The Ghosting of Gods (3 page)

5
her body revolves

The floor of the chapel is staining. Along each individual plank, black seeps, discoloring the carpet of pale dust and the natural brown hue of the wood. Cracks appear in the wake of the staining. Planks shrivel.

The floor is rotting.

“The chapel’s haunting over,” Poe says. His chin lifts. “I think ghosts intend to intervene. To save us.” He gives me a stern look. “Don’t you do anything, Jesse. Don’t ask me for the holy water. Can you sense a vortex opening? They’re coming, aren’t they? The ghosts of the chapel. They want to save us…want to keep us here…”

“The walls are rotting too,” Leesel observes, talking right over Poe. “I don’t like it. Can’t you make it stop, Jesse?”

The rotting floor bulges. Ghosts knock, beating the walls around us, slowly at first, but then urgently until Leesel covers her ears and cries for me to stop it. I grab the lantern, hold it out with a shaky arm, turn in a circle. “What the hell?” I whisper. A sudden
crack
spins me, and I knock the lantern into a pew. Splinters are sprouting all over the antique bench.

“The ceiling is moving!” Ava shrieks.

Over my head, beams shift into odd angles.

“Oh, man,” Poe breathes. “I’m scared for real, but that is pure rapture.”

“Jesse?” Ava is folded in on herself, crouched, reaching for me.

Wind, fierce and sudden, rushes against the chapel. “They’re coming!” Poe shouts in ecstasy as he grips his pew.

Leesel’s wild hair flies straight back, her eyes squinting as she faces the chapel door that bangs open. I tip back my head and
watch the ceiling as it pulls away from the walls…peelings of white paint from the ceiling shower over us like dirty snow.

Ava screams for me to make it stop.

The ceiling sucks in, angling up…the chapel shudders so violently that I’m knocked to the floor. Ava falls; she cracks her head on the floor but scrambles back up, fast.

The chapel shudders in the wind. The once-flat ceiling vaults twenty feet over our heads. Cold air—dense, heavy—sinks down.

“Can you feel that?” Poe hisses. “The vortex is open. They’re here. Jesse, they’re not bad ones, are they?”

Staggering to the doorway, I look out, hoping the priests have been frightened away long enough for us to escape.

As if breaking free of the earth, the chapel lurches. To keep from falling I grab at the side of the doorframe. The chapel thuds down, and the door slams shut on my fingers.
Hell
. I’m caught, unable to free myself. Another lurch, and this time there’s no thudding back down.

The chapel pitches.

A pew slides into my legs, delivering new pain that streaks up my spine.

“Jesse!” Ava screams. She’s huddled with Leesel behind the smoking baptismal. Flames erupt, fanned by wind spewing through split boards.

The door vibrates with violence, and I pull my fingers free. Crawling, I make it to the window nearest me. Poe stands at the other one, screaming to the priests for help. I haul myself up and look outside the chapel.

This is not the ghostly vortex Poe hoped for. It’s like the one from earlier, and I can only surmise it’s come back for me. Below, the landscape whirls by at sickening speed, repeating, as if the chapel is a merry-go-round run by a madman. Woods graveyard priests woods graveyard priests—

I cling to the window casing and look down. Far below, priests lie flat on their stomachs. One of them has taken refuge in
Digging Man’s grave.

The digger himself stares up at me. Wind rips away his long coat. Curling up into the sky, the garment comes to within a few feet of where I stand at the window. While tree limbs and lanterns and other debris pass in and out of view, the coat stays put, gravitationally locked with the face of the chapel. Puffing up with wind, it appears outside the window as a flying phantom clad for winter.

The earth below contracts. Expires.

Poe abandons his window. I keep watch out my own, waiting for my sister Emmy to appear. I’m vaguely aware of Ava calling me to get away from the window, but the cacophony of hellish winds is deafening. I search, needing, yet afraid, to see Emmy, but the atmosphere is now empty of anything but muck. Dizziness presses hard against my head. My vision tunnels and I sink to the floor.

The chapel plummets. I rise above the floor, floating, until the floor erupts into my spine. Wind shrieks. I lie on my back, covering my ears.

Both windows blow out.

Screaming. It’s Ava. She’s on her knees, arms wide and empty.

Leesel is gone.

“She’s out the window!” Poe shouts at me over the din. Horror masks his face.

Out the window? My eyes scour the tiny space inside the chapel. Pews are overturned, but I can’t see where Leesel could be hiding…Out the window?

No. It can’t be.

I scramble up, wind blasts, and my feet lose contact with the floor. Another impact, and my body is bent in half with my torso outside the chapel window.

Poe heaves me back inside. He shoves me hard onto the floor, as if to stick me there, then turns to Ava. “Lie flat!” he screams at her.

But no. Leesel is gone, and once Ava catches her balance, she
runs
for the window.

Sucked outside, she manages to cling to the window casing, screaming as a shard of glass pierces her fingertips. Her long hair is a screen hiding most of her face, but the irregular line of her chin falls slack, and her head falls to the side before either Poe or I can get to her.

Ava floats.

Outside the window, somehow unaffected by the whirlpool of wind, her body floats. Head hanging limply, her body revolves.

“Oh, God, she’s dead,” Poe cries out.

Her head snaps up.

Sparks of static crackle around Ava, straightening her hair, standing it on end. The roots pull taut at her forehead, puckering it. Involuntarily, I shrink back. Ava is conscious, not dead. Mouth open, her expression is one of stunned surprise. She grows pale. White.

Leesel
, she mouths, her eyes married to mine.

Her gaze shifts, and her body drifts away. It lands against the chapel, lifeless. The winds blow, but the body is securely pinned. Poe clutches the window casing, screams for her, and though her face is turned toward us, and her eyes are open, she doesn’t respond.

I search along the side of the chapel for handholds in the rotted boards that I can use to climb to her. The loose shutter bangs wildly. Finally it comes loose, and I duck as it soars by my head. With it gone, I see Leesel.

She’s stuck to the outside of the chapel, too.

A violent updraft lifts the house, throwing me to the floor. I stare at the wall before me, keenly aware that Ava’s body is pressed to the boards on the other side. The body I once touched and loved, the body that shared my couch and kitchen and bed with me.

Leesel’s gone too.

I ball my fist into my mouth.

Poe is braced in a corner, his legs crossed, rocking. “Annabel Lee,” he chokes, weeping. I crawl to him. On my knees, I hug him close as the chapel shudders. It’s breaking apart.

All the burden comes off my body.

6
life review

Something clatters on the roof.

Ghosts careen outside the chapel. Ava’s is angry. She points a finger and yells, though I can’t hear her voice. Watching her, I’m able to catch glimpses on all sides of the chapel because of the missing boards in the walls. Her back turns. She crosses her arms over her chest and stalks away, deeper into the vortex until I can’t see her anymore.

Leesel appears in the swirling dark. She’s very small, a toddler, sitting on the lap of a woman who is clearly her biological mother. The woman has Leesel’s eyes and nose, but not her full cheeks. The woman is emaciated. Sick with plague. She’s buttoning Leesel’s dress. Leesel strokes her mother’s hair and looks solemn.

They blow away.

I want to ask Poe if he sees. He’s beside me, eyes closed, like he’s sleeping. He’s smiling. I let him be.

Free of my body, my own ghost appears in the whirlwind outside the chapel. Poe’s too. We’re on the playground, swinging on rickety swings, our legs pumping back and forth, seeing who can go higher. Jumping off, I land on my feet. Poe is awkward and twists in the air. I remember this. He sprained his ankle.

We’re lost in the twister, like Emmy was. Is this what a life review is? Am I dead?

Of course. I must be.

A new scene, and my breath catches.

My four-year-old self stands eagerly at the gate of New Salem’s most famous cemetery. My priestly escort nods at me, a calculating expression on his face as he watches me walk among the graves in bliss. I remember. Cemeteries used to be places of
peace for me. The scene dissolves as the priest scribbles a note in his black book, the one with the silky pages that I’ll later try to steal.

A new ghost, cloaked in a flowing garment, catches a sprinting Leesel. Long hair spills out the front of a robe cowl. I glimpse a profile with a small nose and rounded chin—a woman. She carries Leesel close to her chest for a few steps, then vanishes. Ava reappears and chases after them, but she falls out of view.

More boards break away. I see that Ava’s and Leesel’s bodies are gone. I’m not upset. Just observant.

I realize it’s strange that I’m so calm. Yet it’s a comforting,
familiar
feeling.

Something continues to skitter on the roof. I’m not afraid.

Our chapel transport is headed toward the top of the vortex, where there’s light. We speed toward it, but it turns out to be only a candle, glowing silver, hanging in the vortex, and there’s a small wooden sign with some sort of lettering, but we streak past it so quickly I can’t see what the words are.

Poe is screaming.

I can see him clearly beside me, despite the fact that the burning bush no longer burns and gives light. Poe leans against a pew. He’s still smiling, an expression of bliss on his face.

But I recognize the screams. It’s definitely Poe. I’ve heard him scream a million times, and it’s distinctive.

Weird. I’m screaming too. I hear me. The screams increase in volume.

The tunnel ends as I blast into light. That fades. My jaw drops so that I can release the screams.

7
weregods

We’ve landed. The vortex is vanished.

There’s moaning beside me. I lie flat on my back, looking up into haze. Dogs howl in the distance.

“My blood is caffeine,” comes Poe’s voice.

My body buzzes too. Static sparks when I move my arm.

Heavy fog. Where did it come from? Boards jumble everywhere. The chapel is destroyed around us. Cratered into the ground, it’s only a broken roof atop a pile of ruined construction.

What happened?

There was a burning bush. God was signaling, seeking to communicate to me…

Broken glass creaks beneath my boots as I climb, carefully, over what used to be the roof above the covered porch. I’m confused. How did I get here? I think back…Leesel was on the porch. Ava’s eyes reflected my fear. A half-circle of priests, their forms a dark sickle under the moonlight.

A vortex.

Abruptly, I remember. Ava and Leesel, pressed dead against the chapel. My groan startles me.

“I have to find their bodies,” I mumble. My body goes into action even though I’m numb. “Ava?” I whisper to the ruined chapel around me. “Leesel? Baby?”

Poe calls after me. “Purgatory! We’re in Purgatory.” I hear his panicked breathing. “What are you doing, Jesse? Quit looking for her. Ava Lily would never be here. We’re in Purgatory!”

My body moves faster. My hands heave boards, toss them aside. The numb feeling fades, and anger takes its place. Is this God’s way of answering my prayer? Bringing death to those I love?

It’s a punishment. For seeking hidden knowledge. For doubting the priests even more than I doubt myself. Of course it’s a punishment.

But not the kind Poe thinks.

“We’re not in Purgatory,” I tell him. “We’re in bodies, alive. Help me find them. We can’t leave them in this.”
I caused this. I have to bury them. But first I need to hold them
. Kicking broken pieces of chapel, I flinch again and again, frightened to uncover their bodies.

Poe rubs his arms, watching me. He begins to pray. I work alone. I move every board, shingle, and shattered pew.

Exhausted, I finally drop to the ground. “They’re not here,” I whisper, stunned.

“What’s that howling?” Poe suddenly asks. I ignore him.

Minutes later: “I told you, Jesse. Ava Lily wouldn’t be here. She’s in heaven.” He squats, holds his head in his hands. I hear Latin, but a moment later he pitches forward onto his knees and vomits.

I wait for him to finish.

“We have to find their bodies,” I insist. I close my eyes, and see my girls lifeless, pressed to the chapel. “They’re dead, like we were. Our ghosts left our bodies. Didn’t you—“

Wait. This doesn’t make sense. We were dead. Now we’re not.

“They could be alive,” I blurt, relief flooding me. “Poe, this has…this has happened to me before. Going through a vortex tunnel. I came out of it alive, with my body. If we’re still alive, then the girls may be too.”

I need him to agree with me, but he looks doubtful.

“We’re not in Purgatory?” he asks. “But this looks like Purgatory.” He paws at the fog. “I know it is. We’re not in our world anymore.”

Motioning for Poe to follow me, I leave behind the chapel carnage. I pick my way through haze and trees, calling Ava’s and Leesel’s names, but receive only silence in return. “This way,” I
direct Poe. “We’ll walk a circle around the site of the crash.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Of course I won’t. Come on.”

Rectangular shadows in neat rows materialize out of the murk. “A graveyard?” Poe mumbles. “Why would Purgatory have a graveyard? Priest never mentioned this. What’s that howling?”

One tombstone in particular draws my attention. Coarse rather than polished, the slab has small chunks knocked out of its surface, giving it an ancient appearance. I trace a chiseled drawing with the tip of my finger. It’s hard to tell what image was etched in the stone, but it seems to be a human figure draped in chains.

My finger pulls back.

There’s no name, no dates. Stomping down weeds, I find an inscription. It’s faded, hard to read.

Poe leans over my shoulder. He gasps. “It says
FEAR NOT WEREGODS
. You don’t think that’s what’s howling, do you? I do. I mean, it’s about werewolves, right?” He presses his crucifix to his lips, invents a prayer against full moons.

We move among tombstones. Poe points one out that’s easy to read:

ghost be saved
body decays
beggar for chains

Poe trails after me through stunted trees with trunks covered in a hardened glaze. Reminds me of petrified wood. Needles, pale green with black tips, coat the ground. Cones crunch beneath my boots—they’re tiny, look like spiky thimbles.

These trees are alien. I take a steadying breath.

The air smells like…rosemary.

Poe’s expression is both thoughtful and pained. “Jesse. It’s not
what I expected, but I think this is how the Resurrection works.”

Light seeps into the day, diluting the fog. A break in the trees reveals a small white sun low in the sky…as I watch, I can actually see it sinking. Smoke arrives on a breeze.

We’re standing on a cliff.

Far below coils a river, its waters gushing from a canyon with walls as gray as the froth of the rapids. A town lies on the shores, across the river. At the sight of it, Poe drops his crucifix.