Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (51 page)

“You okay? Gonna make it?” he shouted in the direction of my ear. I nodded rapidly. He took the bag from my teeth and zipped it open, flapping the map open, and sticking the bag back in my face. Without thinking I took it back between my teeth. He did a double-take, but left it for later comment. Vision blotted by snow, he read the map then oriented himself. He pointed at the ground about ten
feet off shore and yelled over the shrieking wind, “Elizabeth Briggs-Adsit was close to the fence, last one buried, plot ended up next to a farmer’s fence. Handwriting here says ‘stone knocked down by cow, 1918.’”

“Show me how far out.”

“The Briggs-Adsit plot should be there. Really hard to tell
exactly. So much has changed.” He pointed at a spot on the map which was blurring because of the water, and then pointed about seven feet to his left. “Now what?”

The sky darkened as Mama-Captain grew furiously above us,
sucking heat from every available source. We’d be next. Why we
weren’t first, I’ll never know, but will be forever grateful to the mechanics of ghostly manifestation. I took the bag out of my mouth.

“Ignore her,” I yelled back, bringing the bag forward and
shaking the skull chunks. “First, we return John’s skull to his body.” I paused to pinch my lips shut and hug the bag into the shelter of my body as a massive wave hit me, threatening to spill me on my ass. I threw my shoulders into it and managed to stay upright, then shook the water
out of my hair and shouted, “We need to find the rest of their
bones.”

With the ghostly fingers tearing at the map, Schenk shook his head. “Impossible. There could be ten feet of silt and mud and rocks to dig through.”

I showed him my bare hands. “This part’s my job.”

“You’ll have to go under,” he said, his brow furrowing deeply. “Under the dead people water.”

I flapped my hair out of my face and yelled through the wind, “You said it wasn’t dead people water!”

Before he could answer the wind blasted down at the water, throwing sheets of icy spray off the pond. “I was trying to make you feel better.”

“Convection microburst!” I yelled, holding onto his sturdy arm to brace myself against the wind shear. “Get away from the tree.”

“Is she doing this?”

I didn’t have time to work out the possibilities of cold air sink and convection caused by incorporeal human entities in any sort of scientific fashion, because panic was rattling through my brain as if a pinball wizard was at the paddles. I answered, very simply, with my gut feeling. “Yes.”

I clutched the bag of skull fragments, took two breaths in and out, heaved in a deep, final breath, and dove under the water
towards the Briggs-Adsit plot.

The water was turbulent and churning and sluggish with slush. I
could barely see, and there were obstacles in my way, chunks of cement and bricks that mimicked broken headstones and grave
markers. I had to come up for a quick gulp of breath and then dive beneath again, to do another rapid, scrambling search for the marker, if there even was one. I began to doubt I’d find anything and pushed up for another breath when I spotted something half sunk in the mud, a rounded
stone. I stuck my foot on it, went up to gulp air, and thrust down
again, left hand first. My palm hit the marker and I summoned a hot
burst of psi to explore the stone. What I felt wasn’t Mama-Captain and her homicidal wrath, it was John’s cowering in cold, lonely
terror.

I shoved my arms down into the mud, making room for the bag of skull fragments, pressing it down as best I could. The swirling, bitingly cold water stung my eyes. I pulled extra mud on top of the burial spot. The frosty slush in the water felt like death’s cold fingers
in my hair. When I was sure the bag would stay under the mud, I pushed off and surfaced, coughing and hauling air deeply and
noisily
into my screaming lungs. Schenk met me with both hands
outstretched to steady me as the waves coursed around us.

I took the tear vial out of my pocket, wrapped the necklace of the lacrimosa around my neck, and slipped Asmodeus’ ring on it before closing the clasp. The wind responded with another violent burst, shoving water in a wild vortex away from our bodies, only to have it rush back in on us.

The black outline of the poltergeist coalesced above us and I grabbed the necklace off my neck and showed it to her.

“Hullo, Mama!” I cried, teeth chattering. “Got something of yours! Come get it!”

The entity poured out of the sky like purge fluids from a
putrefying
corpse, thick, viscous, and nasty. When it collected into an
identifiable shape and turned its face at me, I swung the necklace back and forth like an old-timey hypnotist with a pocket watch.

Schenk yelled at me through the wind, “Throw it. Just throw it and let’s get the fuck out!”

I couldn’t risk the chance that she wouldn’t get it back. I had to
get it in her grasp, had to make sure. I held it out to her, knowing that she could drain every bit of energy from my body at any second,
needing her to take the necklace and the ring of Asmodeus, to accept the gift. I felt the tart sting of hot cinnamon candies on the back of my tongue, but instinct told me to wait.... wait....

The old woman took shape mere inches from my face, and I heard a rustling crunch as all my wet hair suddenly froze into a wild mane of icicles.

“Someone wants to meet you,” I told the snarling apparition. “In fact, I suspect He will be
delighted
to make your acquaintance, you unremitting bitch.”

The ground shuddered behind me.

Mama-Captain took the lacrimosa. Her spectral mouth dropped
to reveal only blackness, a great chasm of pain and rage, and the
sound that came out of it was the buzz of a million angry wasps. She lifted the necklace and slipped it over her head, where it settled on the fine, black turn of her neck.

That’s when I whispered His name. “Asmodeus.” Just once.
Once was enough. My tongue stung again, harder, hotter.

Mama-Captain turned to walk back into the shallow water, trailing her ectoplasm, reminding me again of electrified, liquid spider webs. The water behind her began to bubble, to boil, and my
heart slammed in my chest. I threw a hand out to grab at Schenk’s arm.

“We gotta get back,” I said. “Back off.
Now!
” I threw the bible back at him. “Hold this! Don’t look back.”

“What did you do?” he yelled.

“Trust me, turn your back!” I shoved at him, and he launched into motion. “I think this might be some serious
Raiders of the Lost Ark Shit
,” I screamed at his back. “Don’t look back! Don’t listen to
it!”

Schenk put twenty feet between him and the pond and turned his back on the water; he didn’t look back, except a quick peek at me to make sure I was still close by. I, on the other hand, had to look at the pond. I
had
to see this.

The demon king Asmodeus, The Overlord, the Banker at the Baccarat table of Hell, King of the Second Circle, Lord of forty-three legions of demons, and all around infernal pain in the ass, shot out of the icy froth with His scaly, red arms thrown wide. Bigger than I’d ever seen Him, he opened His bull's mouth, the smile never leaving His human face as He swallowed Mama Briggs-Adsit whole. His goat's head bleated something that sounded ominously like an incantation in an unclean tongue at the roiling sky. Everything in me flushed hot and limp, like I’d been trapped in a sauna all day.

He glanced down and spotted me. The ground shook again, and snow and ice began to rain off boughs and branches of the trees between us. I
might
have peed myself again, but I'll never tell.

Asmodeus waved at me with one dragon-like claw, and my nipples hardened painfully under my clothes. A waft of hellborn
heat hit me and Schenk, and my frozen hair blew straight back from my face, clattering around my ears like frosty dreadlocks before melting into a sodden mess. I watched the demon king as he did a strange little
happy dance in the water, kicking up droplets, surrounded by fresh steam as his infernal influence battled the wintery conditions,
looking very much like an overgrown puppy with a bacon treat, or the most sarcastic rendition of me getting my first Girl Scout cookie of the season. He flapped about and waggled his rear end in my general direction. Not the scariest demon sighting in my life, but I had come to expect odd things from the Master of the
Falskaar Vouras
.

I glanced at Schenk, who was still obediently not looking; no fool, this mortal knew when the paranormal shit was hitting the fan, and knew when he was out of his league. Apparently, I did not share
the same measure of common sense. My brain suggested, “hey,
hauling ass out of here sounds like a good idea,” but the rest of me thought maybe I should stay. A prickling along the back of my neck urged me to take one last look at the demon king.

The Overlord stood still now, staring over at me, and I felt the weight of His focus shift. He’d had His fun, collected a new soul, and gobbled it up. Now, His terrible yellow eyes caught my gaze,
and I felt Him bear down through that same Bond that allowed Harry and me to communicate our wants and needs so effortlessly to one another. For a moment, there was no doubt that I belonged to this creature. I was His DaySitter as much as I was Harry’s. I was a servant of the Second Circle of Hell. There would be no redemption of my soul, and someday I would join Mama-Captain in that scaly red gullet. That demon would guzzle me right down and then do a gleeful jig to work off the calories. He was my future, right there, smile spreading to reveal a sharp, nightmarish landscape of shattered teeth. The only silver lining to His visit was He was defrosting us where we stood; sure, it was hellfire, but it sure was toasty.

Heat you right up
, the demon promised, His infernal and familiar voice pushing into my brain.

“I hear ya,” I said, mostly to myself, nodding in His direction. “But not today. I’ve got more asses to save first.”

And more to send Me,
He reminded me with a chuckle that felt like being ground between boulders inside my chest. I saw His focus shift to Schenk and I tensed; for a dreadful moment I could picture
Him taking the cop, too, for no other reason than greed. Instead, He pressed His voice into my brain again.
Finally found a man who listens to you. What a chump. He should have his head examined.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I flipped the demon king an enthusiastic middle finger. His yellow eyes gleamed with glee.

Thanks for the hot date.
The demon king put a hand to each of His less-human heads, and blew me a double kiss the likes of which few humans would ever see.
Later, Toots.

Asmodeus put His hat back on His human head, and sank
grinning into the now-boiling water of the Welland Canal overflow pond like a sweaty fat man in a hot tub. A single black feather drifted down from the sky, landing on the snow in front of my boots.

***

“Slow down,” I panted, lifting my voice to be heard over the
wind. “Whoa, Longshanks. Stop. Hold up!”

Once the heat of the demonic presence had melted the snow around Schenk’s boots, he’d gotten a metaphorical spark up his ass and bolted up the hill. Without a moment's consideration whether or
not what I'd told him not to look at was gone, Schenk had had
enough.
I chased him uphill until I nearly fell down with exhaustion. I
paused at the back of the New Red Hook Cemetery to lean against the obelisk
of the town founder, a man who had built mills where they’d told him not to, a man who had seen future progress and had acted
accordingly. Today, his town didn’t exist, save for these cemetery stones and two tall metal gates and a rather pitiful hedge. Now, I rested against his
memorial and wondered what he would think about all this. My
teeth were still chattering something fierce, but I was filled with the fire of
victory deep in my belly. Mama-Captain was gone; her soul was paying the ultimate price for her murderous rampage; maybe that
had bought me a bit of internal toastiness from Asmodeus as a promise and a reminder, as well as some perverted kind of thanks.

I turned on the hill to face the pond, considering.

Schenk slowed to a stop, coughed hard until he caught his breath, then joined me. “What the fuck was that?” he demanded.
“No. Stop. Don’t tell me. Is it over? Is it done?”

He looked like a drowned rat, except he was so much bigger
than a rat, so maybe like a drowned horse, and I thought to mention that to him, and couldn’t find a way to make it sound complimentary, so I thought I better skip it. When my gaze drifted to
the top of his head, though, what little smile I’d had slid right off. He looked like he’d
been frosted, or maybe dunked in a vat of industrial bleach, scalp first.

“Uh, Schenk? I don’t mean to alarm you, but,” I squinted up at him. “All your fucking hair turned white.”

He slapped a hand to his head. “Shit,” he said, but his eyes were on me. Or rather, my forehead. “I don’t want to alarm
you
, but
your
hair has gone black. And blue. Like your face.”

“What?” I grabbed a wet handful from behind my ear and pulled it in front of my sore eye. I saw black locks and a streak of
turquoise.
Just like Britney Wyatt’s hair.
“That doesn’t happen!”

But as I said it, I heard all the times I’d said the exact same thing about ghosts not affecting the physical realm over and over for the past week. I gave up. It was scientifically implausible and surely some kind of magical glitch; I’d put it on the Worry About it Later list, which was getting alarmingly long.
Positivity, Marnie; maybe that just means you'll have a lot of later to worry with
. Elian would be so proud, once he stopped facepalming.