T
alk to me, Dro.” We’re strolling down Franklin again. Well, I’m strolling. Riley and Dro are floating in long, fluid strides that approximate a strut. Riley seems to be back to his old genial self today, which I’m grateful for, because my underslept, overthinking ass is not.
“Okay, well, I was up at the Council Library all day yesterday.”
“Yes, we got the inebriated, unhelpful version last night.”
“Can I talk, Riley?”
Riley nods graciously.
“Thank you. They got a whole section on imps.”
“Imps?” I say.
“Yeah, like those annoying little naked guys that fuck up people’s gardens and shit.”
“Thank you, Dro. I know what an imp is. I just didn’t know NYCOD had a Dewey decimal number for them.”
“Oh, well, yeah, there’s an imp section, and there’s some whispering that the ngks have a certain relationship to imps.”
“Like distant cousins?” Riley asks. He doesn’t look like he’s feeling this thought line any more than I am.
“More like evil stepbrothers.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, indeed. The whispers say that imps are like the less lethal, mentally challenged relatives of the ngks.”
“I’m quite sure,” Riley says, “that it doesn’t say imps are mentally challenged.”
“You know what I mean though. And whereas the imps show up in scattered randomosity—”
“That’s definitely not a word,” I point out.
Dro ignores me, which is probably for the best. “And apparently have no greater purpose, other than to make a mild nuisance of themselves. The ngks, on the other hand, come in quite strategic clumps, usually, and serve a very specific purpose.”
“And what purpose would that be?” says Riley.
I notice a throng of kids chasing one another up and down the block, immersed in some wildly complex game they seem to be making up the rules for as they go. Every few seconds they switch directions as one, just like a flock of birds, and then fall out into fits of laughter. Two old drunks enjoy the show from a nearby stoop.
“Well, of course it’s all very shrouded in—”
Riley gets curt again. “Cut to it.”
“Annihilation of the dead.”
All three of us stop short at the gravity of those words. “Come again,” Riley says.
Dro repeats himself, looking quite solemn indeed. “One very old Welsh text stated that it was commonly known that these creatures are summoned with the express purpose of annihilating all the spiritual activity in a given area . . .”
“Must have something to do with how they precipitate tragedy,” Riley finishes eagerly. “Fuck.”
“You said, ‘are summoned,’” I point out. I can tell that
phrasing will haunt me for a long time, with all those passive hints of some hidden hand at work.
“Did I?”
I don’t like it when Dro gets sloppy with language like that. His shit needs to be impeccable, considering how serious things are right now. “You did. Made it sound like
someone
is doing the summoning.”
“Hmm, I’ll have to check. I read through hundreds of books, Carlos.”
He has a point. I’m probably just tired.
“You thinking ’bout the thing you saw?” Riley says. I nod, frowning.
The kids have scattered off to their respective houses, and a nasty winter breeze sweeps through the city around us.
“But did the two ngked houses even have spirits in ’em?” Dro asks.
Riley shrugs. “Who knows? There’s hundreds of loose spirits flitting around, taking up residence in places they shouldn’t. If there were, they’re surely gone now.”
“If there weren’t,” Dro points out, “what’d be the purpose of putting a ghost annihilator where there’s no ghosts? Who’d get got?”
“Us,” I say. “And it’s already almost worked twice.”
* * *
I’m surrounded by Estherness. The old ghost has a way of taking up space and not at the same time. She’s everywhere, fills the aging room with her jovial old self and yet never overwhelms or suffocates. It’s a skill. I feel safe just being near her, let alone immersed in her. A very simple thought occurs to me: maybe everything will just be all right. I doubt it, but still, the thought is there and I decide to go with it for now.
“You look tired, Carlos.”
“Haven’t been sleeping much.” I want to hold on to that thought, tattoo it to my mind, but it’s like trying to grab water. “Rough week.”
“You’re worried about the infestation.”
“It’s not an infestation. Not yet anyway. Just two.” Mama Esther’s look reminds me that she’s not stupid. “You’re not worried about it?”
“Nah,” she says, but I don’t believe her. “I’ve seen this neighborhood through so many changes. You wouldn’t believe some of the ghoulish monstrosities I’ve watched come and go. Some of the horrors I’ve withstood. Ah, Carlos, when you’re young, every new travesty seems like the last. You shouldn’t trouble yourself so much.”
I want to believe her so badly that I almost do. The ngks just being any old passing spirit would be such a blessing, but I know that’s not the case. Deluding myself won’t help now anyway.
“There’s something else,” Mama Esther says. She could always see right through me. Seems everyone can these days.
I nod. The story waits hungrily at the edge of my tongue. Speaking it into existence would be like taking off a jacket made of chains. My suddenly unburdened soul would float up into the darkening sky. I want to say it so badly it aches. Esther can see it all over my damn face anyway. “Ah, I’m fine.”
“Right.” I didn’t lie because I thought I could deceive her, just to signal that I couldn’t talk about it. She looks disappointed. “You know, I’m very good with matters of the heart. I had eleven children and twenty-three grandkids. They all came to me with their hopes and fears about love, Carlos. And they always left knowing what to do. Esther knows things.”
“I know.” I’m alarmingly close to breaking down, so I scan the shelves for something to change the subject with.
“Oh,
Richard III
. Haven’t read this one since I lived here.”
“What’s her name, Carlos?”
“Esther . . .”
“What a beautiful name! I like her already.”
“Esther.”
“Carlos?”
I shake my head. “No.”
For a full minute, we just stare at each other. Esther’s old even by ghost standards. Her smile, always a little whimsical, has diminished in these past weeks, and the strain shows in other ways too. Little flickers have begun to erupt in her voluminous shining girth. Now it seems she’s not just old, she’s aging. I wonder briefly if something else is wrong with her, some ancient ghost disease no one knows about, but quickly banish the thought. I don’t need to make things any more complicated than they already are: Mama Esther is stressed.
“It must get lonely,” she says. She doesn’t have to finish the sentence. Anyone else would’ve gotten some lip in return for the condescension, but the old house ghost manages to say things in just such a way that you can’t be mad at her. Plus, she saved my life.
Ever so slightly, I nod. I hadn’t ever thought of myself as lonely until Trevor came along with his diabolical plans and beautiful sister. I was just an awkward intermediary, and for the most part, I was okay with that. Now I’m here about to get all gushy in Mama Esther’s library.
No.
Not right now, anyway. I’m afraid if I start to blubber I’ll never stop—some ever-present dam I’ve had up since my resurrection will burst and there’s no telling what’s
on the other side. This is not the moment to find out. Not with ghost annihilators popping up on the block and God-knows-what-else running around the basements. “Must get lonely being in a big house all by yourself.”
Esther takes the hint. “Ah, you know, folks come by and use the library often enough. It’s not so bad.”
A strange thought occurs to me, and then it seems even stranger that it’d never occurred to me before. “Folks come by . . . that don’t work for the Council?”
“Of course, Carlos!” For no clear reason, Esther is chuckling. “All variations of dead come through my doors to do their research or to find a good mystery to keep them up at night. It’s not odd.”
“Right.” My mind is moving fast now.
All variations of dead.
I wonder. I wonder . . .
“Agent Delacruz.”
The staticky explosion of telepathy tears through my thoughts. The Council’s so damn annoying with their damn transmissions at all the wrong damn times. I cock my head at attention so Esther realizes why I’m not speaking. “
Agent
Washington
requests your presence urgently at Franklin Avenue and Bergen Street.”
Crap. So much for their no-locations policy. That’s right down the street, but still: crap. “
He says to inform you that there’s been a sighting of your
. . .” The ghostly voice pauses and then says cautiously: “
Your naked friend.”
“Crap.” I thank Mama Esther and start heading down the stairwell. She doesn’t have to ask to know what happened; it’s written all over my face.
S
orry ’bout the page,” Riley says. “I didn’t have time to fuck around with a messenger, and I didn’t know if you’d get the telepathy blast.” All that supernatural mind-talking stuff doesn’t work two ways for me. I can receive the messages, usually, but can’t send anything out. If I know Riley’s trying to reach me, I can get one-on- one messages, but it’s not a sure shot. And we avoid going through the Council to reach each other if we can help it, so when Riley wants to get at me, he usually sends one of the wandering lost souls that zip here and there through Brooklyn looking for something to do.
“It’s cool,” I say. “I was around the corner at Esther’s. Whatchu got?”
“Had soulcatcher patrols movin’ up and down the block for the past day or two. One of ’em just saw an unusual-looking character streak past, and by
streak
I do mean
streak
, and disappear into this building. He called for backup like a good little newbie, and here we are.”
“Thing is?”
“Thing is, then he went in after it and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“I see.” Ghostly forms swirl around us in a controlled frenzy. The Council soulcatchers wear thick, shimmering helmets shaped more or less like horseshoe crabs without the pointy tail. Their bodies and faces are hidden beneath flowing robes. Overall, they cut an imposing image, but today their nervous energy fills the air till it’s almost hard to breathe. I wonder if the living folks around pick up on all this disturbance.
Suddenly Dro’s beside us, panting. “What’d I miss?”
Riley runs it down for him, and we walk to the building—an old brick four-story on Bergen between a clinic and an abandoned car lot. Behind us, the soulcatchers fall into position. I feel their swarthy ferocity carry me forward like a gust of wind. They’re ready to die the final death to help their brother. They’re furious and determined and afraid.
I walk into the dingy hallway and draw my blade. At a signal from Riley, the soulcatchers flood around us in a torrent, burst up the stairwell and into the various apartments. They howl as they rush forward, a desperate and bone-chilling battle cry that never fails to unsettle me.
I nod toward the basement, and Riley draws his own blade, a shimmering shadow in the dim hallway. We walk forward side by side, and I feel the long night of confusion blow off me in the fevered charge of the moment. Riley is the most ferocious motherfucker I know. Something sinister and freakish awaits us. Whatever it is threatens not just him and me, but this whole neighborhood, Mama Esther, and possibly the entire natural order of the afterlife. Everything else becomes blissfully petty in the face of all that. No wonder Riley seems to have gotten his swagger back too.
I open the door slowly, hear nothing, sense nothing from
below and sidestep, blade first, down the basement stairs. It’s dark as fuck, but the ickiness hangs in the air like a chemical cloud. From out of the emptiness, someone yells. It’s a living human yell, at once terrified and triumphant. The urgent shriek of someone who has absolutely lost his mind. Beneath it all, there’s another voice, a softer one, blubbering and whimpering.
I flinch and then flail for a dangling light chain. The voice is sobbing now, sobbing and gurgling, and that thickness in the air keeps getting thicker. I finally swat the chain and then catch it in my hand and pull. It takes a second to sort through the tangled tableau in front of me. The naked man stands on top of something, lifting one pale foot and then the other. He’s hunched forward like he’s about to pounce, and his mouth opens and closes around a series of shouts, sobs, and cackles. A black tangle of greasy hair hangs down over his face and shoulders. His long arms stretch to either side; one hand is wrapped around the face of a soulcatcher, who’s hovering there miserably. Then I realize that the thing the naked man is standing on is actually a person—the one who’d been doing the whimpering. A very tall person. “Moishe!” I say, more out of sheer surprise than anything else.
“Mr. Delacruz,” Moishe whimpers. “Please . . .”
Soulcatchers flush down the stairs and form a circle around where the naked man is howling. In about five seconds, Riley will give the signal and they will burst forward like a single death-dealing machine and end this whole horrible situation. Just before they do though, the naked man gets eerily quiet and turns to me. His beady little eyes glare out from the squinched-up gray face, and instead of the fermenting hysteria of a madman, I see
something much worse: intelligence. He seems somehow familiar, a junky I’ve bumped into a few times around the way, I think. The guy smiles, a horrible, toothy grin, and I see the muscles flex on that long pale arm and I know what’s about to happen right before it does: the soulcatcher writhes and then spasms and collapses. That shadowy glow diminishes and then fades completely; he’s gone.
The other soulcatchers don’t need a cue from Riley anymore. They take the first step in, but stop in their tracks when the horrific shrieking of the ngk tears through all of our minds. It caught everyone off guard, and I see a few soulcatchers stumble and collapse from sheer shock. They won’t last long. Beside me, Riley gives the pullout signal. I know he’s cringing, hating himself for it, but it’s the right move. This ngk, wherever it’s hiding, is either stronger or angrier than the other one; its screech is twice as grating.
The soulcatchers retreat, but I figure I have a little longer left in me. I steady myself, try to block out all the terror and screaming, and let my blade fly. It cuts through the air, a little harder than necessary perhaps, but the aim is on the money. I hear that telltale
sploitch
sound and watch with satisfaction as the point enters the naked guy just below his rib cage. He stumbles backward, looks down at it. I wait for him to collapse, but he doesn’t. He looks back up at me, and now he’s smiling. His beady eyes drill into mine as he pulls the blade out of himself and then puts the tip against Moishe’s head and pushes down. I close my eyes, cringing, as the sound of tearing flesh and bone and that final scream fill the air.
Dark red blood stains the basement floor. Moishe’s head has vomited its contents in a chunky, steaming mess. The
naked man is still staring at me, still smiling, still holding my blade.
There’s nothing more to be done here. The ngk shrieks again, nearly doubling me over. I take a step backward, then another. Then I do something I haven’t done since my resurrection: I turn around and run for my
life.