Spirit (15 page)

T
ess watched as the indefinite form of the Puritan girl lifted Josiah Jurey's book and soared from the room, heading outside, leading Tess and the children to the large main house.

An instant later the bolted doors there rattled open.

“What is this…?” one child asked, as they entered.

It was hard for Tess to know how to answer; the spirit had lost its energy, and was out of sight completely.

It was a weary shelter at best. The windows were gone, and the cold wind howled inside. Tess dropped one of the blind boy's hands, and he fumbled for hers, terrified. “Don't, don't let go.”

“I'm sorry.” She took it again, and they all stood together for a long moment, out of breath and out of courage.

“Did you hear that?” one of the boys said.

Tess stiffened in fear, having heard nothing. Were their sensitive ears picking up more than she could?

“It's above us,” said another boy.

She looked up. “There's nothing.”

“I heard it. Something's here. Something's right above us,” said
the first boy, pulling back from Tess.

“Stop, stop. There's nothing there. I'll prove it to you,” said Tess, alarming them more. She dropped the boy's hand again, and moved toward the stairs, trying to believe the gentle spirit was the cause of the noise.

“Stay here,” she said, steeling herself.

The boys' faces clearly showed their terror, but they had few choices. They might have to be here for a time, and Tess wanted to know it was safe. She went up the wide staircase cautiously, her head cocked, listening.

Finally she began to hear something, a distant calling, as she rose. She was close to finding the source; it was like a melody being played just beyond several closed doors. She climbed to the upstairs hallway in darkness.

Then she stopped in sudden terror, able to go no farther.

She turned to run back—but she was
sucked up ten feet into the darkness.
Taken.

 

Tobias awoke and clawed his way out of the crater inside the ice church, frantic.

He believed the witch was gone. Left him for dead.

Sattler's body lay broken beside him.

As his eyes fell upon the young man, he felt a profound and terrible guilt. Tobias could have been more careful. He knew more about the threat in these woods. He should have been the one to die.

He was trapped. He looked up at the hole Malgore had created in the ceiling, and, with difficulty, climbed to it by scaling the
sculpture and the ragged wall, pulling his body up with all his strength into the colder world outside.

 

Twilight was fading. In the upstairs bedroom, Tess stood, her body tense. In the dim light, she could see small animals—dead goats and other creatures—hanging from hooks, strange writing scrawled on the walls, and carved on the floors, and as she leaned forward…

A pit. It was built into the floor and led into a red-black throat of fire. It was deeper than seemed possible, ringed with human bones, torn spines, dried flesh.

Tess pulled at a long metal meat hook that clung to the pit, and, trembling, realized it had blood on it.

She had learned exactly what this meant from Josiah's book: She held the weapon that could kill the wretch. If the body was then burned, the witch would be destroyed. A simple arithmetic arranged itself in Tess's mind.

She felt old desiccated feelings running into her arm from the hook, the emotions of the tortured now muted by time, and in the room around her, pain and misery from far too many deaths. She was in Widow Malgore's den. Its horrors would stay with her forever. She pocketed the vile hook and stood up, shaking.

And then her eyes met another's.

In the empty, burned room, a female figure stood before her.

Tess whispered tearfully, “Abigail.”

The ghost was only partially lit, her face veined and pale. Her features began to dissolve, the flesh around her eyes drooping, the bones of her cheeks falling, her countenance altering itself bit
by bit until the woman that stood before Tess was a flickering, magic-lantern version of her own mother.

“Tess,” the figure whispered. “Why do you stand there staring like a doll?”

It was her mother's voice, but not her style of speaking.

“Knew you'd abandon me. You lived up to every fear I ever had.”

“Mother?”

“Every fear I ever had. What's the song? ‘Lock her up in London Tower, lock her up'?”

The vision turned partially incorporeal, as if fighting to appear human, its fading voice whispery and weakening, barely understandable. “Always damaged goods. Always afraid of your own shadow,” she murmured. “Never locked
you
up, did I? You made that choice.”

Why was Abigail bringing this vision to her? Was she allowing her mother to speak through her, beyond the grave?
Could
Abigail do this?

“Daughter of mine…”

Then her mother's face vanished. Abigail returned. In a slow, steady pace she approached, broke apart into frost and mist, and fell inside Tess. She strained to hear Abigail's voice inside her, but the voice could not be heard; witchery had silenced it, even in death.

The spirit had grown desperate, her message swallowed before it could be learned. They could not communicate.

Instead Tess felt emotion vanish, until she was no longer taking in the pain and suffering around her. The spirit was giving her strength. Strength to face the unstoppable.

 

Tobias stumbled out into the evening as the fog flew in a violent wind around him. He ran, driven on by Wilhelm's power, past the house that Michael was in. The door lay open. Tobias stared in disgust. Malgore had killed them all.

He turned, rushing into the street.

The air cleared ahead, to reveal a desperate, tethered horse at the stable.

Salvation.

 

Tess shivered as ice entered her veins. The ghostly Abigail had told her all that she could, half whispers that had floated into her from the world of death. There was a threat in what she felt and heard:
Kill the wretch, or we shall kill you.

Had the vision of her mother been some kind of angry warning?

There was no more time to think. The ghost's voice announced clearly, “She is here.”

Tess was looking at darkness. There was nothing there at all. Her blood warmed. Abigail had lost the strength to remain with her.

A shape moved behind Tess, approaching, she was aware of it though she didn't see it. Oldness washed over her, a smell of rot and sense of ancient resentment, a hollowness that she had come to recognize as the witch. It was coming.

Tess stared straight ahead into the dim room but could not see Malgore at all.

Instead, she saw Abigail, still struggling to appear, trying to warn her. Then Tess heard something behind her.

She tried to move, but was suddenly forced to her knees by an unseen magic. Lightning crackling upon her skin, she crawled, moving under an invisible weight, as behind her the mist spread and rushed the hallway, making a milky dust of the blue evening light.

Ahead of Tess through a hallway window came the silhouette of the new arrival. She watched the figure slip in, the shockingly lithe and supernaturally thin creature. Widow Malgore had returned home.

The witch rushed toward Tess and screeched maniacally, grabbing hold of the smoke-blue mist, as if it could be crushed.

But the mist had life, and thickness in her hand. It fought to free itself….

And Tess knew she was seeing two kinds of forces in battle.

M
algore's face contorted, fangs springing forth, a screeching let loose from her throat. Desperately Tess crawled away to get downstairs, as the mist obscured any glimmer of evening light from outside.

Tess screamed, as Malgore tore apart the blue, mistlike gossamer strings, and then continued, relentless, after Tess.

Malgore crept downstairs almost like a spider, bestial, with long spindly arms and legs. The thorns that were her teeth gnashed repeatedly.

The witch shoved Tess farther down the stairs. But suddenly—the mist-spirit rushed at Malgore, washing her aside, toppling her off the stairway. The room was suddenly in darkness.

 

Tobias rode from Blackthorne on horseback. He stared straight ahead, intent on not looking back, not thinking anything but
move, move, move….

 

Moonlight struggled in. Tess fought to awaken. She had fallen at the middle of the stairway, and had stayed there, unconscious.
Exhausted to its core, her body still wanted sleep. But she heard the boys calling to her; they needed her, there was no one else.

Downstairs, she had to move past the collapsed body of Malgore, and as her legs crossed past those withered fingers of knotted bone, she saw them twitch. The Thing was awakening. Its claws still had hold of a blue silken mist. Its grip was tightening. Panicked, Tess felt her leg rub past the white mane of Malgore's hair, and she suddenly heard the witch breathing, speaking.

Tess reached the boys, grabbing the first one's hand.

He was screaming. “What is happening—”

She had to get them all outside.

“Link hands,” she screamed. She pulled them out into the snow. She glanced back, seeing Malgore crouching in dim light, chanting, but the blue-tinged spirit in the witch's claws tore loose. The witch howled, then began rising in rage, as the mist expanded. They left the house in the distance but she could still see light, pale blue from the swirling mist at the ceilings, Abigail's frenetic spirit, pouring out. Tess stared, transfixed. The boys were running, stumbling, trying to get away. Tess grabbed hold of one student, but the children were too scattered now. Gathering them was like catching birds.

“Follow my voice,” she called, backing into the woods. “Come with me.”

They made their way to the sound. She was rounding them up. Just another minute and she'd have them. She stared back at the abandoned building.

From out of the dead house, the illuminated mist became a female figure entering the night. It was Abigail, gathering the
last of her strength; Tess could see her in a long cloak, fleeing, the most alive and most substantial the spirit had ever appeared, made solid and corporeal by sheer desperation. Tess's heart leaped in fear for her. Striding from the house, just after the girl, there came a vague, deformed shape—Malgore—quick, but with an unnatural, hobbling gait.

Tess saw the Thing snatch Abigail. It had her, like a fish on a hook. And just as helpless, she flailed.

The Thing reached into her, reached into her back, and its fingers closed around her spine.

Abigail screamed soundlessly. The witch could not kill her, but it could punish her, send pain to her with a devilish magic, her most cherished form of torture. And Abigail fell apart, hearing her Mother shrieking with a voice part animal, part woman, in some indefinable way.

 

Tess stared as Abigail's form dissipated into strands, drifting through the forest, nothing more than mist and wind.

The witch-thing shivered with uncontrolled bloodlust.

Tess let out a moan.

The wretch looked up—eyes flashing red—it had found her.

 

Tobias squinted hard as he rode through the snowfall. His horse shot past a fallen tree near the rails, and behind him the snow breathed upon him in a fast-traveling wall of wind. He was being pushed onward. In his head he became aware of Tess again, sensing her far ahead of him, drawing him like the tide to the shore. She was out there somewhere, and he would find her.

 

Tess's eyes fixed on a figure in the distance behind her and she begged herself to look away, but could not.

The wretch, half buried in darkness, was snarling a call. Her massive cat crawled from the blackness. Malgore snapped a whip brutally, slashing its eye. The animal moved to her, low and whimpering, a thing of flesh and bone.

Tess tore herself loose from the mesmerizing sight, and she led the group away. She had recovered all the boys, but there was nowhere to go, they were just running, directionless.

Snowdrift surrounded them. Ethereal light began weaving behind it: a vast flying ghost, like a mirage swimming through the air, rattling trees. Abigail.

Tess felt the spirit's emotion,
You have failed us. You have failed us.

T
ess brought the children back to the train tracks, where the dim hulks of the ruined cars lay waiting. And now the ghostly figure—its shape coming together, tightening—descended, a glassy spirit Tess could barely see in the darkness.

The spirit began to circle the children. Tess couldn't move.

“Let go, let go, it doesn't want us,” cried one boy, pulling free of her. “It wants
you.”

“You have to go with me,” Tess cried to the boys, terrified to the bone.

She stood alone now. The spirit closed in on her, its dim face visible. The ghostly shape—it was somehow still feminine—soared around Tess, smelling her, sensing her, preparing to strike.

Out from the veil of snow, Tobias, on horseback, came speeding into view.

Everything was healed in that split second. He swept by, grasping her hand, pulling her onto the horse, as behind him the wind dissipated the ghostly form of Abigail and battered the trees ferociously. Something had driven her away.

The horse reared onto its back legs, screeching in terror.

Malgore rode from the darkness on her immense jaguar beast.

The witch roared, right along with her familiar. As she passed, her grotesque arm slashed Tobias from his horse, which panicked. Tess grasped wildly to hold on.

The couple fell to the ground.

Instantly, Malgore's clawed hand closed around Tobias's face. He struggled to breathe as Tess screamed. She had lived to see him die.

The witch dragged him, dropped him, then stood, raising a long, curving knife to destroy him. But all of a sudden Malgore screamed, letting loose a terrible wailing. Tess had come from behind, stabbing the metal hook into her back, and out, tearing at the wretch.

Tess hissed, breathlessly, “Your weapon—” and as Malgore turned, Tess plunged it into her heart.
“Yours.
” She executed the move perfectly, just as the witch-hunter had instructed her in the book. She was stunned at herself.

Malgore stumbled back, gasping.

The huge, horrific shape of her body was blown back as if it were nothing but a sack of skin. Tobias reached for the curved knife—and they fought for it, the witch fighting for life with brazen intensity.

Tobias wrenched the long knife free—and swung it into Malgore's thin midsection, nearly bisecting the witch with a single blow. The wretch came apart like old dust and dried bone, still thrashing in death.

Tess reached for a boy's fallen lantern and hurled it at the witch's heart, and fire burst upon the body. The witch-creature
writhed in flames. Still afire, it crawled toward Tess, though weakened and dying.

The jaguar creature saw this—and rushed in—its huge jaws closing on Malgore's head and thrashing about, exacting its revenge, as nearby the horse jolted madly, neighing in fright.
Old Widow Malgore, she keeps a devil slave…

And then the black predator pulled her remains into the darkness, disappearing into its domain.

It would devour the witch.

Old Widow Malgore, your devil will break free…and vengeance you will see…

Tobias ran with Tess toward the tracks as fast as they could.

Tess glanced back and was astonished. From the darkness a torrent of vague shapes were flowing downward—swooping in upon the witch's corpse—and breaking it into fiery pieces as the wind grew.

The long-dead phantoms of this place, held here by the witch's power, wanting revenge for their unholy deaths, were at last receiving it.

But there was something yet unfinished. Both Tess and Tobias felt a deadness behind them, and they turned to see one of the blind boys slowly engulfed in light-blue mist, his eyes clouded with the same subtle color. A hard, malignant male voice came oozing out of him.

“Thou hast done us a service,” said the boy.

Tobias and Tess looked at him in fear.

“Know you this: she held our tongue 'til now,” the boy said, and his face briefly flashed with light but there was a calm to him, and
to the moment as well. “We were hoping for you. You are special among all others. Your fine gifts are a blessing to us as well.”

The boy's hands at his side worked nervously. “You've been made tender for it, over the years. Possession…is no easy thing to endure. The body fights it…but not yours.” His voice broke apart as he coughed. His breathing was labored.

Possession.
Tobias stared in disbelief. “You wanted us…”

“We want what anyone would. To be flesh and blood again.”

It was Wilhelm.

Tess watched the boy step closer, his eyes glazed, not his own.

“All we wanted was to be together. Denied by everyone. Denied by her,” said Wilhelm, speaking through the boy in that burning voice. “We would not be damned to live as spirits forever. We would take hold of new bodies, have a life free of this torture. But her mother was always here. Always, she killed the flesh before we could take it…”

The boy's face began to stretch, as if another face were underneath. The blind child choked, and the spirit was unleashed out of him, tunneling toward Tobias.

Abigail's shape came from behind and knocked Tess to the ground, as a frost settled upon them both.

“Fight them—Tess—”

Tobias got no other words out.

He braced himself. Eyes tight, he shook his head; it was like a swarm of bees inside him, his brain fighting against it, and finally, the mist pushed harder, ramming him into a thick tree.

He hit the ground gasping. He could no longer feel the world around him, or hear it. Something was in his head, searching,
rifling through memories and dreams and emotions and thoughts, looking for a way to drive him further into fear, to scare him truly out of his mind.

He felt it find a place inside, where he kept the pain over his mother and father's deaths. Tobias had lived through the theater fire, and his guilt for surviving shone brightly among his memories. He had ached to know why he hadn't been killed, and the spirit inside him took hold of this bit of him and crushed it until he felt a flood of emotion—sorrow, hopelessness—and the spirit wanted him to feel it, wanted him to want to die.

Tobias felt himself becoming the Wilhelm ghost. He lost any sense of his bond with Tess. She was gone from him, and he couldn't fight anymore.

 

For Tess, there was nothing but a searing blue-white incandescence in her vision and filling her senses. She fell, as the mist invaded her tiny frame, and she clenched her eyes shut, fighting it.

Tess knew Abigail's spirit wanted her. It was searching Tess, tearing through her subconscious, battering at her beliefs, driving her to the sense that she was nothing, had nothing, did not even deserve to exist. It was like a frightening, repeating music, and Tess could feel the triumph, of the wraith inside her.

All that she was, everything she'd ever been, was about to be stripped of her flesh and bone. She would join her mother and father, the ones she had left in that theater in New York, left to the agony of the fire while she had run.

With her eyes blinded, she listened hard to know if Tobias
had made it through alive—if she knew this, it would give her some strength, perhaps enough to fight back….

 

It was morning now. The sun was rising.

Tess's eyes lifted to Tobias, who knelt down, embracing her.

“It's all right, we've made it, we've made it through,” he was telling her, but she could hardly hear him, her heart was thundering so hard. He took her face in his hands, gently. “It's all right.”

Tess was breathless, almost giddy, laughing in disbelief, “We're alive…”

He kissed her, desperate with relief.

As they kissed, the wind blew ice across the ground. It cut into them deeply, maliciously, to remind them who they were, and then it settled.

It was over.

The blind boys had fallen to the ground a distance away, huddled down in the storm, survivors, useless to the spirits.

Far off, the lamp of the train engine finally faded in the snow.