Downside Ghosts: Unholy Ghosts Part 11

She shook her head. "Black ones, I mean black magic. They're forbidden to us. But he couldn't have carved them himself, and-ah!"

They all jumped back, like the chorus line of an old Busby Berkeley musical, as the dead man's heart gave a slow, squelchy beat.

"Ain't dead! He ain't-" b.u.mp started to shout, but Chess cut him off, waving a hand that felt stiff and clumsy with cold fear. Not just from what she was about to say, but from what she saw, the rune sliced into the dead man's heart, the rune that matched the amulet in her Blackwood box at home.

"He's dead. It-they-they're feeding off his soul. His soul is still trapped in there."

Chapter Thirteen.

"There is no proof, of course, that a clean, well-run home automatically equals a safe, ghost-free one, but why take chances?"

-Mrs. Increase's Advice for Ladies, by Mrs. Increase "Don't get how the soul and the heart got anything to do with each other." Terrible slid into the exit lane, heading off the highway to take her home. She couldn't wait to get there. The thought of that man-b.u.mp had identified him as Slipknot, a cutpurse who worked the financial district-and the horror his last hours must have been, of the indignities his spirit was suffering even now and how she could do nothing to help him ... She rubbed her forehead with her palm like she was trying to erase the unwanted vision.

"Technically they don't. But as long as there's life in the body, the soul can't leave."

"So he's not dead."

"No, he is dead. His soul is trapped. His body isn't sustaining life. The spell is sustaining his physical life so it can feed off his soul."

Terrible thought about this for a moment. "So they do the spell, use his blood and innards to power it. Then they trap his soul, aye, so's it can keep feeding the magic. And the magic keeping the body alive? Like a cycle?"

"Right," she said, surprised he'd caught on so quickly.

"And you can't help him? Ain't that what you do?"

"Normally we'd do a ritual to release the soul. Like a Banis.h.i.+ng."

"Send him to the City, aye?"

"Right." She s.h.i.+fted uneasily in her seat. "But we can't in this case, because we don't know what the spell is."

"Don't it end the spell, you Banish the soul?"

"Don't know." She'd smoked so much that day the tip of her tongue burned, but that didn't stop her from lighting another. "If I can decode that amulet, find out what the spell is for, I should know how to end it. Probably. But as it is ... detaching the soul might end the spell, or it might backfire. Somebody else could get sucked into it."

"Somebody like you."

"Yeah."

It almost had sucked her in. She'd never felt darkness like that, and greed. What was happening at Chester was far worse than a simple haunting. And thanks to her own stupid curiosity, she'd managed to get herself tangled further in the mess. The amulet hiding in her bag had tasted her blood. She'd fed it, in her small way, and she had no idea what that meant for her except chances were that if the spell needed another soul, hers would be the first one it came to. Whoever cast it hadn't been stupid or amateurish, that was for sure.

f.u.c.k.

"We find the spell, we set Slipknot free?"

"I'll do my best."

He nodded. "Slip not a low one. He don't deserve it, being trapped."

"I don't think anybody deserves it."

"Aye?" he glanced at her, the dashboard lights coloring his face greenish as he turned onto her street. "Then you ain't had such a bad life at that, Chess."

Five hours later, after a restless nap that felt more like swimming through sleep than actually sleeping, she arrived at the Mortons' house. The street was soulless and blank, dark houses lined up like empty tombs while cars slept on their driveways. Only the trees spoke, whispering back to the breeze.

Chess set her bag on the stone walkway leading to the Morton's front door and unzipped it. The Hand's fingers tried to grip hers as she pulled it out and placed it next to the bag.

Lockpicks came out next, in their leather case, followed by a short, fat candle. The Hand twitched, then shriveled slightly as its muscles tightened around the candle's base. Her camera had fallen to the bottom, but she found it after a minute of searching and slipped the strap around her neck. Last was the steel syringe full of thick, oily lubricant for the lock.

This she squirted in, sliding the needle as far into the mechanism as she could get it. Some Debunkers used a spray can with a tube, but Chess found that too messy, especially after one of her books had managed to wedge against the nozzle of her old one and soak everything inside her bag. The syringe worked better, was quieter and more accurate.

After that sat for a minute she went to work with the picks as silently and quickly as she could, listening for the minute click that would tell her the catch had given.

It came. She grabbed her things, swung the door open, and stepped inside the house.

The Mortons did not believe in leaving a light on, it seemed, and they did believe in running the heater even on a night like this one, when autumn's chill barely touched the air. The heat didn't bother her but the lack of light did. People who were genuinely frightened of ghosts in their home tended to leave them on, often even sleeping under their glare.

"Algha canador metruan," she whispered, striking a match. Light flared from the tip, casting shadows on the tasteful ivory walls of the living room. Once again the Hand twitched as she lit the candle and shook out the match, placing it in her pocket.

She relaxed. The Mortons would sleep now under the Hand's magic, more heavily and sweetly than they had in a while, and she didn't have to worry so much about noise.

The living room held no secrets. In the faint glow from the flame Chess crawled along the perimeter, sliding her fingertips along the baseboards and joints, using her penlight to see behind the furniture. Not that it was too necessary. With the exception of Albert, the Mortons didn't appear to be readers. No bookcases gave hints as to the interests of the owners.

Instead the room was filled with what she thought of as spindly furniture: occasional tables with one single knickknack on top, or couches with tiny legs and s.p.a.ce beneath. She slid the beam of the penlight beneath them and found only a thick coating of beggar's velvet. Mrs. Morton apparently didn't bother to clean under there.

Good thing, that. The dust made it clear nothing had been moved. No wire trails marked it, no sc.r.a.pes indicated sound or film equipment had been hidden here. She hadn't expected there to be, but still good to know.

The kitchen was next. She set the Hand on the counter while she opened the fridge and peered inside, finding it stuffed with condiments and neatly labeled and stacked plastic containers, complete with dates. The freezer held numerous blocks of white paper, also labeled, that would become roasts and chickens when they were unwrapped. She made a note. If she found nothing else before she left, she'd have to come open them all, to see if they contained anything other than dead animals-or rather, the wrong kind of dead animals.

Probably not; the windowsill was lined with cookbooks, their spines ridged and unreadable from heavy use. Chess picked them up one by one, flipped through them, glancing idly at the elaborate photos. The Meat Lover's Cookbook ... Cooking with Taste ... Mrs. Increase's Family Recipes ... Cuisine of the Bankhead Spa ... Wait. What?

The Bankhead Spa was the kind of resort where movie stars and extremely high Church officials went on vacation; incredibly expensive, incredibly dull, with a private ferry and hordes of a.s.skissy staff. Not the sort of place she'd expect an optometrist-or was he an optician? She could never remember the difference-to visit. Not the sort of place she'd expect one to be able to afford, more important. But just the sort of place she could see Mrs. Morton insisting on being taken to. For people who gave a s.h.i.+t about such things, she supposed it would be quite a coup.

The spine on that book was not fuzzed with age. It cracked when she opened it, in fact. Brand-new. Definitely brand-new; the receipt was still inside. September. Only two months before.

No wonder they were still in this neighborhood. No wonder they needed money. With a faint smile, Chess snapped a quick picture of the receipt and the book, and replaced both. It might not be important, that was true. But it might be, and every little bit of evidence would help.

The only place she couldn't search was behind the fridge, so she pulled her electric meter from her bag and fed the wire around. A flip of the switch showed her nothing else back there used electricity. Next she tried the mirror on its long metal antenna. Clean-well, as clean as it could be behind a refrigerator.

This was a waste of time, but still she searched, following the Church-set routine so that if she needed to testify she could say she had. Cabinets stuffed with packaged food and sugary snacks-no wonder Albert looked like a small, squashy torpedo instead of a boy-and still more plastic tubs. Had Mrs. Morton once sold the stuff, or what? Chess couldn't imagine any reason why one small family of three needed the ability to store enough food to feed the entire Downside for a year.

Pots and pans clanked as she s.h.i.+fted them to look behind. The oven was clean and empty, the drawers practically overflowing with lids for all those tubs.

One last stop, the laundry room-actually a small alcove off the garage-where Mrs. Morton had been the day Albert supposedly first saw the apparition. Clean, as was the garage itself.

She climbed the stairs, listening to the heavy, regular breathing of the Mortons. Somebody snored so loudly that if it weren't for the Hand, Chess imagined it would have woken everyone up. The sound grated up her spine like a broken saw.

Ah. Pay dirt. Albert had replaced his books. Everything from electrical wiring for dummies to complicated texts on animation and film editing. She took several pictures of the shelf as a whole, then started removing books, shaking them by the spine in the hopes that something would fall out before photographing them.

His drawers were next. Chess grinned. Looked like Albert had been studying blueprints of the house itself. Interesting. She took more photos, and just out of spite decided to take pictures of his rather extensive collection of p.o.r.n as well. Ha, she knew he'd have one.

Albert sighed and rolled under the covers as she bent down to search under the bed. The bag of wires she'd noted Sat.u.r.day night was still there, along with an ancient DVD player and a few more books on film and wiring, suggesting Albert may indeed have been hiding his activities from his parents.

Wedged between the headboard and the wall was a small black velvet bag. Chess reached for it, then pulled her hand back, certain nothing electrical was inside it. It was a magic bag, a gris-gris, even, and she did not want to open it.

Most homes were full of such items, and none of them ever bothered her the way this one did. Perhaps it was simply tiredness, or the way her nerves still jangled when she thought of the dead man at the airport. But something told her this was not legal magic, not a basic protection bag or charm for safe dreams. This didn't even feel like magic Church employees were authorized to do.

She nudged the bag with the toe of her boot, trying to pull the thread holding it closed. No luck. It was knotted at the top and sealed with wax.

She slipped on a pair of surgical gloves-after the amulet, she wasn't taking any chances-and lit another match, slipping a small white china cup onto the carpet to catch the melting wax. Albert mumbled something in his sleep.

"What's that, Albert?" she said under her breath.

"Didn't mean to," he said.

Chess glanced up sharply. No, he was still asleep.

"I'm sure you didn't," she replied gently, shaking out the match. Most of the black wax had melted into the cup. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"

He sighed. "I was hungry and I didn't have any money, and I like chocolate ..."

Whatever. So he stole a candy bar from a convenience store or something. Big deal.

He kept droning on while she untied the bag and held it upside down over another dish, then snapped a few hasty pictures of the contents. Black salt, a crow's talon, some pink thread tied in knots ... nothing particularly unusual here. It might be unorthodox for a dream safe, but within legal limits certainly-it was personal, and it didn't affect anyone else. So why did her skin crawl, why did she feel as if something large and black and sharp were about to swoop down on her?

Her hands shook as she snapped a quick photo then poured everything into the bag, resealed it, and stuffed it back behind the headboard. She wanted to leave. Wanted to get out of this house that was suddenly suffocatingly warm and filled with eyes.

Eyes like the ones of the hooded figure watching her from the doorway.

Chess jumped up so fast she stumbled against the rickety bedside table, banging her knee hard on the edge. The lamp fell over and crashed to the floor while she tried to stuff herself into the corner, to get a better look at the shape.

He was made of darkness, it seemed, the complete absence of light behind him making the outlines of his robe-or whatever it was-squirm and ripple. Her gaze couldn't seem to catch on anything, to find the definition of his form outside that narrow, pale face and the terrible black depths of his eyes.

He smiled, revealing sharp, dingy teeth, too many teeth. His nose hooked down, thin and crooked like a stalact.i.te in the center of his face.

He should have been another flat image, a film projected from a hole somewhere in the wall, as she'd thought the first time she saw him. But he wasn't, and she knew it. She felt him, felt the absence of humanity and conscience crawl over her skin and try to invade her body.

His hand materialized in front of him, stretching toward her. Not a gesture of supplication, but of threat. He was coming for her, and she could not escape.

It felt like hours Chess stood there, with his eyes burning into her and his presence staining her soul, but it could not have been more than a few seconds before he moved, so fast she couldn't track it. He seemed to disappear only to reappear again a foot closer to her, inside the doorway, as though a strobe light was flas.h.i.+ng in the room.

Her legs refused to move. She tried and tried, but they would not budge, as if her feet had sprouted roots and dug themselves into the thinly carpeted floor.

Closer again, standing at the edge of Albert's bed while the boy muttered in his sleep and s.h.i.+fted under the blanket. Now the creature's other hand was visible, also held out to her, fingers curled in preparation to close around her throat. Her skin there burned already. Her lungs fought to inflate. He was going to kill her, this was it, there was no way she could escape him. Especially if she couldn't get her f.u.c.king feet to obey.

Another movement. He stood in Albert's bed, mired to the thigh by it as though sinking into quicksand. Another. He stood in the corner. Another. He hung in the air by the ceiling, playing with her, disorienting her, forcing her to look wildly around the room to find him.

The knife in her back pocket dug into her. She reached around to grab it, closing her fingers over it, and her palm shrieked in pain. Only then did she realize it had been throbbing for several minutes.

As a weapon the knife would be useless, but it made her feel better, stronger, to hold something as she crept out of the corner holding it in front of her.

He appeared again, right at her side, so close she could see a droplet of red fall from the sharp edge of one canine tooth. Chess screamed and waved the knife at him, but he disappeared again in a breath of icy cold.

Her chest ached as she spun toward the door and started running, banging her shoulder hard on the doorframe and hurtling herself down the stairs. He could have been on those stairs, he could have been anywhere. The darkness was so complete, she couldn't see where she was going, couldn't see anything at all, and she could feel his hands on her neck as she fell the last few steps and landed in a heap on the polished wood floor at the bottom.

He was across the room. He was in the doorway to the kitchen. He was everywhere in the house, in her head. Her palm hurt so bad, she thought it was going to explode. Her shoulder ached, and both her knees where she'd landed on them. No matter. She had to get out, out into the cool fresh air, back into the world she knew existed outside this house of horror.

It wasn't until she was there, crumpled on the street, brus.h.i.+ng tears off her face, that she realized she'd left the Hand inside, along with her bag and everything else.

Chapter Fourteen.

"Now the lack of G.o.ds is fact, which is Truth and need not be believed or doubted. The Church offers protection, and so the Church makes law."

-The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 1641 Lex shoved his hands into his pockets and stared up at the Morton house. "I gotta touch what?"

"A hand. A dead hand. It's on the floor of the bedroom on the right, at the top of the stairs. Just grab it, and my bag, and bring them down here, okay?"

"Don't know I want to touch some dead witch hand, tulip. No offense."

"It's not a witch's hand, it's a convicted murderer's, and it's harmle-never mind. Are you going to do it for me, or should I call someone else? There's not a lot of time left until sunrise."

Chess waited for him to call her bluff. There was no one else she could call. Her only options had been Doyle or Lex, since she didn't have Terrible's number. Lex had won easily. At least he wouldn't spread news of her ridiculous flight all over the Church in the morning. Maybe that wasn't fair to Doyle, but she didn't care, not when the thought of going back into that house made her feel like she was going to wet her pants.

"Aye, I'll do it." His dark eyes scanned her up and down, in her black jeans and snug black top. "But I get something in return."

"Fine. Just go get my stuff, okay?"

She watched him slouch his way up the walk and disappear into the house, half-convinced he wouldn't come out. And now he wanted something in return, and if she were honest with herself, she'd known he would when she called him.

And maybe that, more than anything else, had been why she called him. The thought didn't make her comfortable, but then most of her thoughts these days didn't. Her mind seemed to be endlessly turning over pieces of a broken vase she couldn't put back together. Airports and ghost planes and runes and bodies and eyes, those black eyes that seemed to sear right into her flesh when they focused on her ... Why hadn't he killed her?