The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) (43 page)

“You’re taking this rather well,” he remarked as he closed the doors behind me. “I almost thought there would be screaming and fainting.”

“I got that all out of the way early.” A glass terrarium on the nearest end of the counter held a piebald snake, coiled in on itself and watching with one black-gem eye. I touched the glass and it moved, shifting fluidly just like the pendant. A wave of nausea passed through me. I stood very still until it was gone. “How did you find out about the pendant? The Seal, I mean.”

“My family used to own it, until Moira’s stole it. That was in Ireland, a long time ago. Hannigans have a distressing habit of breeding only sons, and a man can’t hold the Seal. Yet.”

Oh
. “You think you’re going to be the first?”

“I’ll settle for working with the woman who
can
hold it. I’m a reasonable man, when I’m met with reasonableness.” There was a metallic, scraping sound. I whirled, but he had already punched the sword through my chest.

Right through my heart.

The stone floor seared my back. I sat up, choking, and screamed. Blood crusted my lips, and the pendant was a cicatrice of flame. When I ran out of air I scrabbled, my arms and legs not quite working right, my chest on fire, until I hit an invisible wall. It was the edge of the circle, and even though my legs kept going, trying to push me back through it, the air was as solid as steel.

I inhaled sharply, screamed again.

He waited until I ran out of breath again. “I’m sorry. I had to get you into the circle.”

Moira flitted through the room, running laps in a weird ghostly way. First she would be standing near the counter, then she’d wink out and show up a couple of feet to the right or left. She kept doing that, hopping around; I clapped a hand to my chest and found a bloody hole in my T-shirt. My bra was ruined, but everything under it seemed just fine.

“—
bastard
—” was all I could get out. I quit screaming. There didn’t seem to be any point.

“Exactly.” Hannigan nodded. “Precisely. I’m not even a full Hannigan. But I
will
get my hands on that Seal, one way or another. And dear darling Moira just helped me. It’s so easy to predict a woman blinded by the lust for vengeance.”

“
Georgie . . .
” Moira’s voice, faint and far away as she popped in and out of existence. “
I can’t get through, Georgie …
”

Hannigan straightened. He’d shrugged into a long black robe, and looked like a college student playing graduation at some drunken party or another. His eyes had lit up, and that shark smile was just as wide and white. “If Moira’s trying to get through, you can tell her not to bother. She helped me build this room, she knows it’s a psychic fallout shelter. She helped me build
everything
, but she wouldn’t share the Seal. Now I’ll have it anyway.”

The pendant was still burning. A thread of smoke drifted up from my T-shirt, perfumed with coppery, roasting blood.

Hannigan stepped back. The candle flames guttered as he raised his arms, the robe brushing back and forth like he carried his own personal wind with him.

“
Georgie, you’ll have to concentrate . . . Georgie, I can’t get through. Help meeee, Georgieeeeee . . .
” The burns were spreading up Moira’s body as she flickered like the candles.

Oh, holy shit
.

Ryan Hannigan began to chant.

It
hurt
. The Seal roared furiously, electricity jabbing through me. Now I know what it feels like to stick your finger in a light socket, lightning coursing through your veins, skyfire burning every nerve.

“
Georgie, you’ve got to concentrate! Georgieeeee
—” Moira howled. The candles blossomed with sudden flame, and I screamed again, going into seizure on the floor, blood bursting from my mouth and nose, my heels drumming the stone, a sharp edge in the deep-carved star slicing open my foot – he’d taken my boots off, damn it – and more blood flying, the droplets spattering that invisible wall and hanging.

Hannigan’s voice rose, a long yell of triumph shaped in syllables that cut and stabbed, venomous snakes of reddish smoke twisting and glowing around him. The Seal screamed again as it lifted from my chest, but my arm flew up and my fingers cramped around its sinuous curves, forcing it back against my skin.

Even though it hurt. Even though it
burned
.

It wasn’t just the Seal. It was Moira, her copper-gold hair lifting on a breeze, laughing as her bicycle ploughed through fallen leaves. Moira in the middle of the night, leaning out of a car window and shouting, lit up like a marquee. Those years we shared the same dorm room and I did the donkey work so she’d drag me along as the plain-Jane friend, those were
my
years, and even if they had sucked everything out of me so I was stuck as a paralegal in a shady-ass firm full of ambulance-chasers instead of having the stones to get through law school on my own, they were still
mine
.

She was still
my
Moira. And this bastard had killed her, chanting in this room while the car bucked and shuddered underneath her and the fuel truck loomed out of the intersection, its brakes failing and the blossom of fire kissing like an angry lover all over her last moments on earth. I
saw
it, clear as day, the Seal burning through me, and I wasn’t just concentrating.

I was
furious
.

A thunderclap tore the room apart. The floor underneath me heaved, broken pieces jolting apart and the pressure inside me suddenly easing, bleeding away.

Hannigan’s yell of triumph choked off.

Because Moira’s bleeding hands were clamped around his throat. She crouched on his chest, his arms flailing ineffectually as the snakes of crimson smokefire heaved around them both, and she
squeezed
.

So did I. But I wasn’t squeezing with anything physical. It was my will, an invisible snake inside my head, and even as Moira howled in satisfaction and Hannigan gurgled his last, the Seal
flexed
inside me and my dead college room mate’s ghost shredded apart. A burst of cold, clear white light filled the room – the light people talk about when they describe their hearts stopping and the Other Side beckoning.

“
Georgie, nooooooo
—” Moira screamed, a fading train whistle, but the light winked out. The stone room grumbled, like a subway muttering up through pavement, and the smoke took on a sharper, less perfumed tang. I coughed, choking, and heaved myself up to hands and knees.

“M-M-Moi—” I stammered over her name, because I was sobbing.

Now she was truly gone. And so was he.

Monday morning I called in sick and took the ferry.

It was one of those bright clear winter days where the wind comes off the river like a knife and everything sparkles. I stood on the deck in my Goodwill wool peacoat, my belly against the railing, and the fluttering newspaper was whisked up out of my hands.

Billionaire Dead in Mansion Fire
, the headlines screamed. They were calling it a double tragedy. It had been a job and a half pulling enough force through the drained Seal to burn that motherfucking pile down, and I didn’t like doing it. Still, it was the only thing I could think of, if the police weren’t going to come knocking and asking me how I’d strangled him.

Criminals set fires to cover things up all the time. I just had the Seal to make sure it stuck. It was a wonder anything was left of him. The papers didn’t say, but I was fairly sure there would just be charred bones.

The pendant glittered unhappily, cupped in my hand. It was drained now, Hannigan had siphoned off a lot of force, and I’d siphoned off even more. If I was going to do this, now was the time. When it was stronger, I wouldn’t be able to take it off.

Don’t take it off unless you’re ready to die.

Well, I wasn’t ready to die. Not really. But . . . Jesus Christ, living with this thing was not going to make me a happy cupcake.

And . . . Moira.

The wind scoured my face, drying the tears. I held my arm out, stiffly, drew back, and managed a pretty decent throw. It snapped as it left my hand, the chain biting, and beads of blood welled up on my wrist. Sharp darts of light glinted from it as it somersaulted, grabbing at the wind, the chain suddenly tentacles. But I’ve got a good aim, and it hit the choppy water and vanished with a twinkle.

A cloud settled over the sun, the colour and richness of the world stolen away again. I made it home without getting run over, took a bath without drowning, and went to bed because I was too fucking tired to care.

Tuesday morning showed up way too early, the alarm shrieking at me. I smashed the sleep button, rolled over, and spent another ten minutes in dreamland. There was something hard under my cheek.

The alarm shrieked again. I groaned, cursed, and punched it off. Turned my lamp on, every muscle protesting. I was sore all over from being stabbed, suffering seizures, and—

A silver gleam. The lion-dragon snarled slightly, and as soon as I touched the warm metal with a trembling finger it shifted, supple curves gleaming. I let out a small sound like I’d been punched and picked it up by the chain, gingerly, holding it away from me.

The Seal swung in tight circles, muttering at me.
You’re not gonna get away that easy
, it said, and I was reminded of tagging along after Moira.

Haunting her steps. Now this thing was haunting mine.

It settled against my breastbone like it had never been away, the chain sliding under my hair and the lion-dragon twisting and turning as it rubbed catlike against me. I sat in my bed, listening to the rumble of traffic outside, and hugged my knees. My curtains glowed; I could see every thread in the fabric. Every edge was rich and solid again, not washed-out and dull.

“Moira,” I whispered. “Tell me what to do now.”

And just like that, the answer occurred. Well, why not? I could almost hear her laughing. It was what Moira would have done. At least,
my
Moira. Not Hannigan’s. Not the gaping hole she’d been or the woman she grew into, but the girl I’d thought I . . . loved.

I had enough saved up, and if the Seal could make Hannigan rich it could do the same for me. But I’d do something different. I’d
help
people. I’d find the dead, and close their cases. I’d be a goddamn private eye.

I always wanted to be a superhero.

Nancy Kilpatrick

You hear only the crunch as your boots crush snow along this narrow street. A plume of carbon dioxide escapes your nostrils, vaporizing, like a ghost vanishing. Where the smaller ploughs have scraped the sidewalks, crystalline banks form glittering, otherworldly mountains and you scale one to cross the street.

It has been nearly a year since Brian died. A powerful wave of grief crashed over you, and then, within an hour of his demise, leaving grief in its wake, numbness flooded you. You are anaesthetized. A voluntary amnesiac. Now, you merely exist, rather than live, opening your eyes each morning with only a mild curiosity as to whether or not this day will be different. But the days are all the same and much of the time you realize that your waking thought is naïve; hope died with your husband. You are as cold as the dead.

Your brain hurts and you yank the parka’s hood down to protect your forehead and daydream about prairie winters. They had been as bad, worse really, longer, that’s for sure, but that cold was “dry”; you are just beginning to grasp what “dry” means. Here, it is damp and the thermostat often reads warmer than it actually is. Still, you owe this city. You needed a big change – change or crawl into a grave yourself. “Change is better than a rest,” Brian always joked; you wonder if you’ll ever truly rest again.

This is the kind of night you remember vividly from childhood. Not the urban landscape, of course. But, from time to time, the present of this place dovetails with recollections of the past. You recognize the silence. That combined with the pristine white leaves you calm on some level. Despite the chill, a small, grim smile turns up the corners of your lips. You intentionally blow a stream of visual air into the night, just to watch it vanish, and think again: how like a spirit departing when the body can no longer contain it!