The Ghosting of Gods (23 page)

51
who’s afraid of who?

Elspeth, Saint Frankenstein. Is Saint Thomas telling the truth, or is he too crazy? It’s true that Elspeth has unusual abilities. She knows things. She does things.

The coven accused her of healing what should not be healed.

Following Elspeth’s slim, small form through a slit in a cave wall, I don’t want to accept that she’s quite that level of insane. She’s sympathetic to the tunnelers of Memento Mori. I get that. But does she, as Frankenstein, offer
flesh services
to them? It’s hard to believe.

And now we’re following her into deeper and darker crevices.

Poe yelps. “Something’s got me!”

Elspeth swings the lantern’s light over him. He’s entangled in the limbs of a skeleton folded within a pocket of the cave wall. “Fear not,” Elspeth tells him. “The skeleton cannot harm you. It has no head. There will be more such as this. These catacombs were long ago used as storage for such comatose bones. Come now. In moments we will arrive in the cemetery, which overlooks the City.”

“And there we will find help in getting home?” Ava asks.

“There you will find William. You remember? I relayed only the truth to you, while inhabiting Bethany, that William would know the way to get you home. But Jesse will bring the Holy Ghost out of hiding first. It is his destiny to see the Ghost face to face. All I ask is that he fulfill this destiny. Treat me fairly. Suspend your judgment.”

“Whatever,” Ava says. “We’ll get home, one way or the other. By Holy Ghost or William. Right?”

Slowing, I squeeze Elspeth’s elbow, help her to drop back with me. “The truth, Elspeth,” I say. “If I’m going to die, why shouldn’t
I know the truth? What is it you want from me? And what does William have to do with it?”

“Why not ask Chastity? Has she not told you?”

I ask again. Her silence prompts me to squeeze her arm harder.

“Bring the Holy Ghost out of hiding,” she demands.

“Why?”

She shakes off my hand at her elbow. Stops. Faces me.

The others don’t notice. They’re too concentrated on picking their way through the dark crevices with a lantern that’s running out of oil.

Darkness falls around me and Elspeth.

“I want it gone,” she states flatly.

“What is
it?”

“The Holy Ghost. William will take it to his beloved Promised Land. If not, I trust you will dispose of it for me, now that I know you’re an exorcist. I refuse to be burdened by it ever again. When I had it,” her voice catches. She wipes away a tear. “When I had it, my pain was neverending. I can’t bear it, not ever again. For now it is in hiding, but if it should roam, it may find me again. I can’t bear it, Jesse.”

Her confession leaves me speechless.

“You’re special,” she tells me.

I shake my head. “No, Elspeth. If you knew me, if you knew how I didn’t protect my sister, if you knew how I endangered my friends, you would know your faith in me is groundless.”

“You will see the Holy Ghost face to face. You will learn the secret of breaking chains. And you will die.”

My breathing comes hard in the dark cave. “I’m afraid to die.”

“Do not think of it. Think only how we will all be safe. Think of how Thomas and I will be saved.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Thomas fears the Holy Ghost.”

Something is wrong here. She’s not making sense. It’s like
she’s deliberately avoiding telling me something. “You’re hiding something from me. What is your fascination with Saint Thomas? What’s in this for you?”

She takes my hand and walks. It’s so dark, I try to slow down, but she pulls me brusquely. “The exodus is imminent, Jesse. The missionaries will rise in the sky, the Holy Ghost will go with them if you don’t first destroy it, and Thomas and I will be safe. No more will he shriek in fear that the Holy Ghost is coming for him.”

I’m incredulous. “You believe the Holy Ghost is really jealous of Saint Thomas?” We’ve almost caught up the others. And Elspeth hasn’t answered me. I try again, but with a different question. “Why would your original ghost be jealous of Saint Thomas? Does
he
believe your ghost is the Holy Ghost?”

She stumbles. Doesn’t answer.

And then it occurs to me. Is it possible she’s the one caging Saint Thomas, and he’s afraid of
her?

52
before she dies

We descend along a rocky path, steep enough that we’re forced to grab the bones sticking out from the walls to brace ourselves. Despite sharp rock and bare feet, Elspeth takes the lead and increases our pace.

“Elspeth,” Poe says, “we want to thank you for saving our lives. We would have died out in that blizzard. It was clever of you to lay that trail of silver spoons.”

Elspeth looks back, and I see naked surprise on her face.

“You didn’t lay the spoons, Elspeth?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Your sister again?”

No response. She looks thoughtful.

We duck through a hole at an apparent dead-end.

“The cemetery of the City of Sacristies,” Elspeth says, waiting for us outside the mountain, where a tempestuous sky immediately commands my attention.

My jaw falls slack at the sight of massive thunder clouds rolling in the heavens. Sucking in my breath, I jab with my finger, pointing at the vortex swirling into existence…but in the blink of an eye it’s gone again.

“Vortex,” Poe shouts, reaching up and grasping at the sky. “Did you see it? Did you see it, Jesse?”

Rigid with tension, I wait for the vortex to reappear. It doesn’t, and the disappointment is a physical blow to the gut. “Yeah, I saw it, Poe.” Wind lashes against me in gusts, filling my lungs with cold, metallic air. Hacking into the crook of my arm, I clamp shut my mouth and taste ash. It’s acrid, and I paw at my tongue.

Threads. Mixed in the ash are
threads
. I gag.

Elspeth cocks her head, appears bemused. “Threads of haunting. The Holy Ghost is said to spew them into the atmosphere, creating disturbances.” She turns her back to us, sweeps her arm in a semi-circle, and suggests we take in the vista of tombstones. “This graveyard is ancient—”

Ava lunges, screams, brings down a rock on the back of Elspeth’s head. The witch, though small, falls in a heavy thud.

“Mother Mary,” Poe shouts. He stumbles backward.

Leesel bursts into tears.

I collapse at Elspeth’s side. Scooping her into my arms, I press her to my chest. “What have you done?” I cry out to Ava. I cradle Elspeth’s head in my hands. Feeling warmth, I pull my fingers from her hair. They come away bloody. “Ava, what have you done?”

Leesel squats a few feet away, her little face crumpled, tears flowing.

Ava looks at me with eyes that bulge from her strained face. “Tie her up,” she commands. Giving Elspeth’s unconscious body a quick kick, she nods. Bending down, she feels for a pulse. A quivering smile comes to her mouth. “Elspeth’s alive. That’s good. But we need to trade her quickly. To the tunnelers. Before she has a chance to die.”

I don’t know this person.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ava demands in a shrill voice. “You’re so concerned about Elspeth.
Why?
Why do you care about her? Do you think I don’t see how fascinated you are by her?”

Speechless, I rock Elspeth in my arms. Her eyes are closed. Her breathing labored. “Poe? What do I do? I can’t let her die.”

Poe approaches slowly, staring at the bloody fingers I hold out to him. “I don’t know…we need a doctor…”

“Poe,” Ava shrills, “give me the rope from our supplies. Jesse will let us die in this world if I don’t do something. He won’t take care of us. I’m taking my daughter home. By any means
necessary.”

Poe shakes his head and backs away from Ava.

I gently lay Elspeth on the ground. I’m careful to turn her head so that the wound isn’t in the dirt. Feeling for a pulse, I sigh in relief when I find one. But it’s thready.

Ava’s steps are close. I shield Elspeth’s body with my own, going on hands and knees over her body. “Don’t,” I warn.

Ava goes around me to the bag she wanted Poe to open. She rips it open herself and finds the rope. I look at Leesel. She’s crying. Poe tries to comfort her, but she whines in a high pitch when he touches her. He leaves her alone.

“Leesel, baby,” I say, and she crawls to me. I sit back and take her into my lap.

“I have to do this, Leesel,” Ava says, her voice stern, and Leesel cries harder.

“No, you don’t,” Poe interjects.

“Shut up, Poe. This is about survival. Ours. The tunnelers know how to get to our world. That freakish digger at the chapel was one of them. The tunnelers want Saint Frankenstein, and here she is. So I did what I needed to do.” She returns to Elspeth, who lies motionless, defenseless, in the wet grass. I know I should do something. I know I should stop Ava.

Why can’t I move?

Ava ties up Elspeth, lashing her ankles, lashing her wrists. I gawk at her, stunned at her violence. “What do you think she’s going to do?” I ask. “She’s barely breathing, Ava. My God.” I check Elspeth’s pulse again. I look frantically around the gravestones, as if a medic might appear. “We need help.”

Standing, Ava glares at me. “We’ll die, Jesse, if we don’t escape Memento Mori. Are you willing to risk Leesel’s life?”

“We need help,” I repeat.

“No doubt the tunnelers will see she gets it. Otherwise they don’t get their Frankenstein.”

Leesel pushes a finger into my chin. I meet her eyes. “The
tunnelers will help Elspeth. It’s true. They love her. She told me once.” She brushes her bushy hair from her eyes and gets out of my lap. A calculating expression comes over her face. “We can’t just take her to the City. They will recognize her as a covenist. She’s powerless now, unable to protect herself. The people down there will know it, and they’ll take advantage.”

My mind won’t work. All I can do is stare at Elspeth. “What are you suggesting?” I ask Leesel.

“We need to give her to the tunnelers.” Leesel bites her lip. “They’ll help her.”

I stare at the knot, ugly and red, rising on Elspeth’s head, close to where a section of her hair has fallen out. Her breathing is interrupted by short sighs.

I’m afraid. I look to Poe, but he only shakes his head, his eyes wide.

Leesel’s been in Memento Mori the longest. I trust her judgment, but the whole plan makes me sick. My instinct is to get Elspeth help from the living. “Surely there are doctors in the City?” I ask.

“Not that we can trust,” Leesel insists.

Poe holds out his beads. “I believe someone would help us,” he says, weakly.

Ava snorts with disgust.

I stand, rigid, mesmerized by tall weeds blowing against headstones in the cemetery of the City. I am tired. Lost. I am like one of the blocks of stone surrounding me, cold and heartless.

Poe drops his prayer beads. “I know how to find tunnelers,” he says.

Ava looks skeptical. “Really, Poe. How?”

He cringes at her tone and falls silent.

Leesel speaks up. “They won’t come out until it’s night,” she says. Nodding, she’s made up her mind. “We’ll knock after dark.”

53
knocking on tombstones

The last drop of white sun sinks into the dark of Memento Mori. Ava huddles beside me. She’s calmed down, come out of her hysteria. Taking my hand, she speaks softly but with conviction. “Sometimes,” she says, squeezing my fingers, “you have to do bad things to protect the ones you care about.”

I stare out over the City. It appears as a collection of pointed steeples jumbled together in the valley below us. “I don’t believe that.”

“Don’t blame this on me, Jesse. It was you and Poe that took Leesel out into the woods so that she ended up here in this world.” Her voice turns steel cold. “You and Poe. Not me.”

Her words sting, because this is more my fault than she knows. This all has something to do with me and how I’m an exorcist. It has to do with crystal balls and their attraction to me. Something more is going on here. Something wants to happen.

But at what cost?

I’m weary. Exhausted. I don’t want to do this anymore. It hurts too bad.

Hidden flagellants suddenly howl, their screams echoing, multiplying. My eyes rove the moon-washed mountains around us. We’ve been in Memento Mori for weeks, and yet the moon remains full.

“Werewolves are everywhere,” Poe whispers.

Elspeth lies still, unmoved from where she fell after Ava struck her with the stone. I’m afraid I’m going to lose her. I’m afraid Memento Mori will kill my friends. I’ve protected no one, the way I didn’t protect Emmy.

“It’s time to knock,” Leesel says, coming up behind me and Ava. The stick of her shovel rises two feet over her head. We
found several of them, along with lanterns, in a shed built into the mountain. “I feel fine now. I can help.”

Ava feels Leesel’s forehead. “The fever’s gone,” she says.

Poe looks Ava square in the face. “We have Elspeth to thank. She healed Leesel with the medicine.”

Ava brusquely arranges the robe cowl around her face with shaky fingers. Pushing off my shoulder as she stands, she grabs her shovel and marches across the cemetery. Her face is in shadow when she turns back to us. “Hurry,” she hisses. “Before Elspeth dies.”

Surreal. I feel like I’m an actor in a scene from a black and white film. Fog billows along the ground. Untended landscaping scrapes at tombstones, while dead leaves blow through the gate and across the graves. The cemetery of the City is like an old movie set, only unfortunately it’s not.

It’s real, and we have to dig to summon skeletons.

“This is awful,” Poe says. His eyes are puffed and baggy from exhaustion.

Leesel lugs her shovel, clanging it over the rocks fallen from higher up the mountain. “I like this one,” she says, indicating a grave with broken earth over the deceased. “This spot is active.”

Wind blows her kinky hair across her face. She tucks as much as she can behind her ears and lifts her shovel with a determined expression. Swinging, she repeatedly clangs the point of the shovel against her chosen grave’s tombstone.

“Leesel, wait.” Ava picks up the feet of our captive. “Before any tunnelers show up, I think we should hide Elspeth in the shed.”

“Why, Mommy?”

“I don’t want tunnelers to steal Elspeth and just leave us standing here. The whole point of this is to offer Elspeth as a trade for passage back home. We’ll tell them that we have Saint Frankenstein in a safe location. After they show us how to get home, or take us to who can get us home, then we’ll tell them
where she is.”

Poe’s jaw falls slack. He looks to me, then back at Ava. “But, Ava Lily. What if she dies alone in the shed? Before they come for her?”

Ava ignores him. “Jesse. Come on. Help me get her to the shed.”

“Mommy, no!” Leesel drops her shovel, runs toward Ava, but I catch and stop her.

“Calm down, sweetheart,” I tell her as she elbows and kicks me. It’s a struggle to keep hold of her. “She’ll be safer there. Until we can talk to the tunnelers, and know if they’re willing to help her.”

But I will not leave Elspeth in the shed.

Poe rushes forward to pick up Elspeth’s upper body. He and Ava carry her to the shed while I restrain Leesel. Poe backs into the shed door, and dirt cascades down from the corrugated metal roof. They take Elspeth inside.

A moment later they’re back. “I made her a pillow of sackcloth,” Poe tells me.

“Leesel, listen to me,” Ava says. “I’ll tell the tunnelers where Elspeth is as soon as I feel like I can trust them. Okay?”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“It’ll be okay,” Poe says weakly, casting a glance back at the shed.

God help us.

Setting up our lanterns in a wide circle, we leave plenty of room for the digging. “Okay,” Ava says. “Everybody pick a spot and dig. Leesel, you stay right here with me. I don’t want you out of my sight, understand?”

We begin desecrating the graves. Not all the way, but we chip up the earth, banging our shovels up and down, sort of “knocking” on the ground. Crystal balls are planted all over the place. Which is strange. Why aren’t they being worn by resurrected
skeletons? The tombstones are old.

Poe finds one area where a burlap bag has been buried, filled with dozens of crystals. “What’s this all about?” he asks.

Remembering the tunneler who plucked the virgin crystal from the tree while I was with Chastity, I think I might know. “Missionary tunnelers have been pilfering crystals to take with them to other worlds, remember? To evangelize. This must be where they’re hoarding some of the crystals.”

“Good,” Ava says. “That means these are the tunnelers who can help us get home.”

We work in silence. It seems burying coffins only a foot down is common practice in this cemetery. We knock on one casket lid after another, but no one answers. The night drags on.

I check on Elspeth every fifteen minutes. Her condition remains stable, but I’m sick with anxiety over her. Ava glares at me each time I go to the shed.

Is it true? Do I care more about Elspeth than getting Leesel and Ava and Poe home?

I’m drawn to Elspeth, the way I’m drawn to graveyards. The way I’m drawn to
knowledge
.

Storm clouds overpower the moon, and we crank our lanterns so that they blaze at full strength. Lightning fractures the black bowl of sky, leaving an afterglow of blue jagged threads that seem to pulse in sync with rolls of thunder.

Rain.

Shovels.

Mud.

The left side of my back aches. I close my eyes, lean on my shovel, set my chin on the top of the stick. Weird.

My fingers are tingling. Opening my eyes, my gaze falls on a crystal floating. In front of me, about ten inches off the ground.

I’m curious. Wanting to know what I might see inside the crystal, I squat, pretending I’m tired, which I am. With the crystal ball at eye level, I see a glow of light in its center, in its depths.
There’s also a shadow, but I can’t make out anything more than that. Poe calls my name, and I abruptly stand.

The grave shifts beneath my feet.

Spraying mud in my face, two more crystal balls emerge from the earth and hover at my waist.

I peek over my shoulder to see if Poe has noticed what’s happening. I cringe. He’s seen for sure, because he’s gripping his prayer beads. His face is in shadow, but I know something’s wrong by how rigidly he’s holding his body.

All over the cemetery of the City, crystal balls are floating. Floating, and drifting my way.