks tightened.

  Finally she guessed she had everything. Antiseptic, cotton balls, gauze, antibiotic ointment, the razor blade, a straightpin. She chomped another Cept—this was probably going to hurt—and headed back out into the living room, carrying the little towel bundle in her left hand.

  Doyle knelt on the floor in front of the bookcase, flipping through her copy of On the Road. “You have a lot of stuff from BT,” he said. “I didn’t know you were into that.”

  “I like history. I like to read.”

  “But this is, like, all BT.”

  “It just interests me. It’s not a big deal or anything, they’re not forbidden books. They’re great literature.”

  “I know, I just … you seem so live-for-the-moment.” He placed the book back in its slot on the shelf. “I always thought of you as someone who didn’t have a past, so wasn’t interested in the past.”

  “So because I’m an orphan and don’t know my ancestry I’m not allowed to read?”

  “No, no, I … It’s cool, that’s all. I think it’s cool.”

  She thought about pressing the point, but decided against it. Someone who could trace his family back two hundred years wouldn’t be able to understand how it felt when even your real name was a mystery, and she didn’t particularly want to explain anyway. He’d already seen her naked. He didn’t need to see her emotionally exposed as well.

  So she held up the towel. “I have everything.”

  “Actually, I was thinking we probably should do this in the bathroom. Better light, right?”

  Whatever. His show. They trooped back into the bathroom, where she sat on the toilet and held her hand over the sink.

  He did know what he was doing. His fingers were quick and sure but gentle as he cleaned her palm with antiseptic and cotton balls, then picked up the razor blade and wiped it, too.

  “Okay, get ready.”

  “I’m ready.” Chess sat up straighter. She trusted him, sure, but if he was messing around with a razor blade on her skin, she wanted to supervise.

  He slid the blade along the very edge of the wound, drawing a thin line of blood from her flushed palm. Halfway down the color paled as clear fluid oozed out.

  “Yuck,” she said.

  “Yeah, it is kind of, isn’t it?” He flashed her a quick smile. “But at least it’s coming out, right? Imagine if it just built up under the skin and went nec …”

  “Necrotic? Would that really happen?”

  “Do you have tweezers?” He sounded strangled, like he’d just seen something that frightened him.

  “On the shelf. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, clearly something is. What is it?”

  His grip on her hand tightened as he grabbed the tweezers. “Don’t move.”

  “What’s—ow! Fuck! What are you …”

  The words died in her throat as he lifted the tweezers from the wound. Caught between the sharp metal pincers was a small, fat worm.

  Chess had to fight not to throw up as it wriggled and twisted like a fish out of water. Blood—her blood—dripped from its obscene tubular body. Even as she watched it shriveled, balling itself up like a creature in agony.

  Doyle opened the tweezers. The worm fell into the sink, unmoving.

  “Doyle, what is that? What the fuck is that?” Her voice rose to almost a squeal at the end, unnaturally high and loud in the small room.

  “I … I don’t know. Shit, Chess. Hold still.”

  “Is it a …” She swallowed. “A maggot?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He pulled four more of them from the wound before they were done.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Know that where you find isolation, where you find emptiness, so you may also find the displaced soul.”

  —The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 178

  “Chess, baby. Guess Terrible don’t kill you after all.” Edsel smiled and leaned back in his rickety chair. Weak sunlight glinted off the silver talismans and tokens dangling from a rack in the corner of his booth and cast bright spots on the tattered burgundy curtains behind him. The city clock hadn’t even chimed noon yet, and Edsel’s booth was still in disarray.

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “Ain’t never disappointed seeing you, you know that. What you need today? You try that Hand yet? I gots some new sleep potions, you interested.”

  “Sleep potions?”

  He shrugged. “Lookin tired, baby.”

  Damn it. She should have bumped up before she left the house.

  After Doyle finally left the night before, she’d tossed and turned for hours. She didn’t imagine many people would be able to slide between the sheets with a blissful smile after watching bloody worms being yanked from their flesh.

  That image—and several other ones even more unpleasant—chased her into her sleep, and she’d finally climbed out of bed just past dawn.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I was actually hoping you might be able to help me with something else.”

  “Like what?”

  She dug into her bag and pulled out the amulet, wrapped in a scrap of black velvet so she wouldn’t have to touch the metal. Even holding it through the cloth made her skin crawl.

  “You recognize any of these markings?” She set it down on the rickety countertop and unfolded the velvet.

  “Where this came from?”

  Chess shrugged. “Found it.”

  “Ah-huh.” Edsel leaned closer to it, but made no move to pick it up. “Look to me like you best take it back you found it. Don’t see no positive in that thing, baby. I feel it vibin at me from here.”

  “I can’t take it back. It’s … it’s part of an investigation. None of the marks look familiar?”

  “Can’t say they does, but … on the minute. That there look like Etosh. And two down from that, could be Tretso.”

  “What do they mean?”

  “Tretso a bastard rune, you get me? A combination of two. Intensifies other runes, adds power, but say nothing on its own. Etosh … it feeds. Directs Tretso to where the amulet maker want it to go.”

  “So I have two runes here calculated to add power to the others, but we don’t know what any of the others are.”

  “Sorry I ain’t better help.” Edsel glanced at the amulet again, his lip twisted in distaste. “Don’t guess nobody could help with that thing, if the Church can’t.”

  They might be able to, if she could ask them. But she couldn’t. What was she supposed to do, walk into the Grand Elder’s office and tell him she’d found it on the street? Something like this?

  She nodded. Her fingers moved slowly, sluggishly, as she covered the amulet in velvet once again. “Thanks anyway, Edsel.”

  “Your hand right?”

  She nodded. The cut on her palm did look less ugly this morning, but she didn’t think she’d feel comfortable until it was healed completely. Worms … her nose wrinkled. “Just a scratch.”

  “Cool. You kn
ow … now I think on it, could be I know somebody help you with them runes. Name of Tyson, you know him?”

  She shook her head. “Is he here?”

  “Naw, not here. Don’t live in Downside, not even in the city. Old-timer, aye? Got himself a place outside town, by the water. Don’t know how to get in touch with him, though. He come by sometimes. Not stupid, Tyson. He come again, I give him your number?”

  “You know if Tyson’s his first or last name?”

  “Only know Tyson. He never say nothing else.”

  Chess slipped the velvet-covered amulet back in her bag and zipped it up. “Yeah, give him my number if you see him, Edsel. Thanks.”

  “No problem. Keep it clean, baby.” He turned away and started unpacking boxes, preparing for the day’s customers, while Chess wandered off through the Market. Terrible was going to show up soon to take her back to Chester today, to hunt for electrical equipment she’d have to pretend not to see or ghosts she’d have to pretend not to be able to Banish.

  She stopped and bought a bowl of noodles from a permanent booth not far from Bump’s place, and slurped them with chopsticks as she loitered outside the doors. The couches downstairs would be full if she made her way down. They always were on Mondays, no matter what time the day or night. She had ten dollars in her pocket—enough for a long afternoon of soft dreams.

  A long afternoon she couldn’t have, and as if to confirm that, heavy footsteps sounded behind her and she turned to see Terrible advancing like a tank.

  Chester Airport in the sunlight lost none of the feeling of abandoned threat it held at night. The rickety old terminal huddled off to the left like a lonely widower, and the rusty fences looked ready to blow away.

  Chess tried and failed to keep from seeking out the spot where she’d found the amulet. What ritual had taken place here, in the dusty grass?

  She didn’t think she really wanted to know. She also didn’t think she would be able to avoid finding out.

  “You wanna check the building again?” Terrible asked as he held open the tear in the fence for her.

  “I guess. Don’t think we missed anything the other night, though.” Chess glanced over at the right perimeter of the field. “Hold on, what’s that?”

  Terrible followed her gaze, but said nothing.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to catch it, hidden as it was by the tall grass as it was, but as she got closer she saw she wasn’t mistaken.

  The stones formed a rough, loose rectangle, about fifty feet long and thirty wide. Large sections had disappeared entirely, so that only someone carefully looking would have known they formed a shape at all and weren’t just piles of rocks. Without the specific angle of the sun she doubted she would have noticed it at all.

  “Another building,” she said. “I wonder what it was.”

  “Supplies, could be. Even sleeping quarters. Barracks.”

  She glanced up at him. “Barracks?”

  “Aye, you know. No hotels round here. Pilots they come in, they ain’t leaving till morning, needs to sleep.”

  She stood back up and looked at him. His impassive face was turned away, studying the buildings just outside the fence. Black sunglasses hid his eyes.

  “That’s a good idea, Terrible. You’re probably right.”

  Again, no reaction. Chess paced along the remains of the walls, moving stones that looked light or loose enough for her to shift. Anywhere in this rubble would be an ideal place to hide the sort of equipment hoaxers would need, and with Terrible’s attention elsewhere she could cover it back up—if she needed to, if it existed and the ghosts here weren’t real.

  If he caught her … She didn’t even want to think about that. She hadn’t heard from Lex since he’d dropped her off, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. It was so tempting to pretend she’d imagined the whole thing. Too bad she hadn’t, and she knew it.

  The stones yielded nothing, though, so she left a tiny motion-sensor video camera in the pile closest to the runway and they headed back toward the main terminal building. Chess glanced back, wondering what else hid in the jungle of stiff brownish grass, what nestled in the ground just outside the field. They’d have to search there, too.

  Houses crouched close to the fence, as though they’d been shoved out of the way when it was put up. Duplexes, mostly. Over one door smears of blood remained from the Festival; the residents hadn’t bothered to wipe it off when it was no longer needed. Probably figured the rain would get it eventually, and they were probably right. November was usually much rainier than it had been the last week or two.

  Someone must have had a window open; the soft strains of a Willie Nelson song drifted toward them like a whisper.

  Here and there pitted slides and rusty tricycles dotted the badly tended lawns. Chess could practically feel the cracked plastic of the aged toys beneath her. How many children in these homes were living lives like hers had been, right that moment? Being used as a source of income, and none of that money shared with them?

  The buildings sat at odd angles to one another, adding to the air of something seedy and off about the street. One butted right up against the fence, with barely any yard. The next stood a good thirty feet off. “Do you know why the houses are crooked like that?”

  Terrible shook his head. “Always been that way, my guess. It matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  Sunlight shafted into the wreckage of the terminal building. “I guess we can try hunting through this mess again.” She scanned the ceiling. It was clean, or rather, nothing but cobwebs lurked in the shadows.

  They rustled through the garbage again, neither of them wanting to use their hands. This was a waste of time, and she knew it. Something very well could have been planted at Chester, but it wasn’t in here.

  “That dude last night, he yours?”

  “Huh?”

  “Mr. Clean you left the show with.”

  “Doyle? No. Just a guy I work with. How was the show, anyway?”

  Terrible grinned. “Dusters always put on a good one.”

  “I wish I’d stayed.”

  He lifted his chin in a half-nod. “Missed out, you did.”

  She rounded the remains of the desk and crouched down. A few drawers remained intact, near the top. Chess steeled herself to open them. Mice liked to nest in places like this, mice and rats and spiders, none of which she enjoyed encountering.

  “Amy seems nice,” she lied, looking for something to say as she slid open the top drawer.

  “She aright.”

  “Been seeing her long?”

  He shrugged.

  The drawer was empty. Chess opened the others, finding nothing but dust and dead bugs. Their dry carcasses reminded her horribly of the worms in her hand, and she shut the drawers harder than she’d planned. The last one cracked under the strain and her fist almost went through it.

  “Okay, well, I don’t see anything in here, so let’s look outside, okay?”

  “Your show.”

  The air outside seemed sweet after the dry rot of the terminal. Her nose itched as she handed him another little camera and told him how to attach it to the outside of the building, just under the roof. He didn’t need a ladder to do it.

  A few feet from the spot where he’d broken the wall to pull her out the other night was an old well and pump. Shit. “Um … you didn’t happen to bring any rope, did you?”

  “How much?”

  “Enough to lower me down that well so I can see if there’s anything down there.”

  “Like electrics and all?”

  She nodded.

  “Damn, Chess, you really wanna go down there?”

  “Afraid you won’t be strong enough to keep me from falling?”

  His teeth showed in a grin. “Shit. You must joke.”

  “Of course I’m joking. Do you have rope or not?”

  “Could be I do. Wait here.”

  He headed off back toward his car, while Chess poked around in the grass some
more, always ready for that awful coldness to start creeping up her legs again. At night Chester was like a black hole in the city, devoid of life. Who’s to say more rituals hadn’t taken place out here? Anywhere you found empty spaces you found illegal witchcraft. People did their legitimate rituals at home—money charms, luck spells, easy things that didn’t require power or talent. And the Church encouraged it, because when people saw the results of their insignificant spells, their tiny manipulations of energy, it reinforced the Church’s Truth; gods did not exist. Magic did. And the Church was the gateway to magic.

  Terrible returned in a few minutes, holding a thick roll of fibrous tan rope over his shoulder, which he uncoiled and laid on the ground.

  “This long enough?”

  “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Grateful that she’d worn long sleeves, she wrapped the rope under her armpits just above her breasts and tied it in a secure knot. The rope was flecked with brownish stains in spots. She didn’t want to think about what it had been used for last, or, for that matter, why Terrible carried rope around in his trunk. His work was his business.

  Finally she had the knot adjusted. From her bag she pulled her flashlight, and switched it on while Terrible wrapped the free end of the rope around his hands. The leads of her electric meter dangled from her pocket.

  “Okay. If I get too heavy, pull me up—”

  “You don’t weigh nothing,” he scoffed.

  “Okay, I don’t weigh nothing, but nothing can get a lot heavier when it’s dangling at the end of a thin rope. Please, Terrible. I really don’t want to fall, so if you think I’m getting too heavy, let me know and bring me back up, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “And please watch the rope, in case it starts to fray or something.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Just … please?” The mouth of the well gaped in the ground beside her like an entryway to Hell. Hell didn’t technically exist, but the City did, and Chess did not want to be underground again. Not after what happened the day before, not ever. Panic rose in her chest and she focused her gaze on Terrible, taking what comfort she could from his steady gaze and bulging muscles, from the way the rope tangled around his big hard hands.