“We’re fine,” she called.
Rick peeled off his shirt and handed it to her. The attic was so damn hot it barely made a difference.
She wiped his cut with it, ducked as glass smashed behind her, and wound the fabric into a bandage, which she tied around his arm with the air of someone used to dealing with such things. “I need to get out there and look around. So you need to start grabbing stuff, okay?”
He glanced out again at the sea of ghosts, at the way the light they cast reflected off the naked ceiling boards and patchy walls and somehow thickened the air.
“They can’t hurt you unless they have a weapon,” she said, in a softer tone. “Without magic powering them they can’t solidify themselves without an object to solidify around, remember? And those sigils will help protect you. So just keep your eyes open, and get everything you can behind that line. And for Truth’s sake, do not break the line, okay?”
The sound of wood scraping wood drew his attention; a team of ghosts, four or five of them, were pushing what looked like an enormous wardrobe.
Chess saw it too. “We’ll worry about that when we have to. Just go, and go as fast as you can.”
She stepped over the salt line and into the mass of ghosts, who whirled around her, grabbing for her with impossible white hands that failed to take hold.
Rick’s breath rattled in his chest. Ghosts out there. Terrible downstairs, probably with all sorts of weapons and eager to kill someone. He could move, or he could die, and while neither of them really appealed he figured moving seemed like a better idea.
They were so cold. So damn cold. He’d never really thought about it. He’d been brought up to think of death as something peaceful, something that meant you got to go live in the City below the earth forever, that it was simply another stage of existence.
And he did believe it. Hell, he didn’t have to believe it, because it was Fact and that was Truth, and he’d spent hundreds of Saturday Holy Days at Church and didn’t even have to think to know that Fact and Truth were what really mattered, and it was comforting and right.
But apparently it was Fact and Truth that ghosts were cold, too, and that made him wonder if the City was cold, and if the dead spent their time there milling around in angry silence the way they were in that attic.
A lamp flew past his head and hit the wall beside him with a heavy thud. He scooped it up and ran with it, dropping it on the “safe” side of the line. Same with a large book bound in moldy leather, and a rusty frying pan. There wasn’t as much small stuff in the attic as he’d originally feared, but he kept circling the floor, scanning it, almost getting used to the sensation of being dipped in ice over and over again.
Something heavy slammed into his shoulder. He spun around to see a ghost raising another chair leg high over its head, preparing to bring it down again.
He reacted without thinking, grabbing hold of the leg and pulling, turning so he could put his back into it. Damn, that ghost was strong. The edges of the wood dug into his fingers, into his ribs when he tucked it under his arm to get a better grip and leaned forward.
The ghost still didn’t let go. This was fucking ridiculous. What was he supposed to do, spend the entire time up here playing tug-of-war with a dead guy for a chair leg? While more of them wandered around, faster and faster, probably grabbing more weapons to beat him into a bloody pulp?
The thought energized him a bit. He pulled harder, pushing his entire body forward, and ended up taking five or six steps before he realized what was happening.
Maybe he could…? Yeah, that would work, right? The ghost couldn’t cross that salt line, but he could, and the chair leg could.
It made him feel a bit like a sled dog, for some bizarre reason, but he did it, towing the ghost toward the line, pushing through the mass of them. The cold almost started to feel good, it was so hot up there.
He stepped over the salt line. Crossed the few feet between it and the wall, and gave the leg one last tug. The second the ghost’s hands touched the air over the salt line it let go.
Yes!
He ducked out of the way of a flying picture frame and headed back out. Through the translucent forms filling the attic he saw Chess, bending over slightly with her hand out. Trying to find the portal, he guessed. Or hoped.
Not for the first time the idea that he had only her word that she actually knew what she was doing crossed his mind, but he shoved it away just as quickly. If she didn’t, it really didn’t matter. He was in that attic and he wasn’t getting out until either she managed to fix the problem or they both died, so no point in worrying about it.
Terrible shouted from below, and Chess shouted back again that they were fine.
A few simpering china babies sat on the floor by the wall. A ghost picked one up, started advancing toward him. Rick ducked away, realizing as he did so that he had an advantage Chess hadn’t explained. He could walk through them. They couldn’t walk through each other.
He twisted his body, sliding through a ghost raising a shard of glass—that could not be a good thing, was there more broken glass around?—and around a heavy desk. More stuff, that’s what he needed, stuff to get on the other side of that—
The china baby smashing into the side of his head stunned him, knocked him on his ass. Literally. For a second his vision blurred and shook; when the world snapped back into focus he saw light hit the shard of glass as it started to descend.
Without thinking he grabbed at the spectral hand that held it. It was solid. Solid and cold and damp, with a sort of horrible give to it, the kind of give all living flesh possessed but which just felt wrong when the flesh in question glowed bluish-white and froze his own.
The ghost’s face leered above him, its lips stretching into a hideous grimace. His arms shook from trying to hold it off. The point of the glass came closer, a little closer, aiming straight for his heart.
“Chess! Chess!”
She didn’t reply, but he heard her footsteps, heard her voice as she yelled more of those makeshift syllables and flung something at the ghost.
Dirt. It landed on him and he realized it was dirt, dirt with a particular pungent smell. He also realized the ghost had frozen in place and he took advantage of it, snatching the glass from its hand and tossing it at the wall.
That was a mistake. Another ghost caught it. Fuck.
Chess glanced over. “I’ve found it. Get that glass to the other side of the line and come over to the corner. I might need your help.”
Okay, this he could do. He thought. The ghost grinned, holding the glass up, but it was still close to the salt line and wasn’t moving quickly.
And his mother told him playing basketball after school wouldn’t actually teach him any real skills.
He looked at the glass, at the hand holding it. Focused on it. And ran, his hands outstretched. Another china baby smashed against the floor where he’d been; an old book glanced off his back. He ignored them.
His hands closed around the ghost’s, shoving it forward. The ghost immediately went transparent. The glass fell to the floor, and unfortunately Rick fell with it, and it drove itself into his thigh.
It took every bit of strength he could muster not to cry out in pain, but he managed it, remembering Chess’s warning about showing emotions. Instead he forced himself to get back up. They’d smell his blood, yes, and that was a bad thing, but he couldn’t really do anything about that. Instead he limped over to where Chess stood, shouting back down to Terrible that they were okay and had found whatever it was.
She turned to him when he drew up beside her. “Look.”
It was a wreath. What?
As he watched, another ghost slid out of it. It was horrible to see, like witnessing the birth of a grotesque baby. It swung at him, at Chess, several times, its expression growing angrier and angrier, until finally it passed through them, no doubt to hunt for a weapon of some kind.
When it had gone he realized that the center of the wreath wasn’t there, or rather, that he
couldn’t see the floor through it. Instead the air appeared wavery, shiny almost, and tiny lights glowed in that space, lights and more shapes that could have been people.
“It leads directly to the City,” she said, ducking as a candlestick flew past. “Look. It’s mistletoe.”
“I thought that was illegal.” The second the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. Duh, asshole.
She must have seen his thoughts reflected on his face, because she didn’t point out his stupidity. “It opens the gate between here and the City, see? That’s why. Especially in a mistletoe wreath. The Church destroyed every one they could find right after Haunted Week.”
“Right.” Another ghost was forming in the center of the wreath. “So what do we do? I mean, what do you do?”
“I think I can try banishing them all, just sending them right back through without a psychopomp. Then we burn the wreath.”
He nodded, just as if he understood what she’d said, which he didn’t. He knew the words, knew that a psychopomp was an animal that carried spirits from this world to the City and that banishing was the act of summoning a psychopomp to do that job. But he had no idea what it actually entailed. It wasn’t exactly something people got to watch. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Keep collecting debris,” she said. “And tell Terrible to watch out. When I send them all back it will probably create a vacuum in here. So, um, when I give the word grab on to something, okay?”
His stomach lurched. Was she serious?
Stupid question; he should stop asking it. Yes, she was serious, and yes, Terrible might kill him if the ghosts didn’t manage it first and yes, this whole thing was a big mistake and yes, if he made it out of there alive he was going to punch his brother-in-law in the mouth.
She touched his arm, gave him a sort of soft quiet smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
He nodded.
Over the sound of his own footsteps as he half-ran, half-limped around the attic collecting more potential weapons he heard her voice, low and smooth like music playing in another room. The blood leaking from his thigh excited the ghosts, just as Chess said it would. They swarmed him, followed him, spun around him in a dizzying pattern of light. The cold wouldn’t go away, even for a second. The feeling of them passing through him, as if he was one of them, or as though he didn’t really even exist, wasn’t really there, grew more and more unpleasant.
But not as unpleasant as the sound of the wardrobe scraping across the floor again.
He looked in that direction. Not just a few ghosts behind it now. At least a dozen or so of them, pushing the heavy piece of furniture. Pushing it right toward Chess. They must have figured out what she was doing.
As they picked up speed more ghosts joined them. Within seconds, it seemed, he stood almost alone, watching the wardrobe slide across the floor.
“Chess! Chess, look out!”
Instantly he heard Terrible roaring her name from below. No time to try to shout back, and Rick supposed it didn’t matter anyway. With a feeling rather like jumping in front of a loaded gun he ran to the corner where she was, trying to catch the wardrobe before it hit her.
He’d just reached her side when her voice rose. Not in fear; it wasn’t a scream. It was simply her saying those words, those itchy-sounding, tumbly words.
Light flashed from the center of the wreath, a second of bright blue-white light, and then—the space grew. He didn’t understand how it could happen, but the wreath widened until the doorway or portal or whatever stretched from floor to ceiling.
That’s when his feet started sliding across the floor.
Grabbing the wardrobe was instinct. So was grabbing Chess’s hand.
Ghosts flew back through the portal, slowly at first, then faster as the vacuum increased. They too tried to catch the wardrobe, to hold on to him and Chess, but they couldn’t seem to solidify enough to do so.
Chess started walking toward him, going hand-over-hand up his arm, until she too could clutch the wardrobe. The vacuum sucked at him, sucked in some odd way he didn’t really understand. It wasn’t a physical pull, well, it was physical, obviously, but the sensation seemed to come from inside him rather than outside.
“It feels weird,” he managed. Holding the wardrobe with both hands necessitated pressing Chess between himself and the wood, almost spooning against her. She didn’t seem to mind, which was nice.
“It’s your soul.”
“What?” Damn it, there it was again.
“It’s your soul. The portal is trying to pull spirits back into itself, and it can’t differentiate very well between disembodied ones and living people. Just hang on. Do you see any more ghosts in here?”
He craned his neck to the left. Was that glow a ghost or—
He lost his grip on the wardrobe.
As if in slow motion he felt himself falling backwards, his head hitting the floor with a painful thud. Felt the rough wood floor beneath him scraping his back as he slid across it.
Chess grabbed his feet. He managed to force his head off the ground long enough to see her feet hooked on the edge of the wardrobe.
And long enough to turn around and see the portal only inches from his face, to see the cold darkness within, the black silhouettes and torch flames. Faces appeared in it and then disappeared, greedy eyes focusing on him, bony fingers trying to reach out and grab him.
He could practically see saliva dripping from their dead lips as they waited for him, ready to steal his life, to try to feed on that power. He had no idea what exactly they would do to him, but he bet it would be painful.
Chess shifted her grip, crooking her elbow around his feet and reaching into her bag. A second or two later she threw something at the portal, shouted something that sounded like “Belium dishwasher!”
The portal closed.
☠
HE DIDN’T THINK HE’D EVER been so grateful for a beer in his life. Beneath all of the bottles of water in the cooler were a dozen or so of them, chilled to perfection, and he wished he could suck every one back at once.
Not only did he think he deserved a damn drink, he thought it would help a bit with the pain as Chess dug the glass shard out of his thigh.
He was wrong about that one. He just barely managed to stay silent. But at least it didn’t take long, and when her hands touched his skin as she applied butterfly closures and some kind of ointment, covering it all with a bandage…well, that was nice, even though he felt shaky and weak from the loss of adrenaline.
Terrible stood in the corner, watching the wreath reduce to ash. Rick looked at him for a second, then turned back to Chess.
“So, um…maybe you’d like to go out to dinner with me or something, sometime?”
Terrible snorted.
Chess smiled, the kind of smile Rick knew meant “no” even before she opened her mouth, and started cleaning his scraped fingers with a baby wipe. “Sorry. I’m with someone.”
“Oh. Oh, um…is it serious?”
She squeezed more ointment onto the place where the splinters had been, slowly like she was trying to gather her thoughts. She glanced at Terrible, a quick little eye-dart before looking down again; Rick figured she didn’t want him to overhear. “He’s my family,” she said finally. Quietly. “He’s everything.”
“Oh,” he said again, rummaging in his tired mind for a new topic of conversation. “So that thing I saw through the portal, was that the City of Eternity? Like, for real?”
Chess smoothed a Band-Aid over his finger. “Not really. Well, it is, but it’s actually more like a tunnel into the City.”
He took his hand back, took another swallow of his beer.
“All burned out here,” Terrible said.
Chess looked over at him. “Good. Can you scoop up the ashes? We’ll dump them down the sink later.”
“You can’t just leave them here?” Rick asked.
She shrugged. “Probably. But I’d rather be safe. You never know what can happen with s
tuff like that. Mistletoe is very powerful—as you saw—and there are a couple of spells that use mistletoe ash, so…better to just dump them.”
“Because whoever set that thing up might come back and try again?”
“What? No, nobody set that up. That was your fault.”
He jerked upright. “My fault? How did I—”
A heavy hand slammed down on his shoulder. How the hell had Terrible gotten there so fast? Rick hadn’t even heard his footsteps.
“Oh, calm down. Both of you. Nobody deliberately set that thing off. It was you being here that attracted them.”
Rick must have looked confused, because she sighed. “Think of it this way. All these years that wreath has been up there, but the house was empty. There was no energy inside it, you know? No life. But then you guys came in here tonight, and your energy activated the mistletoe and made a portal.”
Terrible let go of Rick, shifted his weight. “Shit.”
“Yes, shit. This is why you’re supposed to let me look through these places first, right? Please? Next time?”
Terrible nodded.
“Good.” She slapped her palms down onto her thighs and stood up. “Okay, are we all ready to go now?”
“Aye, guessing so.”
Rick stood up too. “Hey, do you need me back tomorrow night? Or…”
Terrible’s eyebrows rose. “You wanna come back?”
“Well…” Did he? No, not really. But he still needed the money, and he didn’t think he’d actually earned anything yet.
Terrible reached into the heavy pack against the wall and pulled out a wad of cash. “Here. You take this, aye? An you ain’t needing to come back. Thinkin you done enough.”
He held out his hand. Or rather, he held out a bunch of money, what had to be at least three or four grand.
“Oh, hey, no, I mean, I hardly did anything, the floorboards aren’t even up at all.”
Terrible glanced at Chess, then back. “Take it.”
“But I—”
“Take it.”
So he did, shoving it into his pocket without counting it. At least he knew not to do that.
He slung his backpack over his still-sore shoulder, and the three of them clattered back down the stairs and out the front door.