Spectral Evidence

by Gemma Files

  It’s harder to kill yourself in M-vale than you might think, ‘specially if you’re dumb. But she’d managed it, nonetheless: Drank a bleach cocktail, industrial-strength, and crawled in between two heavy machines to wait it out, making sure nobody’d find her ‘til the worst was long over. She didn’t look too kissable afterwards, what with her mouth all gone blue and vomit in her long, blonde hair. Still, I bent down so we were nose-to-nose, shooting Curzon a glance that penetrated even his rhino skin; made him step back, shut the door halfway behind him, and give us some time alone.

  To this day, I’m not all too sure what I really felt for her, if anything—though I certainly did appreciate the effort she put into things of an intimate nature, ‘specially where I was concerned. But at the time, all I could think was—

  Guess she really did love me—how ‘bout that. I mean…fancy.

  Turns out, Maybelle didn’t just stay with me ‘cause I made it impossible for her to be elsewhere; she was mine ‘cause she wanted to be, all along. Unlikely. Surprising.

  …Depressing.

  Yet potentially useful, all the same.

  I rummaged ‘round in my bra for an empty aspirin bottle I’d found on the infirmary floor one day and managed to keep hid, a secret bit of inexplicable contraband saved for just such an occasion, through all the subsequent strip-searches in between. Slid my thumb to line both triangular childproof seals up, and popped the lid. After which I leant down to the china-pale curl of Maybelle’s ear, closed and dumb now as any empty snail-shell, and murmured into it:

  “O lenti, lenti curite noctus equii…come back to me but a spell, honey, ‘fore you go gentle into that good-night. Shed that cocoon on your way to wings. Break off just some tiny unnecessary bit of yourself and leave it here, for me, to remember you by.”

  Took but a second or two for my words to reach her, trailing down the snarled and fading synapses of her dead brain. And then I saw it right at the back of her throat, a dim light flickering between her stained teeth, on the necrotized black skin of her tongue—some merest fragment of sweet Maybelle Eileen Pine’s soul, like a fluttering luminous moth, snared in her very last wisp of earthly breath; dull as a sub-molecular Los Alamos half-spark, powerful beyond Oppenheimer’s fondest dreams yet struggling still against death’s inertial pull, its foul gravity. Trying blindly to force its way up to me who loved it, against all hope, or logic…

  I sucked what was left of Maybelle’s pathetic little soul in hard, lip to lip, so close I felt the bleach yet left there start to crisp my skin. Then spat it right back out into the aspirin bottle, along with a smear of my own black blood, to keep it trapped there ‘til I needed it. And: “Thank you muchly, baby girl,” I sang out, briskly, straightening again. “Never think, wherever you do end up, that I’m not grateful for your sacrifice—because I really, really am.”

  Like I said—hadn’t seen that one comin’, though maybe I should’ve. But I surely did appreciate the gesture, all the same.

  “Your jolt, Princess,” I told Samaire, much later, as I placed the bottle in her hands.

  —

  The riot broke out on a Tuesday, over in the mess hall—something about somebody either encroaching on somebody else’s territory or looking a bit too hard at someone else’s woman, which soon enough swelled to embrace the shank-wielding triple-header of all good prison conflicts: race, face, personal space. Not that I was there to witness it first-hand, of course…since I knew enough to avoid getting myself inconveniently locked down before all the fun began, I’d already made sure to turn Guard Curzon’s piggy eyes firmly back on me, long before that particular storm ever started to break.

  So here we were instead, in that same supply closet, deep in congress—his version thereof, anyhow—when the alarms went off; he jumped for his gun and stick, only to find ‘em suddenly both in my hands instead. Then went backing away from me at an awkward half-shuffle, with his pants down ‘round his knees and his dick flapping free, ‘til he ended up just where I wanted him—right overtop the most sinister of Abramelin’s squares, which S.L. MacGregor Mathers says “should never be made use of,” and must be buried in a place where the intended victim will walk over it in order to work to fullest capacity:

  CASED—overflowing of unrestrained lust;

  AZOTE—enduring;

  BOROS—devouring, gluttonous;

  ETOSA—idle, useless;

  DESAC—to overtake and stick close.

  The CASED square can render its wielder invisible, under the right circumstances (along with gaining them access to all nearby hidden treasures, works of art and statuary), so at first I’d thought of that…‘til the Princess herself had pointed out a peculiar secondary characteristic of the square which might be just as useful to our cause, given the restrictions we were laboring under. or even more so.

  As Curzon’s foot made contact, he froze stock-still, unable to shift a quarter-inch further either way. “Uh,” he said at the feel of it, intelligently. Then: “Oh, my God. What the good goddamn shit Hell?”

  I just smiled, feeling my own skin ripple as his form flowed up and over mine, from face to naughty parts and everything in between. “‘Lo, Erroll,” I said. “How’s it hangin’?”

  He gaped at me a while, not even resisting when I unbuttoned his shirt, shucked the rest of his pants down and gently encouraged him to kick his boots off, too, like some five-foot-ten toddler. Finally, he observed—with the stunned yet slightly self-pleased air of somebody who’s just figured out what the word hidden in that big Saturday morning paper jumble must be—

  “—You really are a witch.”

  “Yup. Now, how ‘bout takin’ one last ride on the ol’ skin snake, just for luck?”

  “…What?”

  “Aw, don’t fret, cupcake—you ain’t actually my type, anyhow. Sleep.”

  Thus, all tricked out in Guard Curzon drag, I hiked up “my” keybelt and headed for the workshop. Passed Guard Brenmer on the way—ensnared by a howling knot of women, caught in the very manhood-destroying act of getting beat down and having his shit took by unarmed vagina-bearers. “Erroll, help!” he yelled at me, as I went by; I shot him the double finger, and kept right on going.

  The Cornishes I found backed into a corner, shoulder to shoulder, kicking and punching at all comers like some well-trained Ultimate Fighter tag-team. And: “You two, warden’s office!” I yelled, discharging “my” weapon into the air, only to barely avoid being flattened in the resultant rush for the door.

  Which is how we finally came, at long last, to the point of the whole damn exercise: trading letters forth and back, each to each, like some calligraphy lesson from Hell, while Maybelle’s captive soul-fragment flickered and spat and flared in sympathy like a late-night TV-blue bug-light. While that same static charge buzz tuned up and down our bodies, meshing us together in a true witches’ cradle of probability strings, drawing sparks. I could see Dionne’s back-muscles twitch with tension, as the free ends of her hair started to lift; saw Samaire’s blue eyes darken yet once more as her bad blood rose to meet mine, studying me like I was some book she had to strain just in order to read, and wasn’t even sure she really wanted to, when all was said and done. But it wasn’t exactly like she could stop, either…

  And me looking right on back, thinking: Oh, you wanna think you’re like her, that you’re not like me…but truth is, Princess, it’s the whole other way ‘round, ‘cause the only thing you and Miss Dee really got in common’s the pussy you both slid out of. You just want to be normal, so bad it keeps you up nights, taste of it like a mouthful of blood; Hell, I can’t blame you for that. But one day, all those restraining tattoos, all that save-your-soul script you got all over you? They’re gonna just flare up and crisp off, like paper in fire…

  (Like a tower falling, struck by lightning, now and forever more. Like Babylon. Like Charn.)

  …Yeah. Just like that.

  And then, then—that’s when we’re really gonna get to see some fun.

&
nbsp; Charging each other up, winding that phantom winch of combined power ever higher, higher, higher. ‘Til our fingertips met across the paper and our heels began to lift, describing a slow, con-centric circle in the air like we was two antimatter planets drawn into orbit, an incipient black hole twisting reality’s fabric ‘til it bent and broke. A paradox waiting to happen.

  A howl of wind from nowhere, brisk and bleak and bone-stripping, as the lights pulsed and the sirens wailed on; it was completed, as that poor Daddy-betrayed fool Jesus Christ would say. The SATOR box was done.

  I laughed out loud, hair cracking like a whip. And heard Samaire yelling to Dionne even from the very depths of her frenzy, over it all: “Now, Dee, now—now now now now, do it do it do it—do it, do it goddamn now!”

  Dionne raised the square, snug in the whirling widdershins circle of our arms, and spoke the words, her merely human voice near to cracking with strain. And we were off, gone, spiraling fast through time and space, hovering through the fog and the filthy air—out of M-vale at last, chased and dragged by Abramelin’s devils and angels alike, while Maybelle’s soul blew/boiled off in the other direction with a thin, despairing cry…

  Samaire had her eyes closed, but Dionne had hers open; I made sure of that. So when I hove in to kiss Samaire, before either of them knew enough to protest—sudden as rape, my tongue hook-probing deep, scratching on hers like oh-so-voluptuous Velcro—there was no way Dionne could stop herself from doing just what she would have under any other circumstances: lunge to thrust herself between, SATOR box forgotten in her haste, still trailing from the same fist she was aiming for my jaw.

  It touched us both at once—repelling factor back on full, with no Maybelle for protection—and hurled us to the four winds’ tornado-churned quarters, faster than thought; Dionne one way, Samaire and I the absolute opposite. We came down hard, falling fast into black. Then awoke later—much later—all on the cold hill’s side…

  …with no one left near to hold onto, in this dim twilight world, but each other.

  —

  Samaire looked over at me, head hung down, her eyes like bruises. “Where’s…Dionne?” she managed, at last.

  “Dunno,” I said, fighting my own fair share of post-spell-travel nausea. “Could be…anywhere, really.”

  She shook her head. “The SATOR box…must’ve touched us. Thrown us…ugh, Jesus.” Rolling onto her knees, she heaved upwards, gained her feet and stood there, weaving. “Where…?”

  I shrugged—then spat, and wished I hadn’t. “Damn if I know. Sorta looks like…Alabama, I had to take a guess.” Clawed my own way to standing, using a handy tree, and tried a weak version of my normal charming grin out on her: “Aw, but don’t you worry none, pretty gal—given all that excitement we left behind us, I’ll bet you five bucks she already must’ve dropped it.”

  “You don’t get it, Alleycat. I need my damn sister!”

  And: For what, exactly? I could’ve said. ‘Cause you feel guilty you can do things she can’t, and never will? ‘Cause you’re so all-fired hot to get back to killin’ things that’re more like you than she’ll ever be, just ‘cause your old man taught you to? Same old man ended up turning your Momma into hash, as I recall, ‘cause he couldn’t stand having another creature’s fingerprints left on her…and that was just too bad, by Dionne’s standards, wasn’t it? Too bad for your Momma. Too damn bad for you…

  If this actually was Alabama, I knew a hill somewhere ‘round within walking distance where I could surely introduce her to the Daddy we both shared, for what I knew would be the first time. Put his one hand on the crown of her head, the other on her ankle, and know he’d answer each and every question she might have for him in between. We could be true sisters yet, dance at the Sabbat in our naked skins and sup on broiled corpse-flesh; ride the night astraddle like those carrion storm-birds of old Greece, seeking always for prey, and scour this land of any fool who dared think fire, or salt, or a whimpered prayer to some unhearing God would ever keep him and his safe for long from such as she and me.

  But: Looking at her now, I knew it was far too late for that. Her hands were clenched against me, closed and hard like her heart; them ropes of Crossing the River were dug in too deep between the layers of her skin for anything short of a roadside conversion to ever disarm ‘em—though it’d have to be one gained on the way to Dis, Hell’s own lead-walled capital city, ‘course, rather than on the way to Damascus.

  Ah well, I thought. And said, out loud—

  “Suppose you probably oughta go back for her, then. While you still can.”

  She knew what I’d done, then, without a doubt; got it all in one, like the brilliant bitch she was. And kept on looking at me nonetheless, appraisingly—less with hate than a vague sort of sorrow, albeit one which came liberally admixed with a caldera’s worth of barely-veiled, magma-hot rage.

  “…I’m gonna find you, too, Allfair Chatwin,” she told me, without much affect, as the air between her long fingers began to spark and whine again. “Eventually.”

  To which I nodded my head, briefly, in what probably looked—from her angle—like acceptance. And replied:

  “Oh, but not too soon, I hope. Princess.”

  —

  Took half a second for the rift to pop open again, behind her, and the other half to close once she’d stepped back through. Then I was all by my lonesome in the dark, dark woods once more, a state of affairs which sure did seem to call for immediate relocation—so I started out walking, whistling softly; an old holler tune my Momma always used to sing me, back in the day, on empty nights like these…

  Don’t the moon look pretty, shining down through the trees…/

  Said don’t the shining moon look pretty, Lord, shining down

  through the trees…/

  Oh, I can see my baby, Lord Lord Lord…but he can’t see me…

  I went looking around for a highway, found one. Started walking. And after a while—

  —well, that’s when you picked me up. Didn’t ya?

  Turn in here, darlin’.

  SPECTRAL EVIDENCE1

  “The dust still rains and reigns.”

  —Stephen Jay Gould, Illuminations: A Bestiary

  Preliminary Notes

  The following set of photographs was found during a routine reorganization of the Freihoeven Institute’s ParaPsych Department files, a little over half a year after the official coroner’s inquest which ruled medium Emma Yee Slaughter’s death either an outright accident or unprovable misadventure. Taken with what appears to have been a disposable drugstore camera, the photographs had been stuffed into a sealed, blank envelope and then tucked inside the supplemental material file attached to Case #FI4400879, Experiment #58B (attempts at partial ectoplasmic facial reconstruction, conducted under laboratory conditions).

  Scribbles on the back of each separate photo, transcribed here, appear to be jotted notes done in black ink—type of pen not readily identifiable—crossbred with samples of automatic writing done by a blue felt-tipped pen with a fine nib; graphological analysis reveals two distinct sets of handwriting. The original messages run diagonally across the underside of the paper from left to right, while the additional commentary sometimes doubles back across itself so that sentences overlap. Where indicated, supplementary lines have often been written backwards. Footnotes provide additional exegesis2.

  —

  1. Metaphorical license, naturally: Nothing here constitutes proper legal ‘evidence’ of anything, by any stretch of the imagination.

  2. All footnotes were compiled throughout March of 2006 by Sylvester Horse-Kicker, Freihoeven Placement Programme intern, at the request of Dr. Guilden Abbott.

  —

  Photograph #13:

  Indistinct interior4 of a dimly lit suburban house (foliage inconsistent with downtown Toronto is observable through one smallish window to left-hand side); the location seems to be a living room, decorated in classic polyester print plastic-wrapped couch 1970s style. A stuff
ed, moulting sloth (Bradypus pallidus), mounted on a small wooden stand, sits off-centre on the glass-toppped coffee-table.

  Notes: “House A, April. Apported object was later traced back to Lurhninger Naturalichmuseum in Bonn, Germany. occupants denied all knowledge of how it got there, paid us $800 to burn it where they could observe. Daughter of family said it followed her from room to room. She woke up in bed with it lying next to her.”5

  Commentary (Forwards): “Edentata or toothless ones: Sloths, anteaters, armadillos. Living fossils. A natural incidence of time travel; time travel on a personal scale, living in two places at once, bilocation. Phenomena as observed. I love you baby you said, I can’t do it without you, I cut the key, you turn it. But who opens the door, and to what? Who knows for sure what comes through?”6

  Commentary (Backwards): “Apports are often difficult without help, so try using lucifuges for guidance. Circle is paramount; Tetragrammaton must be invoked. They have no names.”7

  —

  3. Photographs, as indicated, are not themselves numbered; numbers assigned are solely the result of random shuffling. The fact that, when viewed in the order they achieved through this process, the eventual array appears to “tell a story” (Dr. Abbott’s notes, March 3/06) must be viewed entirely as coincidence.

  4. Most photos in the sequence are best described as “indistinct.”

  5. Research prompted by details in commentary has since indicated that “House A” may be 1276 Brightening Lane, Mimico, owned by William McVain and family. On April 15, 2004, at the request of McVain himself, Slaughter and her Freihoeven control partner, Imre Madach, were sent to investigate on-site poltergeist activity. Activity had apparently ceased by April 20, when they filed their report; the report contains no mention of monetary reimbursement for services, which the Freihoeven’s internal code of conduct (of course) strongly discourages.