Unholy Ghosts

“I’m sure I can. Perhaps you could show me all the places where the entity has appeared? I’d also like to see any locations where its presence was felt in some other way. Sounds, any symbols etched on the walls or maybe in the mist on the shower doors or mirror? They often try to communicate like that.”

The Mortons stared at her, their eyes so wide they looked artificial.

“Has anything appeared on any other walls or windows? Any feelings of being watched? Movement seen out of the corner of your eye? Odd smells? Touches? Anything of that nature, now’s the time to show me where it happened.”

She pulled her tape recorder and Spectrometer out of her bag and switched them on.

The Mortons didn’t move. Chess fought the urge to look down and see if something had spilled on her blouse when she wasn’t paying attention.

“Is there a problem?”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Morton said. “I just…you scared me. We haven’t had anything as bad as some of that. Is that going to happen?”

“It might.” Chess watched them carefully. Sometimes she could see the little wheels spinning in their heads as they planned how to stage a more potent manifestation. She’d caught someone out that way in her second year of work, when she’d finished her list and the client had blurted out “Messages in frost? I never even thought of doing that!”

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Morton clutched at her sweater. Her blue eyes examined the room, sweeping back and forth as though something was going to materialize and jump out at her any second. Either she was a great actress, or she was genuinely frightened. Was it possible the son—Albert—was doing it without his parents’ knowledge? Or that Mr. Morton was behind it? That had happened once, too, a husband faking a spooking so his wife would be too afraid to ask for the house when he left her for another woman.

She scribbled on her pad: Girlfriend Mr. M?

“I’m sure we can take care of it before things start going really badly,” Chess said. “Now, if you could please show me around the house…?”

All three of the Mortons came along on the tour, much to Chess’s chagrin. Extra bodies crowding around her in small spaces like the Morton’s cramped hallway were not what she needed in the slightly nervous state the Nips had left her in. And if little Albert accidentally-on-purpose brushed against her breast again she was going to hit him. The quality and quantity of porn she imagined she’d find under his bed, when she got around to searching, would probably be staggering.

Mrs. Morton’s pale fingers trailed over the picture frames in the hall. “We trace our family back over three hundred years,” she said. “Roots are so important, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” She wondered what Mrs. Morton would say if Chess told her she had no idea who her parents had been, much less anyone further back.

Her tattoos didn’t so much as tingle, nor did the Spectrometer beep, when they entered a small bedroom on the right, which looked as though some bizarrely pretentious child lived in it. Batman wallpaper warred with posters of mallard ducks and prints from the Tate gallery. A teddy bear slumped on the dresser next to a rack of silver cuff links. Books tilted on the scarred pine bookcase like crooked teeth, but when Chess stepped closer there were dust lines on the shelves. Someone had recently—probably very recently—removed quite a few titles.

Little Albert was into sci-fi and technology. All the big fantasy names were there—Tolkien, Card, Anthony, Weis—along with Sagan, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Straub…but no how-to tech books, not even a single Idiot’s Guide, which was unusual because the more she looked around the room the more she noticed the bundle of cables peeking out from under the bed, the empty shelf under the flat-screen TV in the corner. Albert looked like an A/V Club boy, and A/V Club boys read books about hacking and splicing and F/X. They read about digital imagery and home theaters and how to rewire speakers so they went up to eleven.

When she came back later, or the next night, she’d have a more thorough look around.

She let the Mortons lead her through the spare bedroom and the bathroom, into the master bedroom. The signs of desperate upward mobility were strewn all over the house as if an L.L.Bean catalog had exploded; a beautiful dresser in a bedroom with mismatched bedside tables, expensive lotions on a cracked bathroom countertop. The copy of The Book of Truth next to the bed had been arranged so the light shone off the gold lettering and reflected back at her when she stepped through the doorway.

“This is where it was.” Mrs. Morton waved a nervous hand at a spot on the floor to her left, about a foot from where she was standing. There was something vaguely familiar about the movement, about Mrs. Morton herself. Maybe the family really did attend Church sometimes and Chess had seen her there. “I was in bed, there, like I said, and it just…hovered here, and stared at me. It looked so angry, I just didn’t know what to do…”

This was ridiculous, a waste of her time. She switched off the Spectrometer and tape recorder, shoved them both back into her bag.

“Well, I’ve seen enough for now. If we could go back to the living room and you could sign the complaint, we’ll get started processing it.”

“But…you didn’t see the ghost, does that matter?”

Chess pulled the zipper on her purse shut, realizing as she did that her hand was shaking slightly. She glanced at the clock by the bed. Five to nine. This was taking forever, she needed to go.

“We’re not done yet,” she replied, trying to sound cheerful. “It’ll take at least a week or two to really investigate. This was just to get the papers filled out, and so I could get a feel for what we’re dealing with. You’ll be seeing quite a bit of me, Mrs. Morton, don’t you worry.”

Mrs. Morton smiled weakly. The cheaters always hated it when she said she’d be around a lot. And the Mortons were faking it, she knew it. Not even a beep, not even a blip on the Spectro. Very unusual in an enclosed space with ghosts.

And the Mortons would certainly be learning about enclosed spaces if she was right, and they were faking. The Church didn’t take kindly to attempts to steal from it; Mr. Morton would have a hard time examining eyeballs from a little blue cell.

“So let’s just go sign those papers and I can leave you to your eveni—”

Something darted through the air behind Mr. Morton, so fast it took Chess a second to realize it wasn’t just a hallucination. A black shape, man-size but crouched over. She had the impression of a hood hiding its face, of the light by the bed catching the sharp edge of a blade, before it disappeared into the closet.

It looked almost like a cartoon, like an image projected on the wall instead of moving in front of it, but it had been so long since she’d seen an actual cartoon, she could have been wrong about that.

She wasn’t wrong about the sense of unease, though, more than simply the unease of her body starting to get serious with her about its needs—at least she thought it was. Fuck, she shouldn’t have waited to take her pills, it was throwing her off. For the first time a ribbon of doubt slipped through her mind. Withdrawal, or ghost? No way to be sure.

The Mortons stood watching her, faintly perplexed, waiting for her to finish her sentence. They hadn’t noticed anything—or perhaps they had, and they were watching her to see if she said anything.

Of course. The image had looked like a cartoon, like something being broadcast, because it was. When she came back later she’d look for the projector. It was probably behind the mirror over the dresser. The thought was comforting, but not enough to ease the cool sweat on her forehead and body. She felt sticky with it.

“To your evening,” she finished. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you so late, my last interview ran long. And I’ll be in touch.”

Sooner than they knew.

Chapter Seven (#ulink_a50bd012-eb1c-5094-9dc2-774108f9f97d)

“Debunking often looks like the most appealing of Church positions, but very few possess the skill, intelligence, and above all, integrity required.”

—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin

All buzzed up and no place to go. At least, not until three, when she investigated the Morton house again.

The Market was closed. Bump’s place would be open—Bump’s place never closed—but she didn’t particularly want to go there either. She had everything she needed.

But the walls of her small apartment were closing in, the faint colors from the stained-glass window sliding over surfaces like they were chasing her.

She could go get cigarettes. The Stop Shop on the corner had special dispensation to be open twenty-four hours. That might be nice. A little walk in the cool night air would clear some of the anxious cobwebs in her head.

What the hell had that thing been? She’d never seen anything like it. Projected image or not, it was menacing. She’d had the feeling that if it had turned and saw her, looked at her, she might have screamed.

Maybe she should eat. It wasn’t like her to get so paranoid. Take a little of the edge off, fix the sourness in her stomach. The Stop Shop sold snacks, too.

She fished a twenty from her bag, then grabbed her knife and tucked it into her pocket. Walking alone and unarmed in Downside was never a good idea. She locked all three of the bolts on her door as she left.

Her building had once been a Catholic church, before the Church of Truth made every other religion redundant.

Many of the old places of worship had fallen into disrepair, but buildings with some sort of historical value or level of attractiveness were permitted to remain. Chess’s was both, and she was glad, even if the extra floors built in ruined the effect a little bit.

It was still one of the prettiest buildings in Downside. And the air outside her apartment did seem clean, despite the odors of garbage and exhaust that never went away.

The heavy double doors at the end of the hall stood wide open, framing the empty street beyond. That was odd. The doors were normally closed and locked. Could be old Mrs. Radcliffe on the second floor left them open. They were difficult for her to move, and she always forgot what kind of neighborhood she lived in.

Or it could have been the four members of Slobag’s gang from Thirtieth, lying in wait in the protective darkness between the huge slabs of wood and the walls. Chess reached for her knife but she knew it was useless. A hand closed over her mouth before she could open it to scream, and the sharp pinch of a needle was the last thing she felt before the world went black.

The itching woke her up. That, or the intense discomfort of lying on a cold cement floor. But she was pretty sure it was the itching. It burned a path from the palms of her hands and soles of her feet, up her arms and legs, and spread across her chest and throat as if she wore a cheap, terrible necklace she couldn’t take off.