Unholy Ghosts

Chapter Five

Her skin crawled just touching the thing, but she wanted to try and see if she could make out anything of the complex pattern around the edge. Runes, maybe? They weren’t supposed to memorize the runes—part of their power lay in the concentration it took to copy them—but it was impossible not to recall some of them, and a few of these symbols were familiar. The rest could have been invented, placeholders to confuse the curious or those unlucky enough to stumble across the copper piece, but somehow she didn’t think so. The amulet was too powerful for that, and there were many magical alphabets Church employees were forbidden to learn.

Edsel might know, but she couldn’t go to him until Sunday. Tomorrow was Saturday, Holy Day, and she’d need to be at Church for most of it.

She tucked the coin in her black box on the bookcase and said a few words of power, hoping it would be enough. Usually magic’s edge of unpredictability fascinated her, but it didn’t seem so much fun when it came to items like these. Who knew what energies might be manifesting in the amulet, how they might affect her and her home?

“Okay,” she said, turning. “Has it stopped bleeding?”

“Aye, looks like it.” Terrible peeled the thin towel away from the wound on his arm and inspected it. “I be right, Chess. Ain’t you worry.”

“Let me see.” The bleeding had stopped, but the gouge in his skin from where the fence had caught him, too, looked deep and ugly. He’d saved her life. The least she owed him was some antiseptic.

An almost-full bottle of it rested in her bathroom cabinet. The sharp medicinal scent stung her nose as she soaked a clean cloth with it and pressed it against his wound. His arm twitched but did not move as she finished cleaning it and put a fresh pad over it, taping it into place.

“Sorry about the pain.”

He shrugged. “Had much worse.”

Which reminded her. She crossed back into her small, dingy kitchen and grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the fridge, then another for Terrible.

Awkward silence descended as they sat and sipped their water.

But what was she supposed to talk about with him? She barely knew him. Nobody really knew him. Nobody really wanted to. Better to run when they saw him coming.

He cleared his throat, gulped his water, cleared his throat. “Nice place.”

“Thanks.” It wasn’t, really. It was bare, and plain, and dull, except for the enormous stained-glass window taking up one entire wall. But if she’d been forced to spend most of her time in the gynecological horror chamber that was Bump’s place, she probably would have thought it was nice, too.

“So what you think, Chess? You think Chester haunted?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d like to look at it during the day.”

“On the morrow?”

“I have church. Saturday.”

“Right. You not there they miss you, aye?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded slowly and got up, taking his water with him. “I talk to Bump, give him what happened. Come to his place on the early. He’ll front you.”

“Thanks.”

Sleep was out of the question when he left. Looked like she’d be pulling an all-nighter whether she wanted to or not. She shrugged and started chopping out another line. Might as well enjoy herself, watch some movies, dye her hair—her reddish roots were starting to show under the black—before Church in the morning.

Normally she arrived at church before the Reckonings started, in order to avoid having to watch. This morning she’d been busy organizing her CDs, so citizens with bags of ripe fruit and sticks greeted her when she finally stepped onto Church property at five to nine.

They weren’t looking at her. They barely even noticed her, but she still felt exposed, as if they were all watching her from the corners of their eyes, waiting for her to turn her back so they could curse her and beat her. It was hard to remember sometimes that they wouldn’t, that that part of her life had ended the day she entered the Church training program.

Two Minor Elders led the first Penitent into the square, a large man with a heavy beard. His bare, dusty feet shuffled across the pavement toward the stocks, but the look on his face belied his body’s reluctance. He couldn’t wait to be abused, couldn’t wait to be cleansed by filth. Easy answers made everyone happy. Idly she wondered what he’d done. Broken an oath, told a lie? An information crime, perhaps? He didn’t wear the gloves of a thief, so she guessed his infraction was a moral one; adultery, or lying, perhaps.

Chess didn’t stop, crossing the square past the enormous stone 1997 Haunted Week memorial, remembering as always to dip her head in respect for the millions worldwide whose lives had been stolen.

She didn’t remember Haunted Week herself, she’d been only an infant. She only knew the ghosts hadn’t taken her own parents, whoever they were—or rather, that their death wasn’t the reason she was in the system. They’d given her up already. But the story of Haunted Week she knew, of course she knew, as everyone did. She could only imagine what it must have been like, people huddled together in churches and homes and schools, praying and crying, while silent ghosts, risen from their graves, moved through the walls in search of them. Stealing their lives. Armed with knives and broken glass, armed with ropes and hatchets and razors, their blank faces impassive as they killed.

She wasn’t the only one who saw the Church as her salvation, despite the few grumpy splinter groups who attempted to rebel in their small, largely useless ways. All of humanity—all that remained, a third of what the population had been before that fateful week—owed their lives to the only group, the only religion, that had been able to control and defeat the ghosts. Before Haunted Week—before the Church showed the world what Truth was—they’d been a tiny group, devoted to the theory and study of magic. Now they ran the world.

And she was part of it. It was the one thing in her life of which she was proud.

She pushed her way through the heavy iron doors so she stood in the cool blue entry hall of the Church of Real Truth.

It always felt a little like coming home, and why shouldn’t it? The only constant thing in her entire life had been this building. A different set of parents every couple of months, a different house, different siblings. Take your choice between being beaten or fucked by a series of Rent-a-daddies. But almost every Saturday she’d been brought here to listen to the Grand Elder, to learn the secrets of entering the city of the dead.

And of course, once they’d discovered she had some talent, it had become more than that. School, and the first place she’d ever been somewhat safe.

Her heels clicked across the tile floor. The sound followed her, a half beat behind her actual steps, rising up past the bare walls to the carvings around the ceiling. Skulls and shrieking faces on the west side, the beatific smiles of the rested dead on the east.

“Cesaria. Good morn to you.”

Elder Griffin opened the door to his office and stepped out into the hall. His dark blue velvet suit glowed in the dim light, emphasizing the pure white of his stockings over well-defined calves. The broad brim of his matching hat cast his face into shadow, making his smile float like the Cheshire cat’s.

He bowed over her hand. “You look tired, dear. Are you well?”

“Fine. Only…” She hesitated, but only for a moment. “I need a new case. I finished the Sanfords last night, I’ll turn in the file before I go.”

“But no bonus.”

She shook her head.

“Any trouble at the Sanfords’?”

Um…“Actually, I need a new psychopomp, too. This one appeared early. It’s not a problem, it’s fine,” she amended quickly, seeing the concern in his eyes. She did not want to be questioned on what had happened. “But I think the one I had would work better with a different Debunker from now on.”

“Talk to Elder Richards before you leave. Did you bring the old one with you?”

She nodded. “And then I’m ready for a new case. Please.”

“Is it your turn?”

“I think so. Please, Elder Griffin. I want to get started, I really…feel lucky.”

He thought for a minute, narrowing his black-ringed eyes. “Actually, something came in late last night. Come with me. Elder Murray is doing the service today, I’m just leading the Credo, so I have time.”

Light glinted off the silver buckles on his shoes as they clicked down the hall to the Reports Room, where Chess averted her eyes while he performed the necessary ritual to break the warding spell on the door. “I started the file this morning, haven’t gotten the financial reports yet. The Mortons, out in Trebor Bay. They claim to have been having problems for several weeks, but they’ve only just called.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Same old story.”

“Exactly. Here we go.”

Without the imposing figure of Goody Tremmell sitting behind it, the Reports Desk looked oddly empty, even with the jumble of loose papers and empty coffee cups scattered across it. The files stayed tucked in the long row of cabinets behind the desk; Goody Tremmell never allowed anyone but herself and the occasional Elder to go near them, much less touch them, and Holy Day was her day off. It felt like a violation simply to be in the room.

Griffin used an ornate silver key to open one of the drawers. Chess half-expected an alarm to sound, but the Elder simply selected a file and handed it to her, pushing the drawer closed behind him. “What happened to your hand?”

The wound she’d gotten from the amulet at the airport looked even worse this morning, jagged and red, so she’d wrapped her hand in a gauze bandage before heading in. She shook her head. “I cut myself opening a can of tuna, can you believe it?”

“You should have one of our doctors look at it.”

“It’ll be fine, thanks. It’s not deep, I just want to keep it clean.” Actually she suspected it was getting infected. Her entire hand throbbed.

“Well, if you change your mind let me know. You can probably get out there tonight.”

“Get—oh, the case. On Holy Day?”

“Go after sundown. We’ve made a dispensation to get caught up after the Festival.”

“Oh. Right.” The Church was still trying to get caught up, and so was she. The Festival meant work, work and sleepless nights, and more work. One week a year of penance, mourning, and rituals, long daylight hours in Church and longer dark hours at home with blood and herbs on the doors and windows to protect the citizenry, and her skin crawling with ghostly energy. Six nights, during which the dead again walked the earth, separated from the people they wanted to kill only by the Church’s knowledge and power.

It was scary, and difficult…but it certainly reminded people who was in charge. Not the Quantras with their useless protests, or the PRA with their attempts to use the Church’s own government branch to undermine the Church’s moral authority. Not the Marenzites with their threats or even the more sinister and effective Lamaru with their black magic and their complicated plots. All these groups wanted to be in control.

Only the Church was. And from the twenty-eighth of October to the third of November every year, they reminded the world very forcibly of that fact.

Elder Griffin smiled. “Take it, and see what you can do with it. Luck carry you.”

She tucked the slim manila folder into her bag to examine later and followed him back down to the Temple, where Elder Murray was discussing the importance of respect. She’d heard this one before, but she slipped into a seat in the back, making sure he saw her. Making sure they all saw her. Living away from the church complex put her under scrutiny enough—especially lately—without being seen to miss services.

Which reminded her. She wanted to see if there were any records on Chester Airport before she left.

Elder Griffin stood at the podium and swept off his hat, so the blue light in the room shone off his blond hair and turned it silver. The whites of his eyes floated in the black makeup ringing them. Chess bowed her head.

“I have no need for faith.” Hundreds of voices raised together, intoning the Credo; Chess imagined other Church buildings, other parts of the country, of the world, with everyone speaking in unison. “I do not need faith because I know the Truth. I do not need to believe. Belief is unnecessary when fact is Truth. I do not pray to a god. Prayer implies faith and gods do not exist. Only energy exists, and this is Truth. The Church shows me the Truth and protects me. If I hold to these Truths I will enter the City of Eternity, and there I will stay.”

By the time they reached the last words, voices echoed and crashed off the walls, joyous, emphatic, trusting. The room’s energy snaked over her skin and warmed her all the way through, as she knew it was doing for every Church employee. Sensitivity to such things was the first basic indicator of talent.

“Heard about the Sanfords,” someone whispered. “Bad luck, huh?”

She turned, glaring right into Agnew Doyle’s grinning face. He probably wouldn’t be grinning so cheerily if she slapped him, but this wasn’t the place. Doyle had caused her enough trouble already. She didn’t need to start fighting with him in the middle of the hall.

“Hey, wait. I just wanted to say sorry, Chessie. I heard this morning how it was a real haunting, and I thought—”

“You thought you’d get the full story, some good gossip to pass on?” Bodies brushed hers as people left the hall.

Church services were very short, as a rule. They didn’t need to be long. What mattered most was the swiping of identification cards to prove one had attended, to prove one was faithful; coming to services wasn’t mandatory, but everyone knew those who did had a better chance at getting good jobs, at getting their children into superior schools. What benefits the Church provided always went first to those who did their part.

No donations were solicited, no pleas for funding the way the old religions used to do. The Church protected the People, and the People paid their taxes to the Church. No middleman, no quibbling about how tax money was spent. It was spent the way the Church wanted to spend it, and if the People didn’t like it, there were hordes of malicious ghosts waiting in the City of Eternity, eager to rise again and murder the People should the Church decide to set them free.

Besides, the Reckonings were the real action. Nobody wanted to miss those, and you had to attend services to be admitted.

“That’s not fair. Just because—”

“You know what’s not fair, Doyle? That thanks to you half the people I work with think I’m a whore, that’s what’s not fair. Get out of my way.” Just the thought of being talked about, of having people know things about her, made her squirm. Technically she and Doyle hadn’t violated any rules—they were unmarried and of age—but being looked at, knowing her coworkers were picturing it in their heads…

“I didn’t tell anyone.” He reached for her arm, then pulled his hand back as if her skin burned. “Someone found out, that’s all I know.”

“Right. Sure. All those spies hiding in your bedroom.”

“Why would I tell? You’re not the only one people are looking at, you know. Somebody must have—” He glanced around the empty room, lowered his voice. “Somebody must have heard us.”

“So somebody is probably listening right now, too. I have to go. I have work to do.”

“You can’t have already gotten another case.”

“I did, and unlike some people, I really need this one. We don’t all get handed Gray Towers.”

“That was luck.”

“Luck and a besotted Goody, you mean.”

Gray Towers was a mansion on the outskirts of town with a reputation for being haunted. Unfortunately, the own ers had exploited that reputation, offering tours and going to the press with stories of various events—sounds, physical manifestations, even a psychic attack—making the case extremely high profile. Doyle had Debunked it. Rumor had it he’d earned close to a hundred thousand dollars, the biggest bonus ever given to a Debunker—ten times the basic single-ghost claim amount. Several others were fairly pissed about that one, not least Bree Bryan, who had been next in the case queue.

The corners of his lips turned down. “Why am I even discussing this with you? You don’t believe me, fine. Whatever. Have a great day, Chessie. Good luck with your new case.”

Watching him walk away was a mistake. The way his broad shoulders moved, the blue light bringing out highlights in his shoulder-length black hair…that hair was extremely soft, she remembered.

Following him was the fastest way to get to the Archives, but instead she took the longer route, heading out the door to the right past the elevator. This hall always made her skin prickle. She’d taken that elevator once—the long, slow journey below the earth’s surface, and the silent twenty-minute train ride to the city itself—on her first evaluation visit, and she didn’t have any real desire to do it again. That’s why she chose Debunking instead of Liaising. The City of Eternity wasn’t a fun place, at least not to her.

What everyone else saw as peaceful and happy, a long, well-earned rest, seemed cold and impersonal to Chess. Seemed like a lonely hell only slightly worse than the one she lived in every day. And no matter how hard she tried to understand what everyone else found so agreeable, she just…couldn’t. Another missing stitch in the fabric of her soul, another feeling she could not share with everyone else. Another thing that made her different and alone.

Past the elevator on the left were the stairs, rising in a tight circle nestled against the wall. The old iron rattled under her feet. Nobody ever used these stairs, or this hall, for that matter. Only the Liaisers, and they didn’t work on Holy Day.

Chess stopped about two thirds of the way up and dug for her pillbox. The extra Cepts she’d taken for the pain in her hand were making her drowsy, and this was probably the only place in the entire building where she could be certain no one would watch. There weren’t even security cameras here, not after the Liaisers raised a stink about being observed as they prepared for their journeys. Chess didn’t blame them. You had to go naked to the dead.

Her right hand didn’t want to obey, so she was forced to set the pillbox on the stair next to her and use her left hand to open the clasp. It would have to be her right hand she’d injured.

Inside the box was the little bag Bump gave her the night before. She took a long barrette from the inside pocket of her jacket. Its slide was just the right width for doing bumps, and had a convenient dip in the center. She pinched it between her left thumb and forefinger and scooped out a little of the powder. Her right thumb closed her nostril as she lifted the barrette.

“I’m telling you, something isn’t right.”

“Bruce, Bruce. You’re overreacting.”

Chess peered down between the bars of the stairs. What was the Grand Elder doing here with Bruce Wickman? Bruce was a Liaiser. They never seemed to talk to anyone but one another or the dead. And why talk here, instead of the Grand Elder’s office?

If they looked up they would see her. Good thing nobody ever did.

“I’m not, sir. The dead are…they’re unsettled. I’m not the only one who noticed. If you’d loan me some materials, I could speak to one of the old Debunkers’ spirits and see what they think.”

“What do you mean, unsettled?”

“Restless. Like something’s bothering them, scaring them. We’ve been having a hard time communicating with them.”

“Their Festival just ended two weeks ago. They always get like this when their week of freedom ends. Don’t you remember two years ago, Bruce, when they tried to escape three days after the gates closed? You were here then, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but this isn’t—”

The Grand Elder pressed his palm into the center of Bruce’s back. It looked friendly, but Bruce jerked forward a little. “I’ll look into it, Bruce. You tell the other Liaisers that I’m going to consider your request. But I’m sure things will go back to normal shortly.”

Bruce nodded unhappily while Chess tried to ignore the tiny flecks of ground Nip falling from her hairpin. Her foot itched but she didn’t dare move, not on these loud stairs.

So Bruce thought the City was unsettled? Hmm.

The Grand Elder did have a point. As the anniversary of Haunted Week drew near, the same astrological and atmospheric conditions that had allowed them to come back in the first place prevailed again; the planets aligned, the magical energy of the earth underwent its yearly shift, and in that space the power surged enough to give the ghosts what they needed to break through. The exact moment of alignment didn’t last long, of course, but it took a little time for everything to go back to normal.

Despite her unqualified affection for and respect of the Church, Chess had always wondered if the Festival was more than just a chance to remind people of their debt and celebrate the Church, was in fact unavoidable: the dead had to be released from the City in a controlled way, under Church-and-psychopomp guard, or they would escape on their own—with dangerous results.

Not that it mattered. The Festival happened, end of story.

“Okay, Grand Elder. I’ll tell them. But please…please consider it.”

“I will. Go on, now, Bruce. Facts are Truth.”

“Facts are Truth, sir.”

The itch was starting to sting. The Grand Elder stayed where he was, staring at the elevator doors. Why didn’t he just go already? He had places to be, and she had feet to scratch and uppers to snort.

“What frightens the dead?” he muttered, shaking his head. “What could scare the dead?”