The Ghosting of Gods (10 page)

21
hungry ghosts

My coat’s not heavy enough to cut the relentless wind. The sun slides sideways over a herd of wooly sheep that huddles for warmth, or maybe safety, in the grasses. There’s no shepherd to guide them.

A leaf, carried on the wind, tumbles across my path. Its sickly yellow surface has been charred black along one side.

Another leaf, and another, finds its way to me. The burned leaves stick to my shoes and clothes, catch on my face just long enough for me to smell the smoke on them. Chills run along the back of my neck and down my body. Poe stops. He’s looking at me, and at the leaves.

The phenomena accelerates. The leaves are coming to me. Not just blowing on the wind, but
coming to me
. It’s a deranged thought, I know it, but there it is.

A sketchy path of scorched leaves lies before me, leading off to the left and disappearing into the forest not far ahead.

Ava comes up beside me, panting, her hands on her hips. She sees the fluttering path of leaves and frowns. “Haunted leaves, Poe?” she asks. “From a haunted forest?” She bends over, picks up a leaf, tosses it into the wind. Swirling, it begins to blow away, then stops in mid-air. It falls suddenly and heavily, like a brick, exactly where it had been before. Ava repeats this experiment several times, walking ahead of me and Poe.

She never looks at me suspiciously. She doesn’t connect the strange burned leaf phenomenon to me at all.

I’m relieved. Disappointed. I don’t want her to know there’s something weird about me. Or special.

Poe is watching me. I shake off my feelings, try to look normal.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ava says. She looks in all directions. “Maybe there’s nothing in this entire world but George’s town. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about Bethany. I think…she knew where Leesel is. We’re doing the right thing, following this map, aren’t we?” She holds out the map, looks desperate.

“I think we have to at least try the map,” I reply. “It’s a better option than asking for help in the town where everyone was in hiding or drugging us with tea.”

Ava takes a deep breath. Squares her shoulders. “Okay, then. We follow the haunted path.” She studies the map. “It leads in the direction we’re going.”

I realize Poe hasn’t spoken. He stares at me, and I find the suspicion on his face that was missing from Ava’s. There’s also unease in his eyes.

It’s like he’s afraid of me.

The ground turns muddy, but the carpet of leaves—the scorched yellow brick road—thickens, making a surface easier to hike on. The wind strengthens, blowing stronger and colder. I clutch my coat at the throat. The sun completes its sideways slide and begins to drop.

Forest.

Ghosts.

They stand with their backs to us, motionless. Cowled forms of gray. Framing the yellow and brown of the forest, there are hundreds of them, holding hands in a line that stretches east and west.

The sight of them, their unnatural
silence
, is numbing. Why aren’t they speaking to me? I realize I’m not walking anymore. My body feels frozen. Ava and Poe stand, riveted, beside me.

My hand takes Ava’s. Barely able to turn my head, I see, out of the corner of my eye, that she and Poe are holding hands too.

Sighing voices at last blend with the rustle of wind through branches. The sighing is odd, not what I’m used to. It’s hypnotizing.
Trancing. Gazing at the line of ghosts before me, I see gaps. One, two, three ghosts…are missing. Where did they go?

I hear Poe crying.

Ava giggles.

Their noise makes me angry. The calm feeling inside me goes away. I drop Ava’s hand. “Quiet,” I hear myself snap. It startles me; I didn’t mean to say anything.

My body tingles, I’m lightheaded, I feel
movement
.

I come loose inside my body.

Suddenly, I’m looking behind me. No. I’m looking in all directions, all at once.
No
. I don’t like this. It feels wrong. This has never happened before. Bouncing around inside my body, I try to get situated again. I hear myself screaming, but the scream cuts off abruptly. “Quiet!” I shout at myself. “Get out!”

My body begins to seize. I fall backwards. I try to hold up my head, but it snaps against the ground.

Ava skips in front of me, giggling. Poe’s on his knees, moaning.

Grass sticks in my eye, but it doesn’t hurt. Ava steps over me, clapping her hands, her boot dragging across my chest and neck, but I can’t feel that, either. All my attention flows to my chest. Somehow, I know I’m being shoved out. “I’m hungry,” I hear myself grumble. My leg jerks. “I can’t plug in!”

I watch raindrops fall from clouds above me. They don’t really look like drops. It’s more like needles of water. Ava dances, her tongue stuck out. Her laughter grows hysterical. Poe holds his ears and awkwardly walks away from her. Tree limbs sway. A large rabbit hops timidly through the grasses and vanishes into its burrow.

Ghosts let go hands.

A girl. Petite. Porcelain face. Black hair, in ropes to her waist. She strides out of the forest and toward me. Behind her, ghosts are now huddled together in groups, standing with arms limp at their sides. I manage to lift my hand and reach out. “Help,” I beg
the girl. “I’m so cold. Please.”

Rage explodes inside me.

I revolve inside my head, trying to escape, but I see my friends. I can’t leave them. Ava and Poe stand, foreheads pressed together, arms at sides. The girl splits them apart, shouting something in Latin. Is she a priest? She comes to me.

“Do you know who I am?” she asks, her voice a sweet soprano and tinged with threat. Uncertainty washes over me.

The cold leaves my body. I see in one direction only—at the woman who leans over me, brushing hair away from my face. “There, that’s better,” she says. Her head cocks to the side. “You’re falling into shock, Jesse. The possession was not a gentle one…”

22
coven scientist

Soft light. Brown walls. Forms shift around me, hold lanterns to my face, blinding me.

“Jesse…”

It’s Ava. She’s crying.

The girl with the very white face and black ropes of hair leans across my body. “I am Elspeth,” she whispers in my ear.

Sharp, thin pain lances my neck. My fingers twitch. Warmth trickles down onto my shoulder. “The vial,” she says, her voice clinical. Glass scrapes along my skin, catching the blood.

I’m awake now.

She’s young, barely a woman. She taps a glass tube filled with my blood.
Elspeth
. Her dark hair is wet and matted, draping her body like a shroud. Twigs are caught in the ropes and tangles. She wears a shapeless black garment, which covers all her body, only there’s no cowl. Her profile is angular, elfin, but when she turns, her soft round eyes meet my own in such a way that goosebumps break out on my skin.

She holds the vial of my blood under her nose, swirls it, and inhales. “Mmmm…” she says, her eyelids fluttering.

I’m lying on a wooden table, inside some kind of a hut. Split logs brace the low ceiling over my head. It’s packed mud and straw. Something glints. I squint, and think I’m asleep in a nightmare, because it looks like the straw is threaded through the eyes of needles, hundreds of needles…as if the very walls have been sewn together. Nausea rolls in my stomach.

“Open your mouth,” Elspeth says to me. “I have medicine for revival of ghost. The possession stunned you. It was your first time, as with your friends, yes? It was good I found you. Swallow the medicine now.”

It wasn’t my first time. But it had never happened like that. It was awful. “I’m going to be sick,” I rasp.

She holds my nose so that I have to open my mouth. Thick, grainy liquid flows onto my tongue. It tastes like sour milk. I gag as it clogs my throat. Elspeth presses on my chest, massaging, and somehow the wave of nausea passes and I’m able to keep the liquid down.

Other women are in the room. Talking quietly with one another, they appear agitated. They’re disinterested in me. It’s Elspeth they watch.

My vision blurs. The table beneath me tilts.

Elspeth speaks softly. Confidently. “He has been infected. I will stir his blood to reveal the cure.” She smiles at me. “Don’t be afraid. My specialty is phlebotomy, but I am talented in all healing, including surgery, if it is needed. Lilith? Obtain a blood sample from the other boy as well. He’s doing better than these two, but we must be certain no plague has entered the village. I will extract the sample from the girl, though she is not so affected. Go.”

Lilith obeys, but her face is angry.

Ava cries out. Elspeth asks for a vial.

“Leave Ava alone,” I croak, but my voice is so weak…I can’t get up…

I remember being loose in my body. Closing my eyes, I begin shaking. A blanket is tucked around me. I sleep.

When I awake, only Ava is with me. She sleeps, slumped in a chair against the wall. I sit and hang my legs off the table. I have a look around. The hut is small, with one doorway—no door—and no windows. Work tables covered in books, flasks, and measuring instruments line three of the walls. Liquids boil in small pots over a fire. The odors are pungent. Strange charts with formulas and equations are tacked to the earthy walls with small knives. I lean forward to get a closer look at the charts, but they’re smeared with dirt and difficult to read.

I was dreaming before, or delirious. The walls aren’t full of needles.

Ava wakes up. She comes to me, wraps herself around me.

“This is the coven village,” I say, dumbly.

She takes a second before answering. “Yes. They say Leesel is here, but…I haven’t seen her yet.”

“Poe?”

“He’s okay. They supposedly took him to see Leesel. Right now they’re keeping you and me separated from the rest of the village. It’s not just that we were possessed…you and I have been infected with something. They say.”

Infected
. “This is surreal,” I tell her. I think maybe I’m still dreaming. No. I must have a fever. I touch my forehead to see.

Ava’s shaking. “The possession was awful, Jesse.” She starts to cry. “I haven’t seen Leesel. Oh, God, maybe it happened to her. Or maybe she’s not even here.”

My mind is clearing. Ava’s tears are waking me up. Making me move. “How many of them are there, Ava? The witch—the covenists?”

“I’m guessing maybe a hundred or so. They don’t want me to leave this hut, but I’ve stood in the doorway, and I’ve seen them moving around the village. Huts like this one, thirty or so, are scattered all around between the trees.” She lowers her voice. “They’re watching us, all the time. If I take more than a few steps out of the hut, a woman appears, reminds me to keep watch over you.”

“Are we prisoners?”

“You are. And Leesel. I heard Elspeth promising the others that Poe and I would leave soon.”

Ava has no time to explain because Elspeth enters the hut. I struggle as Ava whimpers, but Elspeth gets another dose of the medicine into me. She gazes into my eyes again with her face two inches from mine. I feel weak. She smells earthy, like moss and wet tree bark.

She whispers in my ear. “I, too, wish to destroy crystal balls. I, too, wish to save ghosts from the past, from their chains.”

I blink. I couldn’t have heard her right. “What? How do you know about that? How?”

Instead of answering me, she quickly scratches a long nail down my cheek. I yelp.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ava demands. Frightened, she runs to the open doorway, clutches it and calls for help.

“I needed to make sure he still bleeds,” Elspeth calmly answers Ava. She stirs her pots of boiling liquids, picks up a quill and writes on a sheet of parchment. Lifting her eyes, she holds a finger briefly to her lips, as if to shush me.

Ava, realizing no one is coming to help us, stumbles back to me. Her eyes are wide with fear as she watches Elspeth. I don’t like her being afraid.

Forcing my gaze away from Ava and onto Elspeth, I speak. “Can we see Leesel now?” I ask. The room tilts around me again. It’s so hot. I feel strange, confused, and wonder what the hell the medicine she’s given me is doing to me. I wonder if I really heard the witch speak of destroying crystals and saving ghosts, wonder if I truly saw her shush me.

“I’m sorry,” Elspeth says. “You may not see Leesel just yet. Not now. You must trust me.” She pulls out a wooden box, rummages in it until she takes out a small leather pouch. She pulls at the strings, dumps out a reddish-black powder on her worktable. “Perhaps you are thinking of appealing to Saint Thomas.” She smiles faintly, then glances at me. “It will do no good. He will only doubt your sanity.”

The mention of Saint Thomas reminds me. “The letter,” I say to Ava.

“What?”

“The letter. In my coat pocket.”

She digs out the letter and hands it over to Elspeth. “We were asked to deliver this to the coven.”

Elspeth barely glances over the letter and casually tosses it into one of the small fires, burning it. “Jesse, we shall need to observe you, to make sure you don’t fall victim to a relapse. For now you are cured. Ava, too. Darkness falls. Both of you should rest. Someone will bring tea.”

Ava shakes her head. “But Leesel, I need to see her—please.”

“No.” Elspeth lowers her voice. “I am going to see her now. Leesel speaks to few, but she loves me. Most of the covenists she ignores as if they don’t exist. She’s delightful. Don’t be afraid. I will take care of her.”

Elspeth leaves. Ava cries and laughs, half hysterical. “Leesel’s
ignoring
them…It’s true, Jesse. Leesel’s here.”

Shaking with relief, I stand. “Help me with my coat, Ava.”

Hovering in the hut’s doorway, we peer out. It’s dark and drippy outside. There are huts planted everywhere beneath the towering trees, looking like shaggy mushrooms with their inverted-bowl roofs of straw. Doorless entries glow with the light of fire, and the scent of burning wood, laced with a spicy scent, soaks the air. A figure leaves one of the huts, darts into another, carrying a stack of papers. Otherwise it’s quiet, still.

“Let’s follow her,” I say, taking Ava’s hand. “She’s going to Leesel.”

23
she ruptures

Lanterns dangle from heavy tree branches, swinging and creaking in the chilled night wind. The coldness helps to revive me after the heat and humidity of Elspeth’s lab with all its little fires and bubbling fluids. The sweat on my forehead quickly dries.

Hiding in shadows, Ava and I spy on Elspeth.

She moves from lantern to lantern, reducing flames so that they cast no discernible light. Her long garment drags in the deep layer of leaves that carpet the ground. Realizing how noisy the scraping of leaves is, I motion for Ava not to move. We wait until Elspeth is a distance away, then carefully follow after her, keeping to shadows and out of moonlight.

Elspeth speaks. Peeking around a tree, I see that she’s still alone. I can’t make out her words, but she gestures with open hands and turns in a circle, face to the sky. She’s smiling, as if she’s very happy.

Ava grabs my arm and pulls me against the tree. Another coven scientist has appeared, walking quickly down a path, which brings her to Elspeth.

Elspeth stops her whirling. She bows to the woman.

With a hand fluttering to her face, the woman passes Elspeth in a wide berth. As if she’s afraid of the young covenist. The feeling isn’t mutual. Elspeth tags along after the woman, practically skipping as she does so. She gives a playful push to each new lantern she passes, knocking two of them hard enough to extinguish their flames.

We pursue her and discover a large gathering of coven scientists well away from the village, in a hollow where a few stray tombstones poke tilted out of the earth. It’s low ground, soggy.
Torches stand in the muck, arranged in concentric circles and burning brightly. A huge pot—Poe would call it a cauldron, but I’m guessing George would mark the description as socially insensitive—balances over a blue fire.

Covenists mill about, talking to one another. Leesel’s name is spoken in agitated voices, yet she’s nowhere to be seen.

Conversation dies upon notice of Elspeth’s arrival. All avert their eyes; many turn their backs to her. She pays no mind, but finds a spot to sit on the ground with legs crossed and hands on her knees. Her expression becomes serious.

One covenist steps forward, clapping her hands. “We are gathered,” she announces, her chin lifted, her stature over the others pronounced. Her hair is so red as to appear truly flaming. She waits as covenists arrange themselves around her.

“Make her leave, Ruth,” a voice in the pack calls out, anonymously.

“I think not,” the red-headed one answers after appearing to give the request some thought.

Elspeth sits perfectly still.

Red-headed Ruth gazes about her. “Pay no attention to Elspeth,” she advises, even as she glances at Elspeth sitting on the ground like a school child. “Or whomever she is. Her identity is uncertain.” She lifts her voice. “Let us focus on our work. Otherwise we shall sleep forever in this very hollow.”

Murmurs.
“No, no, no, no…”

“Very well. Who, tonight, will release the ghost from her body? May I?”

“Yes, please, please…”

A small girl, about Leesel’s age, digs in a burlap bag and pulls out a long vine, which she dips into the pot. Ruth kneels, and the girl arranges the now dripping vine over Ruth’s shoulders. Black juice dribbles into Ruth’s red ringlets and onto the ground, releasing a scent like licorice.

Covenists crowd around the pot, lean forward, and inhale
deeply with eager expressions on their faces.

Ava leans close. “Leesel isn’t here. Let’s go.”

“Wait.” I want to watch Elspeth. Her elfin profile is frozen.

The coven chants. It’s Latin again. If Poe were here, he’d be able to translate. Numbers get mixed in with the words. They’re chanting equations. Taking turns leaning over the cauldron, nostrils flared, the covenists breathe deeply. After several moments they begin chanting once more. Only now their words are slurred.

They’re getting high.

“Ahhh,”
the crowd of women says. Their eyes are on Ruth, and they look ecstatic. Insane ecstatic, with their mouths hanging open.

Ava tugs on my arm. I get up off my knees.

“Bliss. Paradise. Rapture.”

My legs are stiff. Waves of dizziness envelop me, and I fall. Shit. It’s affecting Ava, too. She stumbles beside me, and gasps loudly. Once my vision clears, I look back at the coven gathering, expecting to see them coming after us.

But no. They’re fixated on Ruth, who now lies on the ground with her hands grasping her neck. Whispers mix with the night breeze.
“Rapture, rapture, rapture, rupture, rupture, rupture…”

Rapture? Or rupture?

Ruth’s body spasms.

Her hands release her neck, her arms fling out from her body.

Fog arises around her. No. It arises
from
Ruth. From her chest. Gray and shifting, it reminds me of Emmy’s crystal ball as images took shape within the sphere. This fog coalesces as well…and a doppelganger of Ruth appears. It steps to the side of the physical Ruth lying on the ground. Lifting its palms up to the sky, it regards the coven with a confused expression.

“Ruth is ruptured!” a covenist cries out. She pulls out a stick from behind her back. Approaches Ruth. Raises the stick with both hands.

Startled, I realize she means to attack Ruth while she lies defenseless. Lurching forward, I go to stop her.

Instead, Ava grabs my waist, and we both fall clumsily to the ground. A tree root juts into my diaphragm, knocking the breath out of me. “No!” Ava hisses in my ear. “We’re leaving this. Have you forgotten Leesel?” She stands, tries to pull me up, but loses her balance and stumbles sideways.

I suck in a breath, taste something foul. My tongue thickens.

Ruth’s doppelganger strokes its hair. It tips back its head, and I see a chain wrapped around its neck.

Mother Mary
.

It smoothes its robe, and at first I think its body is malformed, but then I recognize the pattern of chain links beneath its robe, wrapping all the doppelganger’s body. I mutter a prayer.

Once again, the doppelganger raises its palms to the sky. The ghostly form intensifies, so that I can hardly tell the difference between the real Ruth and her doppelganger. I sense fear on the part of the doppelganger, as if it’s reaching to heaven for help. Suddenly, shifting to the side, it looks directly at me.

As if I’m the source of its fear.

The coven screams encouragement to the one with the stick. Gone are their blissful expressions. Fury distorts their faces. But Elspeth is different. She sits motionless, crying.

The stick comes down—but not on Ruth’s body.

It’s the doppelganger, the ghost, that’s being attacked.

Ava grabs my wrists. Yanks. “Okay,” I tell her. My tongue is so thick, I don’t think she understands me. I speak as clearly as I can. “I’m coming. We’re getting Leesel the hell out of here.”