The Ghosting of Gods (28 page)

62
it happens in his presence

Behind me, the courthouse groans. The wood in its walls shrivels, as if some dark force is whittling it away. It’s haunting over. Cobblestones blacken, as if they’ve been thrown into a furnace. The temperature plummets.

This has nothing to do with the Holy Ghost and everything to do with Willy. He arrives on the scene and sets tunnelers to work gathering the burlap bags filled with virgin crystal. Some of the bags have fallen over, and crystals roll. “Collect our treasure, my brethren!” Willy demands.

The exodus. It’s time.

Where is Poe? And Ava, Leesel? Did skeletons drag them away?

Elspeth stands frozen, her arms hanging at her sides, silently weeping. “I doubt your sanity, my love,” Saint Thomas calls to her. She flinches at his words.

Flagellants howl. I’d forgotten about them, they were so silent. No more. Their cries compete with the noise of the clacking tunnelers, creating a cacophony that confuses me.

Light flashes at the center of the vortex.

Flagellants and tunnelers alike fall silent.

“A disturbance…the Holy Ghost returns…A disturbance…” a single emaciated old flagellant cackles.

Willy shouts, and tunnelers everywhere chase down crystals to stuff in their ribcages. Several skeletons even widen their jaws to stuff crystals in their mouths. Like apples. A vision of Chastity in the Eden, where crystals grow on trees like fruit, comes to my mind.

Where is she? Is it true that she tricked Elspeth? That I don’t die at all?

The sea of tunnelers divides. Danny walks the channel between them, calmly, toward the platform. He’s alone. Ava and Leesel aren’t with him.

Raising his hand, he catches the attention of Elspeth. She gasps. Falls to her knees. “Thomas, Thomas,” she says. “Look. This tunneler wears no chain. No crystal.”

Saint Thomas scrunches his nose. “It was judged unworthy and received no crystal. It has no past. No identity. Shameful!” He parades up and down the platform, rattling his chain and moaning loudly. “It must be caged. Not fair. It wears no chain.”

“No, Thomas,” Elspeth says. “I know this one. He worked as a spy for me. He wore a chain, and now it is gone.” She turns to me. Grabs my cowl at the neck. “You freed this tunneler. Why lie to me? You’ve met the Ghost, and learned Its secret of breaking chains. Why refuse to break the chains of Thomas?”

I try to pull away. “Danny’s crystal emptied, and the chain broke, but I don’t know how,” I explain, trying to make her understand so she’ll let me go. “I never know how it is done, or why…it’s always been this way…the exorcism happens
in my presence
, but I’m not really
doing
anything…”

Her fingernails break my skin as she clasps my chin in her hand. “But now you must. You must act, Jesse. Are you waiting on your god? If so, you are a fool. Break the chains yourself. Act!”

Her fervent plea moves me. She’s right. I’ve waited throughout this Memento Mori journey for God to show up, to direct me how to save Emmy and forever be connected to her. I believe in my God. But God has abandoned me.

Uncertainty. Doubt.

I know why God has abandoned me. Knowing what I am, how I can do whatever special thing it is Elspeth wants me to do?

Panic strikes. In my confusion, I confess. “I can’t act. I don’t know what to do!”

At last she doubts me. I see it on her face. Doubt and disgust, the same expression Ava had on her face when she told me I was
doing nothing to save Leesel from Memento Mori.

“You disappoint me,” she tells me, her voice cold, and I’m cut.

Words lash out of me. “You’re a
child
, Elspeth. Believing yourself to be so special, so very
special
, that your original ghost is the Holy Ghost! It’s called
delusions of grandeur
. You’re
insane.”

She raises her hand to slap me. Clenching her fingers into a fist, she lowers her arm. Her breath is hot on my ear as she leans close. “Act, Exorcist,” she demands. “For you are special, even if I am not.”

Saint Thomas screams. Throwing his arms over his face, as if to protect himself from me, he nevertheless runs straight
at
me. “Exorcist! You will never take my story. I would rather keep my chains!” I move to the side, but of course he sees me despite his matted eyes and changes direction to come after me.

Poe appears on the platform. A welt has risen on his forehead, his eyes are bright, and he looks determined. As Saint Thomas passes by him, Poe stomps on one of the chains trailing after the ghost. The chain is so dense, so heavy, that it may as well be real—Saint Thomas jerks, falls on his behind.

Bottle of holy water in his hand, Poe uncorks it and shakes the contents over Saint Thomas. The saint gasps, holds his hand to his heart. “Do you know my greatest doubt?” he howls.

I face him. “Tell me, Thomas.”

“I doubt my existence.” He weeps with abandon. Elspeth weeps with him.

His statement disturbs me. “You’re real,” I argue. “Ghosts are real.”
Emmy is real. She’s still real
.

Tunnelers clap their hands at the entertainment taking place on the platform. The applause sounds like wooden wind chimes. Willy climbs atop the platform. He signals for them to get back to work collecting crystals. “The time is near!” he proclaims. “The vortex opens for our exodus. We must be ready. We must collect every crystal for the haunting of our new world. The Promised Land awaits!”

Saint Thomas wipes up drops of holy water with his robe sleeve as he sits on his butt. He howls louder than the flagellants. Elspeth, her hair blowing so as to hide her face, wraps her arms around him, comforting him.

I scream her name, but she ignores me.

Poe steps back, uncertain what to do next.

Someone grabs my arm. The boney fingers squeeze. It’s Danny.

“Where are Ava and Leesel?” I shout at him. “It’s time for the exodus. They have to be here, they have to go!”

He tilts his head back, gazes up at the vortex, violent in its twisting, and then points at the crowd of tunnelers.

“Yes, Danny, I know the tunnelers are going too.”

He shakes his head.

What is he trying to tell me? I don’t have time for this. Looking in the direction of his pointing finger, I see that the tunnelers are all turned in
our
direction.

They’re staring at the crystal balls chained to their necks. The crystals are floating rather than hanging.

The crystals are pulling them forward. Toward the platform. Toward me.

63
surrender jesse

Elspeth cocks her head to the side and watches the floating crystals. Slowly, her eyes shift to find me. “You act?”

I’m doing nothing. But I nod my head.

Willy struggles to lower his crystal. He can’t. The chain pulls taut. His skull swivels to me. “What are you doing?” he screeches at me. His vocal cords quiver. He attempts to hide his crystal ball from me, tries to hide it within his billowing robe. “Leave me alone. I am doing the work of the Holy Ghost. You will not empty my crystal! I will never surrender!”

He picks a virgin crystal off the ground and pulls back as if to pitch it at me.

Across the City square, tunnelers mimic Willy’s action. They clasp virgin identity tags in their hands and pull back their arms, as if to…stone me…with the crystals.

“Oh, Emmy…” The ground sways beneath me.

Now I know why God brought me to Memento Mori. To suffer justice. God is abandoning me, as I abandoned Emmy by not watching over her and keeping her safe.

I’m on my own. Ava and Elspeth are right. I have to act. Right now. Before all is lost.

The vortex bulges, reaching downward. Flagellants yodel in fear and flee to the dark shadows of their cages.

Surrender
.

Danny. He’s speaking in my mind again.

Surrender, Jesse. Do nothing
.

Voices.

Gradually, the awful clamor of clacking lessens. Even the wind grows quiet, though newspaper and embers swirl ever faster around the town square. Looking out over the crowd, I see
the jaws of tunnelers working, but instead of clacking, I hear voices. Narrating. Telling me stories.

Their stories.

No. I can’t listen. I need to save my friends—but something wants to happen. It’s compelling, and it’s feels good. Should I push it away? Elspeth demanded that I act.
She
would act. But I feel this power flowing through me, and I want to trust it. It draws me, like faith and God and graveyards…

I surrender.

The stories rush in.

I accept their sins without judgment. I understand that bad things happen in stories.

They don’t want their bad stories any more than I want mine
.

Somehow, I can hear and follow the story of each narrator, despite simultaneously being aware they’re all talking at once. I don’t just listen to their stories. I let the bad stuff dissolve with the telling of it. Their stories are just stories. They confess, and I forgive them.

The loudest story belongs to Saint Thomas. He’s pushed aside Elspeth and is shouting about his childhood, acting it out.

Flapping catches my attention. My angel twists, flying awkwardly in the force of the winds. Smoke clears for a moment, and I see Willy’s threads, silvery in the glow of the vortex’s light, swirling around my angel. They stick to him, constrict his wings. As if caught in a net, he spirals to the ground.

Tunnelers back away even as they continue with their storytelling, leaving a wide perimeter for my angel. He flutters, bones scraping along the cobblestones, maimed.

I observe all of this, but I’m not afraid.

Danny places his hand on my shoulder. One by one, the voices fade.

The ticking of identity tags across the square fades.

Wind rolls crystals along the cobblestones. The tunnelers have dropped the crystals rather than stoning me with them, but
that’s not all. Broken chains clatter as they’re dragged along. Like Danny, the tunnelers have lost their identity tags.

Most of them. A few hold their crystals against their ribcages, refusing to give up their ghosts. Willy is one of them. He’s crouched on the platform, rocking back and forth and glaring at me with hatred.

Tunnelers without crystals are leaving the city square. Slowly, calmly. They don’t look back even as Willy implores them to return. They don’t even look at the sky. Danny goes with them, leading them.

“The exodus! The exodus!” Willy shouts as the enormous vortex reaches down for us.

Poe stands, arms outstretched, gawking up at the tunnel with its center of light.

Elspeth screams.

Saint Thomas is vanished. Elspeth frantically pats the wooden platform, as if he melted into the wood. Her shaking hands gather up his secret pouch of flagellant tools that lie discarded where the ghost once sat.

Where is the saint?

I start toward Elspeth, but Willy appears, blocking my way. “You’ve made me very angry,” he growls. He plucks a small glass bottle from an inside pocket. More holy water?

No. It’s the hourglass he stole earlier from my pocket.

Crystals roll inside his ribcage. Without thinking, I plunge my hand inside Willy’s chest and grab a crystal. I yell as it burns my hand, but I keep a hold on it. The scene projects.

A holographic Chastity stands on the platform. She’s calm, but Poe, who stands manifested beside her, is not. He’s angry. “She’s the one who did this to him,” he shouts at Chastity. I can hardly recognize him. I’ve never seen such rage on his face. Such grief.

“I’ve done all I can,” she answers. “She’s the only one with the skill to sew him back together.” She holds out her hand. Elspeth steps into view and takes the offered hand.

What the hell is this? This never happened. My stomach falls. I realize that this is a scene from the future. But whose crystal is this?

Suddenly, I know.

It’s Elspeth’s, the one that was stolen from her grave.

My hourglass appears in front of my nose. With a twist of his boney fingers, Willy snaps it in half.

I’m aware of falling, of Elspeth’s crystal falling from my hands. The manifested scene before me vanishes, and in its place an iron ghost gallops onto the platform, into the sand of my broken hourglass, which glitters pure white, like snow falling down. An image of Chastity, raking flakes of skin from her hair with long, graceful fingers, comes to me.

The vortex takes me, suspends me over the platform. Elspeth screams Saint Thomas’s name, but he’s gone. Her fingers scrabble for the knife she dropped earlier. Crazed, she rushes at my body that lies below me on the platform.

Leesel is screaming my name, trying to make her way through the throng of tunnelers. Ava comes from behind and scoops up Leesel.
They’re going to make it
. Whether through the exodus tunnel, or in the wake of my ghost, they’re going to make it home.

I begin to spin.

Once on the platform, Ava rushes to my body. Elspeth turns on her.

The vortex breathes me in, blows me apart.

64
identity lost

Emmy doesn’t meet me.

The graveyard is vast, or small, depending on your perspective. Only one headstone in the distance interrupts the flat wasteland. The sky is gray, the earth is gray, the stone is gray. Wind whistles by at high speeds, unimpeded by trees. Nothing grows here. Nothing lives. No angels guide me…I walk on my own toward the grave because I am drawn to it, like always.

It takes me a long time to get there, and not any time at all. My name isn’t carved into the stone. Instead, it’s written in pencil on a sheet of paper and tied on with thread. There are no dates.

What the hell?

I pull off the paper, crumple it, toss it away. It rolls and bounces in the wind toward the horizon. My vision is really good: I can see the paper miles in the distance.

Turning back to the tombstone, I see that engraving has appeared in the stone.

Phantom

I wish Emmy would come for me.

Instead, my doppelganger appears. Now there are two of us.

“I’m glad I’m dead,” I say.

Near us, an upside down tree bursts into flame. I watch, mesmerized by the flames. I’m confused. Where did the tree come from? Its hefty roots grow up and fan out into the sky. Leaves sprout here and there from limbs that coil above and below ground like a sea serpent. Crystals abound, most of them half-buried.

Gravestones erupt, cramming the landscape.

My doppelganger calmly watches the tree burn. “They weren’t meant to be buried,” he says. “It’s all upside down.”

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I was going to ask you the same thing. You seem to have forgotten.” He points at the tombstone where my name is missing.

“This isn’t heaven, is it?” I ask.

“Does it look like heaven?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t? Oh. You have something in your eyes.”

My eyes do feel itchy. I reach up and touch them. They’re completely matted up. I don’t understand how I can even see. I rake my eyes, pulling out threads the way Saint Thomas would do.

Oh. I get it. “I’m a ghost now,” I say.

My doppelganger doesn’t answer. He merely gazes at me. I look away, and suddenly I realize grass has grown beneath our feet. Thick, green, soft. I’m barefoot. Suddenly, I feel as calm as my doppelganger looks. It’s nice here. The breeze waves the grass, hypnotizing me. But where is Emmy?

“You aren’t staying here,” he tells me. “It is not yet your time. You will go back.”

“No. I feel peaceful. I don’t want to go back.”

We sit in silence.

“Blessed are the poor in ghost,” my companion says.

The feeling of peace leaves me. I remember.

I remember everything.

Emmy in the crystal. Memento Mori. Possessing ghosts. Identity tags. Missionaries bent on haunting my world. Willy with Emmy’s crystal. Collapsing in the grass, I struggle to breathe. “I didn’t save her. She’s trapped in the crystal. That’s why she’s not here, isn’t it?”

“Only phantoms reside in crystals.”

What does that mean? “I can’t live with myself,” I tell him. Wait. I’m dead. I’m dead and it doesn’t help.

“You can’t live with yourself?” he repeats. “Do you mean
there are two of you in that body?”

“What?” I think of how I asked Elspeth that very question. “Are you saying I’m possessed?”

“Of course. You are confused over your identity, constantly trying to decide whether you are special or bad. You are neither. Perhaps a few more threads need to be removed.” He reaches forward and plucks another thread from my eye. “Deny thyself. Surrender Jesse. Give up the ghost.”

“I gave up the ghost when I died.” No. That doesn’t make sense. I
am
a ghost now. Aren’t I?

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” Suddenly, I feel a weight at my neck. My back hunches over. I look down in horror. This isn’t heaven. I’m in hell.

Chains. Identity tag.

Shame. My secrets will be revealed.

I gaze inside the crystal and review my life, the story of me, Jesse. Helpless to stop myself, I narrate. Looking up at my mother’s face as she rocks me, playing with Poe who wants to attract vampires, stealing his prized batting stick, peeking at Emmy for the first time—she opens her eyes and looks right at me, lying so that the bully at school didn’t know she was my sister, kicking the dog when it wouldn’t stop barking, sharing my cookies with Emmy, having sex with Ava after Poe cried to me about how he loved her, Mom’s death, fighting the school until they agree to enroll Emmy…

“Surrender,” my doppleganger suggests.

“No! This is who I am. I have to face it.” I continue to gaze.

My voice grows hoarse with the telling of this story. It comes to me that I don’t want to tell Jesse’s story anymore.

Silence.

Surrender happens.

I scratch at my eyes. I can’t see anything in the crystal. It’s empty.

The chain breaks. All the burden comes off my body, just as it
did when I sat in the haunted chapel as it twirled in the vortex. Wind rolls away my crystal ball. I let it go.

“Who are you?” my doppelganger asks me again.

Something stirs inside me. Relief. Freedom. “I am. Jesse was only a story I experienced. But it was awful. I did bad things. I was afraid of who I was, of what I was. I frightened myself.” I gaze at my doppelganger. “Who are
you?”

“Your Higher Self. The Holy Spirit. Sometimes known as the Holy Ghost. The Presence.”

I ponder this, but it’s difficult. I’m disoriented. This is not as I expected. “I’m supposed to have an offering for you. The witch’s broom.” I think, trying to remember. “Chastity gave me her skin in a bag, but I don’t have it with me.”

“Surrender your ghost. That was Chastity’s meaning. Her skin is symbolic of her ghost. The offering has been made. Of course, you didn’t have to die first.”

I lie in the grass. It’s heaven. Suddenly I realize something important.

“You’re an exorcist,” I tell him. “It’s been you all along, using me to perform exorcisms. And now…I am the one who’s been exorcised. Of my story. Of my identity. Right?”

His eyes are so peaceful. This calm my doppelganger possesses…it’s familiar. “The Exorcism of the Holy Ghost,” he agrees. “Otherwise known as the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Your false identity is dissolved. Melted, like the wicked witch. The ghost is a mere phantom.”

“But what I don’t understand is why you said I didn’t have to die first.”

“Emmy tried to tell you, but you misunderstood.
Blessed are the poor in ghost. Die before you die
. The world is left by discarding false identity and remembering who you are. It isn’t left by death—Memento Mori unknowingly reflects this truth. Ghosts aren’t allowed in heaven. The ghost must be given up. On that Saint Thomas did not lie. Why wait to die? Break the chains, drop
the identity. Ghost to
God.”

“Poe would call that blasphemy. Only Jesus is like God.”

“Many teachers have been accused of blasphemy, even insanity, for proclaiming Truth. Can Truth be contained in words? Let us try.
Ye are gods. Deny thyself. The kingdom of God is within you. God is one. I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
My doppelganger touches my chest, where the identity tag once was so heavy. “I Am.”

“You’re like Saint Thomas and Elspeth, using verses of my religion.” I stare into the distance. Blooms swirl in the sky, fluttering down to cover names on gravestones, like they don’t matter. “Jesus was basically God, in human form. The point of my religion is who
he
was. Not who
I
am.”

“Tell me. Who are you?”

My mouth opens to answer, but I stutter. I know now that I’m not Jesse. I never was. My doppelganger waits for an answer. I try to give it. “I’m…I am…”

“Yes. All of you is God, though please understand, you are not all that God is. Does that ease your discomfort? Brace yourself. You’ve not even begun to conceive
God
. Very few on your world ever have. Do not be afraid. You will see. The veil is not completely removed, but threadbare is an improvement.”

Ah. Touching my eyes, I feel the threads that remain.

“You must go back,” he reminds me.

“Wait, I haven’t gotten to see Emmy.” I bow my head. “If I have to go back…please, can you tell me how to be with Emmy? Without being dead?”

His response comes inside me, in my mind.
If you want to find her, you must give up the ghost. Let go the past. Be present. Be Presence
.

I lift my face, another question on my lips, but he’s gone.

My perspective has changed. Somehow, only one of us now reclines in the soft grass. I guess because Jesse is gone.

Utter calm envelops me. It’s familiar.

I am present. Jesse is gone.

Temporarily. Part of me needs to go back. I only wish I could remember this…but I will forget. When I go back, the phantom will seem so real. It will possess me and seem to be me. I want to remember…but it’s harder to separate ghosts from the living. Death of the body helps. That’s why I could empty the crystals of the tunnelers. Doing so with the living…that’s another thing. The living resist the surrender of their identities. Usually to the death.

I have to go back. It will be hard. The body is injured. I know this, yet I am calm.

Jesse’s ghost will find me.

And Poe and Leesel are grieving. I will, too. But now…now I am calm.

No more thinking. No past. No future. Just my Presence. Ironic. I played hide-and-seek across Memento Mori, seeking the Presence, and I had it all along.

I am the Ghost. I am present.

I am Presence.

Look no more far than your own back yard
, Emmy liked to say, taking wisdom from Dorothy, her favorite character.

Emmy
.

The one I knew as my little sister comes to me. She’s the Ghost too.

“Do you know Jamison?” she asks, balancing on her tiptoes as she whirls.

I imagine the boy who stoned my sister. His sin surfaced in me when I picked up the stone in the City of Sacrisities square. I feel compassion. His story was painful too. I think of it, of all that happened in the past.

Willingly, I let that past, that small story, go.

“I do,” I answer. “He’s the Ghost.”

Threads come loose from my eyes and drift away. Emmy looks more beautiful, more real, than ever. Yet she doesn’t really
look like Emmy.

“Oh,” I breathe, as realization, as
recognition
, surprises me with such undeniable force that my vision brightens into perfect clarity.

Oh, Father in Heaven, I know her.

Not as Emmy, which was only a story.

I know this soul. I’ve always known this soul. I always will. There is no beginning, no end, to my being with this soul
.

We embrace.

“But I have to go back,” I tell her.

She twirls. “You don’t need death to cross over,” she sings into my mind.

* * *

Where am I?

The grass is soft beneath my hands. There’s no past. No future. Just presence.
Presence
. Who I am.

I Am.

It seems unbelievable that while in a body I was consumed with Jesse, with who he was, whether he was good or bad or special or worthless. I took it all seriously. I believed Jesse was all that I am.

I laugh.

Sooner, or later, I’m ready to roll the stone away. A vortex appears below me, twisting with dizzying speed, consuming the soft grass and all the world around me…and beneath me.

I fall.