Anna Dressed in Blood

by Kendare Blake

  “Are you okay? Is anything broken?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Get to the door.” As she scrambles away, I stand up. He’s walking down the steps without any sign of that old ghostly stiffness. He’s as limber as any living, young man.

  “You might just vaporize, you know,” I say, because I’ve never been able to keep my damned mouth shut. “But personally, I hope you explode.”

  He takes a deep breath. And then another. And then another, and he’s not letting them back out. His chest is filling up like a balloon, stretching his ribcage. I can hear the sinews in there, ready to snap. Then, before I know what’s happening, his arms are thrust out toward me and he’s right in my face. It happened so fast I could barely see it. My knife hand is pinned against the wall and he’s got me by the collar. I’m hitting him in the neck and shoulder with my other hand, but it’s like a kitten swatting yarn.

  He lets go of that breath, rolling out through his lips in thick, sweet smoke, passing over my eyes and into my nostrils, so strong and cloying that my knees buckle.

  From somewhere behind me, I feel my mom’s hands. She’s screeching my name and pulling me away.

  “You’ll give her to me, my son, or you’ll die.” And he lets me drop, back into my mother’s arms. “Your body’s filth will rot you. Your mind will drain out your ears.”

  I can’t move. I can’t talk. I can breathe, but not much else, and I feel far away. Numb. Sort of confused. I can feel my mom yelp and lean over me as Anna finally blows the door off its hinges.

  “Why don’t you take me yourself?” I hear her ask. Anna, my strong, terrifying Anna. I want to tell her to watch out, that this thing has tricks up its rotting sleeves. But I can’t. So my mother and I huddle in between this hissing match of the strongest spirits we’ve ever seen.

  “Cross the threshold, beauty girl,” he says.

  “You cross mine,” she says back. She’s straining against the barrier spell; her head must feel almost as tight as mine. A thin rivulet of black blood dribbles from her nose and over her lips. “Take the knife and come, coward,” Anna shouts. “Come out and let me off this leash!”

  He’s seething. His eyes are on her and his teeth grind. “Your blood on my blade, or the boy will join us by morning.”

  I try to tighten my grip on the knife. Only I can’t feel my hand. Anna is shouting something else, but I don’t know what it is. My ears feel stuffed with cotton. I can’t hear anymore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The sensation is something like staying underwater for too long. I’ve foolishly used up all my oxygen, and even though I know the surface is just a few kicks away, I can barely get there through the suffocating panic. But my eyes open on a blurry world, and I take that first breath. I don’t know if I’m gasping. It feels like I am.

  The face I see upon waking is Morfran’s, and it’s far too close. I instinctively try to sink farther into whatever it is that I’m lying on in order to keep that mossy beard at a safer distance. His mouth is moving but no sound is coming out. It’s completely silent, not even a buzz or a ringing. My ears haven’t come back online yet.

  Morfran has stepped back, thank god, and is talking to my mom. Then suddenly there’s Anna, floating into view, settling down beside me on the floor. I try to turn my head to follow. She sweeps her fingers along my forehead but doesn’t say anything. There’s relief tugging at the edges of her lips.

  My hearing comes back strangely. At first I can hear muffled noises, and then when they finally become clear, they don’t make sense. I think my brain figured it had been torn apart, and now it’s putting out its feelers slowly, grasping at nerve endings and shouting across synapse gaps, glad to find everything still there.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, my brain-tentacle having finally located my tongue.

  “Jesus, man, I thought you were toast,” Thomas exclaims, appearing at the side of what I can see now is the same antique sofa that they put me on when I got knocked out that first night at Anna’s. I’m in Morfran’s shop.

  “When they brought you in…” Thomas says. He doesn’t finish, but I know what he means. I put my hand on his shoulder and give it a shake.

  “I’m fine,” I say, and sit up a little with only a minimal struggle. “I’ve been in worse scrapes.”

  Standing on the other side of his room with his back to all of us, acting like he’s got a lot more interesting things to be doing, Morfran gives a snort.

  “Not likely.” He turns around. His wire specs have slid most of the way down his nose. “And you’re not out of this ‘scrape’ yet. You been Obeahed.”

  Thomas, Carmel, and I all do that thing you do when someone is speaking another language: we look around at each other and then say, “Huh?”

  “Obeahed, boy,” Morfran snaps. “West Indian voodoo magic. You’re just lucky that I spent six years on Anguilla, with Julian Baptiste. Now that was a real Obeahman.”

  I stretch my limbs and sit up straighter. Except for a little tenderness in my back and side, plus the swimmy head stuff, I feel fine.

  “I’ve been Obeahed by an Obeahman? Is this like how the Smurfs say they smurfing smurfed all the time?”

  “Don’t joke, Cassio.”

  It’s my mother. She looks awful. She’s been crying. I hate that.

  “I still don’t know how he got into the house,” she says. “We were always so careful. And the barrier spell was working. It worked on Anna.”

  “It was a great spell, Mrs. Lowood,” Anna responds gently. “I could never have crossed that threshold. No matter how much I would have liked to.” When she says this last part, her irises get three shades darker.

  “What happened? What happened after I blacked out, or whatever?” I’m interested now. The relief of not being dead has worn off.

  “I told him to come out and face me. He didn’t accept. He just smiled this terrible smile. Then he was gone. There was nothing but smoke.” Anna turns to Morfran. “What is he?”

  “He was an Obeahman. What he is now, I don’t know. Any limitations he had left with his body. Now he’s only force.”

  “What exactly is Obeah?” Carmel asks. “Am I the only one who doesn’t know?”

  “It’s just another word for voodoo,” I say, and Morfran slams his fist into the wood corner of the counter.

  “If you think that then you’re as good as dead.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. I haul myself to my feet, unsteadily, and Anna takes my hand. This isn’t a conversation to have lying down.

  “Obeah is voodoo,” he explains. “But voodoo is not Obeah. Voodoo is nothing more than Afro-Caribbean witchcraft. It follows the same rules as the magic we all practice. Obeah has no rules. Voodoo channels power. Obeah is power. An Obeahman doesn’t channel shit, he takes it into himself. He becomes the power source.”

  “But the cross—I found a black cross, like yours for Papa Legba.”

  Morfran waves his hand. “He probably started out as voodoo. He’s something much, much more now. You’ve gotten us into a world of shit.”

  “What do you mean I’ve gotten us?” I ask. “It’s not like I called him. ‘Hey, guy who killed my dad, come terrorize me and my friends!’”

  “You brought him here,” Morfran growls. “He’s been with you the whole time.” He glares at the athame in my hand. “Hitching a ride on that damn knife.”

  No. No. That can’t be what’s happened. I know what he’s saying now, and it can’t be true. The athame feels heavy—heavier than before. The glint of its blade in the corner of my eye looks secretive and traitorous. He’s saying that this Obeahman and my athame are linked.

  My brain fights it even though I know he’s right. Why else would he bring the knife back to me? Why else would Anna smell smoke when it cut her? It was tied to something else, she said. Something dark. I’d thought it was just the knife’s inherent power.

  “He killed my father,” I hear myself say.

  “Of course he did,” Morfran s
pits. “How do you think he became connected to the knife in the first place?”

  I don’t say anything. Morfran is giving me the piece it together, genius look. We’ve all gotten it at one time or another. But I just got un-mojo-ed five minutes ago, so cut me some slack.

  “It’s because of your father,” my mom whispers. And then, more to the point, “Because he ate your father.”

  “The flesh,” Thomas says, and his eyes light up. He looks to Morfran for approval, and continues. “He’s an eater of flesh. Flesh is power. Essence. When he ate your father, he took your dad’s power into himself.” He looks down at my athame like he’s never seen it before. “The thing you called your blood tie, Cas. Now he has a link to it. It’s been feeding him.”

  “No,” I say weakly. Thomas gives me this helpless apologetic expression, trying to tell me that I wasn’t doing it on purpose.

  “Wait,” Carmel interrupts. “You’re telling me that this thing has pieces of Will and Chase? Like it carries around part of them?” She looks horrified.

  I look down at the athame. I’ve used it to send away dozens of ghosts. I know that Morfran and Thomas are right. So just where the hell have I been sending them to? I don’t want to think of this. The faces of the ghosts I’ve killed flash behind my closed lids. I see their expressions, confused and angry, filled with pain. I see the frightened eyes of the hitchhiker, trying to make it home to his girl. I can’t say that I thought I was putting them to rest. I hoped so, but I didn’t know. But I sure as hell didn’t want to be doing this.

  “It’s impossible,” I say finally. “The knife can’t be tied to the dead. It’s supposed to kill them, not feed them.”

  “That’s not the Holy Grail in your hand, kid,” says Morfran. “That knife was forged long ago with powers best long forgotten. Just because you use it for good now doesn’t mean that’s what it was made for. It doesn’t mean that’s all that it’s capable of. Whatever it was when your dad wielded it, it isn’t now. Every ghost you’ve slain has made this ghost stronger. He’s a flesh-eater. An Obeahman. He’s a collector of power.”

  The accusations make me want to be a kid again. Why isn’t my mommy calling them big fat liars? The seriously, completely wrong pants-on-fire kind? But my mother is standing silent, listening to all of this, and not disagreeing.

  “You’re saying he’s been with me the whole time.” I feel sick.

  “I’m saying that the athame is just like the stuff we take into this shop. He’s been with it.” Morfran looks somberly at Anna. “And now he wants her.”

  “Why doesn’t he do it himself?” I ask wearily. “He’s an eater of flesh, right? Why does he need my help?”

  “Because I’m not flesh,” Anna says. “If I were I’d be rotten.”

  “Bluntly put,” Carmel observes. “But she’s right. If ghosts were actually flesh they’d be more like zombies, wouldn’t they?”

  I start to waver by Anna’s side. The room is spinning slightly, and I feel her arm come around my waist.

  “What does any of this matter, right now?” Anna asks. “There’s something to be done. Can’t this discussion wait?”

  She says that for my benefit. There’s an edge of protection in her voice. I look at her gratefully, standing by my side in her hopeful white dress. She’s pale and slender, but no one could mistake her for weak. To this Obeahman, she must look like the feast of the century. He wants her to be his big retirement score.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I say.

  “You’re going to have to,” Morfran says. “If you want to stay alive yourself.”

  That doesn’t sound good. “What are you talking about?”

  “Obeah is not my specialty. It’d take more than six years to do that, Julian Baptiste or no. But even if I was, I can’t take that hex off of you. I can only counter it, and buy you time. But not much. You’ll be dead by dawn, unless you do what he wants. Or unless you kill him.”

  Beside me, Anna tenses, and my mom puts her hand to her mouth and starts to cry.

  Dead by dawn. Okay, then. I don’t feel anything, not yet, except for a low, weary hum all through my body.

  “What’s going to happen to me, exactly?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Morfran replies. “It could look like natural, human death, or it could take the form of poisoning. Either way I think you can expect some of your organs to start shutting down in the next few hours. Unless we kill him, or you kill her.” He nods at Anna and she squeezes my hand.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I say to her. “I’m not going to do what he wants. And this suicidal ghost schtick is wearing a little thin.”

  She lifts her chin. “I wasn’t going to suggest that,” she says. “If you killed me, it would only make him stronger, and then he would come back and kill you anyway.”

  “So what do we do?” Thomas asks.

  I don’t particularly like being a leader. I don’t have much practice at it, and I’m much more comfortable risking just my own skin. But this is it. There’s no time for excuses or second-guessing. In the thousand ways I pictured this going down, I could never have imagined it like this. Still, it’s nice that I’m not fighting alone.

  I look at Anna.

  “We fight on our own turf,” I say. “And we pull a rope-a-dope.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A more ramshackle operation I’ve never seen. We’re driving in a nervous little caravan, stuffed into beat-up cars that leave dark exhaust trails, wondering if we’re ready to do whatever it is that we’re going to do. I haven’t explained the rope-a-dope yet. But I think that Morfran and Thomas at least suspect what it is.

  The light is starting to get golden, coming at us sideways and getting ready to turn sunset colored. Getting everything into the cars took forever—we have half of the occult merchandise from the shop packed into Thomas’s Tempo and Morfran’s Chevy pickup. I keep thinking of nomadic native tribes, and how they could pack up an entire civilization in an hour to follow some buffalo. When did human beings start acquiring so much crap?

  When we get to Anna’s house, we start to unload, lugging as much as we can. This is where I meant when I said “our own turf.” My own house feels tainted, and the shop is too close to the rest of the populace. I mentioned the restless spirits to Morfran, but he seems to think they’ll scuttle off into a dark corner at the presence of so many witches. I’ll take his word for it.

  Carmel gets into her Audi, which has been sitting here the whole time, and dumps out her schoolbag, emptying it so she can fit bunches of herbs and bottles of oil inside. I feel okay, so far. I still remember what Morfran said, about the Obeah getting worse. There’s an ache forming in my head, right between my eyes, but that might be from impacting against the wall. If we’re lucky, we’re accelerating the timeline enough so the battle will be over before his curse even becomes a factor. I don’t know how much use I’ll be, if I’m writhing around in agony.

  I’m trying to stay positive, which is strange, as I tend to brood. It must be this whole leader of the pack thing I’m trying on. I have to look well. I have to appear confident. Because my mother is worried to the point of prematurely graying, and Carmel and Thomas look way too pale, even for Canadian kids.

  “Do you think he’ll find us here?” Thomas asks as we pull a sack of candles out of his Tempo.

  “I think he’s always known exactly where I am,” I say. “Or, at least he always knows where the knife is.”

  He looks back over his shoulder at Carmel, still gently packing bottles of oil and things floating in jars.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have brought them,” he says. “Carmel and your mom, I mean. Maybe we should send them somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t think there is such a place,” I say. “But you could take them, Thomas. You and Morfran could take them and hole up somewhere. Between the two of you, you could put up some kind of fight.”

  “What about you? What about Anna?”

  “Well, we seem t
o be the ones he wants.” I shrug.

  Thomas scrunches his nose up in order to push his glasses higher on his face. He shakes his head.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Besides, they’re probably as safe here as anyplace else. They might get some crossfire but at least they’re not alone, sitting ducks.”

  I look at him fondly. The expression he wears is sheer determination. Thomas is absolutely not naturally brave. Which makes his bravery all the more impressive.

  “You’re a good friend, Thomas.”

  He chuckles. “Yeah, thanks. Now do you want to let me in on this plan that’s supposed to keep us from getting eaten?”

  I grin and look back at the cars, where Anna is helping my mother with one arm and carrying a six-pack of Dasani water in the other.

  “All I need from you and Morfran is a binding when he gets here,” I say while I continue to watch. “And if there’s anything you can do to bait the trap, that would help too.”

  “Should be easy enough,” he replies. “There are tons of summoning spells used to call energies, or to call a lover. Your mom must know dozens. We’ll just alter them. And we can charge some cord for binding. We could modify your mom’s barrier oil too.” He’s got his brows knit as he rambles off requirements and methods.

  “Should work,” I say, though for the most part I have not a clue what he’s going on about.

  “Yeah,” he says skeptically. “Now if you can just get me one point twenty-one gigawatts and a flux capacitor, we’ll be in business.”

  I laugh. “Doubting Thomas. Don’t be so negative. This is going to work.”

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  “Because it has to.” I try to keep my eyes wide open as my head really starts to pound.

  * * *

  Two fronts are set up in the house, which hasn’t seen this much movement since … possibly ever. On the upper level, Thomas and Morfran are shaking a line of powdered incense along the top of the stairs. Morfran’s got his own athame out, cutting the sign of the pentagram in the air. It’s nowhere near as cool as mine, which I’ve got in its strung leather sheath, slung over my shoulder and across my chest. I’ve been trying not to think too much about what Morfran and Thomas said about it. It’s just a thing; it’s not some inherently good or inherently evil artifact. It has no will of its own. I haven’t been hopping around and calling it my Precious all these years. And as for the link between it and the Obeahman, it’ll sure as hell get severed tonight.