Unholy Ghosts

Chapter Nineteen

She’d never been this far out of the city. Had the day been as bright and sunny as she’d pictured, it would have been a pretty drive. As it was she could barely see. The Chevelle’s wipers slapped a quick beat across the windshield and fog obscured any view there might have been. It felt as though they were hurtling through space, she and Terrible, talking occasionally while Chuck Berry came softly from the speakers and she made notes for her interviews with the Mortons later. Elder Griffin hadn’t been upset by her lack of progress, but she was, and seeing Randy Duncan hovering around again hadn’t made her feel better. He’d lost his edge, what little edge he’d had. She didn’t want to do the same.

“Do you know where we are?”

“How many times you gonna ask that?”

“Until we get there. We’ve been driving forever.”

“Not even an hour. You always this impatient?”

“I’m bored. I feel cooped up. It’s too foggy outside, I can’t see anything.”

“Ain’t much to see.”

“How do you know?”

“You the only one in this car never been out the city.”

“I’ve been out of it. Just…not in a long time.”

“Not much purpose in it. Not much out here, not anymore.”

As if to illustrate this, he slowed down to make a turn. Through the mist loomed a blackened, craggy shape; the remnants of what had once been a church, one of the many destroyed by furious citizens when Haunted Week finally ended. The country was littered with these brick and granite corpses, silent testaments to a system of belief that had served mankind for centuries but ultimately proved as worthless and obsolete as a black-and-white television.

“Roll down yon window some,” he said.

“But it’s raining.”

He raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. “Ain’t say open it wide.”

They seemed to be rolling through a neighborhood now. She could barely make out the shadows of buildings at regular intervals, and he’d slowed to about forty. Maybe he wanted to throw things out of the car? Whatever. She grabbed the crank and gave it a half turn.

“What is that smell?”

“The ocean.”

“Doesn’t smell like the ocean.”

“Naw, don’t smell like the bay, what you used to. That’s the for real ocean, Chess. Ain’t it sweet?”

It was. She’d never smelled anything like it. Tangy and salty, with an undercurrent of sour fish that should have been nauseating but somehow made her feel clean instead.

“Are we going to see it?”

“Guessing, aye. Look like your friend live down on it.”

“He’s not my friend.”

“Let’s hope he ain’t an enemy. This don’t have the right feel to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just we don’t know the man. You don’t know him, and I don’t know him, and he maybe knows too much himself about some shit nobody want to be involved in if they got their sanity working right.” He made another turn, then swung left onto a road Chess imagined would have been almost invisible even on a clear day. It couldn’t even be properly called a road, really, more like a track, two shallow ditches winding through tall brown grass. The Chevelle rattled and bumped over it like a lumbering insect, finally coming to a halt by the edge of a cliff.

“We here,” Terrible said, and he did not sound happy about it. She knew he was right. She wasn’t really sure why she was in such a good mood, unless it was Lex’s excellent speed. Certainly there wasn’t much for her to be so cheery about. Edsel’s warning that he didn’t know much about Tyson came back to her, a warning she should heed. Edsel was her friend; if he said she should be careful, she should.

Just the same, she was cheery. Or at least she wasn’t depressed, which was a victory in itself. Drugs or not, she hadn’t felt this good in a long time. Which meant it was time to make sure she didn’t come down unexpectedly.

“Hold on a minute.” She closed her window and brought out Lex’s Baggie and her hairpin. “You want some?”

“Naw, thanks. Jerky enough out here. Ain’t the city, feels empty.”

She shrugged and bumped up, then tucked everything back in her purse as he came around to open her door. The fresh-smelling wind caught her full in the face, and she sniffed it and her drugs down in one long deep inhalation that sent sparkles all the way to her toes.

And there was the ocean, in front of her, stretching out into the fog like a piece of napped gray velvet. Her hair whipped around her face and stole the view. She pushed it back with an impatient hand and closed her eyes, lifting her chin, letting the wind wash her clean.

“Can we touch the water when we’re done? Before we go, I mean?” Smiling, she turned to him, but he looked down before she could catch his eye and started digging in his shirt pocket for a cigarette.

“Aye, if you’re wanting,” he mumbled, turning away from her to light up. “C’mon, let’s get this done.”

The cliffs hunched over Tyson’s little house, sheltering it from some of the rain and giving it the appearance of a troll crouching under a heath. Chess almost expected it to leap out at her, and her mood went from unusually good to cautious and tense in the space of an eyeblink. Edsel’s warning reverberated through her head, and this time it caught her. She wondered what exactly Tyson purchased from him. She decided she was very, very glad she had Terrible with her.

That thankful feeling grew as they walked across the flat stones laid in a path to the front door. Each one was carved with runes, most of which she knew but a few she didn’t. One in particular sent a shivery tingle up her leg when she stepped on it, like someone had rung a bell in her veins.

In the doorframe were more runes and symbols carved deep into the wood. Totem images and swirls, letters in some of the ancient alphabets, pentacles…too many for her to take in before the door swung open and Tyson stood framed before them.

Something slithered behind his eyes, clouding them smoky gray like an overcast sky for a second before they normalized again. But Chess had seen it, and the hair on her nape stood on end. Tyson was not human, not entirely. Whether he’d been born that way or whether he’d made himself what he was through dealing with the Underworld she did not know, and she hoped she wouldn’t find out.

He rubbed the palm of one surprisingly large hand over his short white hair. Now that she’d had a second to adjust she realized he wasn’t old, as she’d first imagined. He might have ten years on her, possibly twenty, but not more. His small, stooped frame had been bent by something other than age.

“Thou must be Cesaria,” he said, his voice pouring over her like whiskey. “And thou has brought an escort. A guard?”

“Just a friend,” she said.

“Awfully big friend, is he not?” Tyson looked Terrible up and down, a shifty half-smile playing on his lips, then shrugged. “Aye, welcome in. Edsel sayest thou needs information? About some runes?”

“Yes.”

He bowed and stepped back, sweeping his right arm wide to usher them in. “I have information, indeed.”

For a moment the size of the place made her dizzy. Had he somehow subverted the rules of physics, made his little hut bigger on the inside? Then she realized why the room smelled of dusty rock, dry and powdery in her nose. With the exception of the weathered wood front wall, the rest of the house was made of stone. He’d tunneled back into the cliffs. She made a mental note not to walk farther back if she could help it. The thought of all that heavy rock—and one BT muscle car—with absolutely nothing to keep it from falling…

Focusing on the house itself did nothing to put her at ease. Shelves lined every wall, stuffed full with jars and bottles, with bones and feathers and fur. Why did this man shop at Edsel’s, when he had virtually everything a spellcaster could ever want right here? Skulls from at least fifteen different animals on one wall, rows of various other parts on another. Jars of herbs stacked one on top of the other, three deep, intruded into the room from the back, framing a small black door that she imagined led to Tyson’s bedroom.

She turned around to see Terrible brushing cautiously at the objects hanging from the ceiling as he entered. Amulets and charms, all tied to colored ribbons and strings. They would have hit him in the face if he didn’t push them aside, but she could feel his reluctance to touch them and couldn’t blame him for it.

“I have made refreshments,” Tyson said. “Would thou care for some? A drink? A cookie?”

It should have been amusing, the offer of a cookie from a man whose eyes kept sliding into and out of gray and lived in a museum of sorcery. But his smile was a little too wide, a little too full of teeth. She couldn’t help but wonder what sort of cookie he might have made.

According to Church law, world-bound souls were not permitted to exist. The human host could be sent to prison, one of the special prisons where souls were tortured and escape was impossible. Chess wondered why Tyson did not seem afraid she might report him. Most tried to hide their binding. He did not.

“No, thank you,” she said, realizing he and Terrible were both watching her. “Can we just get down to business? I’m afraid I’m in kind of a hurry today.”

“Of course. The formalities are only that—formalities. Having dispensed with them we may conclude our transaction at any pace thou desires.”

“Um. Great.” She pulled out the amulet, wrapped in its tea towel. “I was hoping you would be able to decipher some of the runes on this, they—what?”

Tyson collected himself with some effort. His eyes smoothed back to gray as he forced the smile to leave his face, but Chess could still feel his amusement, could still hear his light laugh in the air. “I am sorry, Cesaria. Tell me, where did thou find this thing?”

“I can’t say.”

He nodded and held out one large hand, his too-slim fingers curving gently like seaweed in the tide. “May I hold it, please?”

She set it and the cloth in the center of his palm, hoping he didn’t notice her reluctance to touch his skin. He whipped the towel away, closing his fingers around the amulet and holding it up.

“Oh, aye,” he said. “It does its little job, does it not? Hmmm.” He brought it to his nose, stuck out his tongue for a taste. His eyes rolled back in his head. “Thou has given it blood, Cesaria.”

“It was an accident.”

He chuckled, like a clogged engine coughing its way into life. “Accidents do happen.” His hand snapped shut. “I can tell much of it. What shall I get in return? The book needs its sacrifice if it is to open.”

“What book? Can’t you just tell me?”

“The words cannot be spoken unless cast. Thou must read them, but not say out loud.”

Nothing good could possibly come of this. She saw herself at the door, saw Terrible behind her as they left and climbed back up the hill to his car, saw them hauling ass away from here and back to the city.

Then she saw Slipknot, with his body rotting more every minute and his soul trapped inside the maggoty, desiccated ruin, and she knew she could not go.

“What’s the price?” She picked up her bag, ready to dig into her wallet. For that matter, she was ready to make Terrible dig into his. Bump would be paying both of them back. This was his project, he could use his own damn money.

“Oh. Thou offers money.” Those extra teeth of Tyson’s glowed in the dim light. “The book does not require such cold sacrifice, dear. It asks for something more…Perhaps thou had better see. Wait here.”

Chess and Terrible exchanged glances as he got up and disappeared through that black door, the shiny gold and red fabric of his robe floating behind him.

“You ain’t get this learning any elsewhere?”

She shook her head.

He sighed. “Ain’t liking this, not one bit.”

She was about to reply when Tyson swept back into the room, holding a book flat in front of him. At first Chess thought Tyson had cut himself on something in the other room, that he either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. Then she realized the blood spattering onto his robe and absorbing into the dirt floor wasn’t his.

It was coming from the book.

It dripped dark and clotted from the covers and oozed out from the pages. Chess’s skin crawled. She did not want to read that thing, didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to go near it. Her palm burned and itched, the tattoos on her arms warmed as the book was brought closer to her.

Tyson nudged a small table with his foot and looked at Terrible. “Will thou bring it over?”

Terrible’s face did not move as he lifted the table and set it in front of Chess, but when his eyes met hers she read the message in them. He felt it, too, didn’t like this any more than she did.

It couldn’t be helped. She tried not to cringe away when Tyson set the bloody book on the table, forcing herself instead to reach for it. Tyson’s hand stopped her.

“Thou is sure? Thou is ready to touch the book?” His eyes gleamed.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Terrible stepped forward. “Give it me.”

“No. This isn’t your—”

“Ain’t having you do it, Chess. It’s why I come along, aye?”

Droplets of blood plunked onto the dirt, loud in the silence while she and Terrible looked at each other.

“One of thee decide, if it pleases,” Tyson said. “Charming as this little moment is, I haven’t got all day to watch.”

Chess reached out, but Terrible was faster. The tips of the fingers on his left hand brushed the cover, and the book flew open, scattering drops of blood everywhere, onto him, onto Chess, onto the walls and furniture.

She barely noticed. She could not tear her eyes away as the pages shifted, fluttered, brushing against Terrible’s hand, then finally falling open, clean and white. The blood was gone.

For a moment, anyway. Then it started again, spreading across the pages in a crimson flood, forming words and symbols that seemed to float above the parchment.

Terrible grunted softly, an uncomfortable sound, one she did not like. His hand, which had been resting on top of the book, seemed to shrink, to flatten, and she realized it was actually sinking in. The blood on the page now was his.

He sank to his knees, his face flushing, his eyes closed.

“Terrible? Terrible?”

He shook his head. “Ain’t…no…”

“Terrible!” She reached for him, meaning to pull his arm away, but Tyson’s voice stopped her.

“Thou had best get the knowledge,” he said. “Quickly, lest the book kill thy guard before thou do.”