Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (47 page)

I popped the trunk, set my teeth, and launched out of the car, dragging my backpack with me. The cold wind dropped slightly and
the snow seemed to increase, falling furiously straight down, less fluffy and more like ice pellets. I spat on the lower edge of the
window,
slapped my note to it, wedged the edges of the paper into the weather stripping, and waited a second for it to freeze there. Then I
marched to the back of the car, still looking for Schenk’s headlights. The box of evidence was now sealed with a strip of red tape. I broke the seal with the pencil, and tucked it inside the box in case I needed it again. I spotted a first aid kit in a black bag in the corner. I rummaged through it and emptied the whole thing into my backpack. There was a crowbar along the right edge of the trunk. I hefted it in one gloved hand, feeling a bit like I was stalling, wondering if I’d survive if I actually needed a fucking crowbar to fight off a poltergeist. On
one hand, a crowbar was good enough for Gordon Freeman to fight off an army of mutated horrors in
Half-Life
. On the other, I pictured
Mama-Captain using it to clobber me the way she’d used the Twizzlers, or
her Spoon of Doom. Reluctantly, I put it back, knocking a roll of something to one side: bright yellow reflective tape. I grabbed the tape and ripped off a long strip, slapping it on my chest. I tore
several others, wrapping them around my forearms, and one more that I tried to slap to my back but ended up across my shoulders. Good enough. I’d be visible in the storm. Kind of. Or at least I'd be a half-assedly decorated and slightly more easily-found corpse. I slammed the trunk closed, knocking off a wedge of snow that had already collected on top.

I took one long, hopeful look down the road for Schenk. “Last chance, officer.” I checked my phone’s GPS for guidance, waited a beat longer, and then started away from the car, heading for the entrance.

Someone had closed the New Red Hook Cemetery gate and secured it with a padlock. This was a rather amusing symbolic
gesture
since the gate only extended twenty feet on either side of the road before going to overgrown, brown hedges. Entrance to the
graveyard was a pain in the butt but hardly impossible. I set the evidence box
on top of the hedge, tossed my backpack over it, and then began muscling through, kicking down hard with my boots to snap
branches. The wind shoved me back once, slamming into me with a bracing force. I gritted my teeth and snarled at it, which didn’t do much to
help but felt really good. If the hedge had been green I’d have taken energy from the leaves, but the leaves were long gone. Any crisp
leaves that stubbornly held their post were snatched away to go skittering across crusted snow.

Driven forward by the stubborn determination to beat Mama-Captain to Father Scarrow, I plunged out the other side of the fence, reclaimed my backpack, slung it on my shoulder, and grabbed the evidence box. To generate some much-needed heat, I started to run, awkwardly at first, but finding my stride through the calf-high snow on what I assumed was the road, since the snow here was a foot lower than the surrounding humps. I hustled, wishing for the
schlip schlip schlip
of the snow suit, longing for Harry’s added strength, or some witchy sources of warmth, thinking,
Man, magic fucking blows in
the Great White North
. I hadn’t noticed the giant gap in my abilities any other winter, but to be fair, every other winter I generally wasn’t outside chasing shadows. I was usually just chasing brownies with espresso.

I reached the fence on the far side, marking the few tall
headstones
I recognized from my last visit; an obelisk for a town founder, a weeping angel for a fallen nun, a tall cross for a war hero. Here I paused and checked my phone. No messages, no texts. I checked the
GPS and texted my current coordinates to Schenk. When there was no reply, I
assumed he was a good driver and was being cautious. I put my phone in my front pocket for easy access and went to the gap in the
fence.

The last time I’d been here there had been hard-packed trails
leading down a slippery, treacherously steep and uneven path full of ankle-
snapping rocks and mud holes. Now, that was all covered with snow. It looked to be all one height, but I knew that to be false.
Hidden under this drift was a plunging path. No sign that Father Scarrow had been
here before me. I looked back the way I’d come, the places I knew I’d stepped. Next to the obelisk, my footprints were still visible, but beyond that, to the tall cross, to the angel forever sobbing into
cupped hands, there was almost no sign that I’d been here, beyond some faint and
fading ruts in the thick white cover. I took a deep breath and plunged into the drift, stomping firmly with my boots to find solid ground. The ground dropped suddenly, but I expected it and kept
my footing. For a few steps the snow reached my hips, but then I was through the drift and onto steadier ground. It wasn’t long before I wished I had stayed in the car.

The pond came into view. The blue forensic tent had been left up, but the storm had shoved it half aside. I imagined Mother Nature laughing at the foolish attempts of man to hold back her
forces and tossing the structure out of her way. It was now a crumpled blue
thing mostly buried in the snow on the shore, one corner of tarp flapping madly against several jutting rocks. The wind was at my back now, pushing me onward, and I leaned back against it, sure that what I would find ahead was not something I wanted to be
rushing toward.

I was right. My feet came to a full stop. I put the box down and let the backpack fall off my shoulder. It was a good thing that Mr. Merritt wasn't within earshot.

They stood there, some more solid than others, vapors and shades hovering a foot and a half above the frosty water, marking their final resting place like sentinels. Hundreds of silent apparitions, unmoved by the raging wind; their white, misty faces were barely
more than vague impressions staring at nothing. Even the best sketch artist would
have produced little in the way of identifying features with most of them, but here and there I could see a narrow chin or a broad
forehead. The one closest to me was slim and angular.

My breath left me and my mouth dropped open. A crowd of ghosts populated the space above the pond. There was still no sign of Scarrow, dead or alive. The water level in the pond seemed low. For as far as I could see, under the floating spectral shapes, the water appeared no more than calf deep. I could now see where I couldn’t the last time I had been here, the light brown soil beneath the water,
lumpy and uneven, speckled with white-grey chunks of broken cement, old tombstone bits, and slime-coated limbs of trees. Lightning flashed overhead followed by an immediate crack of thunder. I cut my eyes to
the ghosts. No reaction. They didn’t move, flinch, grow, shrink,
nothing. They just hovered there, staring. Waiting.

I dug out my phone, pulled off a glove and shoved it in my
snow-crusted pocket, hissed at the painful cold on my bare hand, and started pushing the button to take pictures. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. When I got to a hundred, I sent the last one to Batten then dialed his number.

He answered with, “Is that what I think it is?”

“What the fuck do you think it is?” I asked over the wind, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them, the sight was still the same.

“Um, ghosts?”

“Yeah,” I said, unable to form a wittier reply.

“How many?”

“Based on a prior conversation with a triple-x exorcist ex-
priest?” I
tried to remember the exact number, and ended up with, “Six
hundred sixty-something.”

Batten sounded unhappy. “You’re doing something stupid right now, aren’t you?”

“I’m talking to you, so that's a given. But I'm also saving
someone’s life.”
Hopefully
.

“By being stupid.”

“No,” I said sourly, squinting through the snow and wind.

Batten warned, “I don’t own a black suit.”

Liar.
“You’re not going to need one.”

“Not writing your eulogy.”

“You won’t have to,” I promised. “But just in case I’m about to die,” I grinned into the storm, “talk dirty to me.”

“Jesus fuck.”

“No, nicer. Be romantic and shit. We can get to the kinky role-play later.”

“Marnie…” He sighed long into the phone. “Get the fuck out of there, please.”

I bit my bottom lip. “Oh, how I would love to. If there was anyone else who could do this,” I trailed off and scowled against the
blowing grit. The snow was like sand; tiny and hard, it hissed against the
accumulation on the ground. The few buckthorn trees clustered
around the shore thrashed in the wind. “There’s a man out in this shit who thinks he doesn’t need help.”

“Maybe he doesn’t.”

“And maybe he does,” I said. “I didn’t call you to talk me out of this. I called you to get me all hot and bothered before I bite the big one. Don’t let me die all cold and lonely. Where’s your heart? Have mercy, dude.”

I thought I could actually hear his eyes roll. “Let me get some privacy, Weirdzilla.”

My heart skipped a beat. “The dead guys are at rest. Sex me up, pal.”

“Meh,” he said warily. “Your brother’s a telepath, and he’s been fighting rest lately. I don’t trust him.”

“Make with the words,” I said.

“Let me make sure Chapel’s not still here, Snickerdoodle. Hold your horses.”

I stamped my feet, and started toward the shoreline, watching the ghosts to make sure none of them so much as looked at me. They stared in unison at the hill behind me, like they were waiting for something. “Hurry up, man, I’m ten feet from a battalion of entities from beyond the veil, for fuck’s sake.”

“They can’t hurt you, right?”

“Uh…” I scrunched my face under my ski mask and the pain
was definitely not fucking off yet. I paused in my stride until the discomfort subsided, then continued forward. “Well, I wouldn’t say that anymore. Let’s just say I may have papers to write when I get home.”

The ghosts stared through me like I didn’t exist, or they hadn’t noticed me.
Yet
, my mind teased. Their filmy forms did not stand in an even, military formation, but scattered here and there, and though they faced the
same direction, they didn’t seem to be aware of their surroundings or one
another.

Until the first one turned to look directly at me.

My throat closed around a strangled little squeal
.
The spirit dipped its chin to take a closer look at me without a change in expression; it didn’t seem to care that I was there, but I was
absolutely sure that it was aware of me.

I opened my mouth to say something to Batten but what came out was, “Mr. Ghost, Sir? Scientific theory states that you are lost and unaware of the physical realm.” Heart hammering in my chest, I sidestepped twice to the left along the jumble of snow-covered rocks. The apparition turned, a smooth motion that did not require limbs,
to follow me with its gaze. “Nope, see, you just broke the rules,
there. You’re not supposed to see me.”

Batten said something in the phone but it crackled and cut out. I looked down at the phone and watched the signal drop from four bars to two, one, and then I lost the call.

“Sir,” I whispered tersely at the ghost, “you may have just cost
me my last corporeal nookie. Now, I don’t know if phone sex is a thing after death, but I will never forgive you if that bitch kills me today. Shame on you for denying a girl the last groin-tickle of her
life.”

I waggled my phone at him, and then checked the bars. My
signal
bar was dancing up and down erratically. I thumbed the GPS; I had enough signal for that, apparently, and I texted the numbers as
quickly as I could to Schenk in case I was about to lose my phone entirely.

“If I wasn’t searching for a dumbass exorcist, I’d get video of you breaking the rules, there, Casper.” I took a deep breath to calm myself. “I owe Father Scarrow and his doodads an apology.”

If Scarrow wasn’t lying dead in the spot where we’d found Britney and Barnaby’s MUCE-covered corpses, then where the hell
was he? I couldn’t stay out here and wait all day. Call Mama-Captain to her grave, here? Call to John Briggs-Adsit? Release the spirits back to beyond the veil? The ring in my pocket began to pulse with warmth and I thought,
Dream on, demon, I’m not giving these innocent souls to you. But thanks for warming my crotch.

If I called Mama-Captain with the lacrimosa, would she come? Would she shove it down my throat and kill me? I went back to the evidence box, moving slowly in case it was possible to startle a herd of ghosts into a stampede.
What’s a herd of ghosts called?
the scientist in me asked.
You knew this, once. You don’t know it now?
And in my mother’s voice, I thought,
What good are you, Marnie-Jean?

The spirit closest to the evidence box turned again to watch me, and I slowed to a tentative creep.
A host of angels
, my brain began, stubbornly working on this question instead of dealing with whatever
the hell was brewing before me.
A racket of banshee, a scamper of
boogeymen
… The ghost’s mouth began to open. It sank slowly, revealing black empty space purling with white mist that spilled out. The ghost next to him flinched and turned to face him.
A congress
, I thought, not in the least
bit relieved that it had finally come to me.
A congress of ghosts
. One by one, several dozen other ghosts in the congress faced the gaping
one, as if sensing something wrong.