The Ghosting of Gods (13 page)

28
missionaries

Leesel murmurs in her sleep. Her thumb finds its way to her mouth, and she’s quiet again. Touching her cheek, I feel that she’s warm now. As far as I can tell she’s sleeping comfortably. Checking on Leesel is a welcome distraction while I think of what to say to Chastity. I can’t come up with anything. I’m afraid she knows my secrets.

“How did you know I’m an exorcist?” I eventually ask.

Her mouth twitches. “You are brave to admit your treason. As for your question, I know because I have watched you in virgin crystal. I have seen your fate, and my part in it. I saw what must happen.” She holds up a hand. “No. Let me finish. You need to hear what I must speak, and there isn’t much time.” Tossing her stick in the fire, she comes around and sits close to me.

“So you know why I’m here?” I ask.

“I know a story.” She stirs embers. “These tunnelers who pluck virgin crystal are missionaries. Members of a cult born here in Memento Mori, they pass over to altered worlds at will for the purpose of evangelization. They provided the means for your crossing to Memento Mori.”

Missionaries. Crystal balls.
Digging Man
. Digging Man is one of these missionaries. Digging Man opened a way to Memento Mori, and we fell into it. But I need to know more. “What do you mean, they want to evangelize new worlds? They’re in my world now. I saw one of them. With priests from my own religion.”

“Yes, I know.” She bites her lip. I get the idea she’s deciding what she wants to reveal to me. “Jesse, the missionaries—mostly tunnelers—are harvesting virgin crystal balls and planting them over graves in your world.”

“But why?”

“Worshipping the Holy Ghost of their religion, they prepare a world for their god’s arrival.
They will haunt your world
. To spread their faith, they plant crystals to catch the ghosts of the dead.Skeletons resurrect confused, and wish to see themselves as they once were. They cling to their identities in this way. Or, rather, their identities cling to them. By chains.”

Impossible. Missionaries from another world, burying crystal balls to catch the ghosts of my world’s dead. I picture skeletons in my hometown sitting on ruptured graves, crystal gazing. Slowly, stark realization dawns on me.

Emmy’s grave had a crystal ball. It contained her ghost. The crystal ball was buried there. For a reason.

Oh, God. I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I realize this before? It’s so obvious. And impossible.

“Do you mean that a resurrection similar to the one in Memento Mori will happen in my world?”
Will happen to Emmy?

“Not similar. Exactly.”

“No. No. It’s crazy.” Emmy is trapped in a worse nightmare than I ever imagined. My whole world…I stand, walk away. Turn back. Chastity sits by the fire, watching me, her face loose with sadness. “How do you know this?” I shout at her. “What part do you have in it?”

Leesel shifts, slips her thumb from her mouth. “Mommy,” she murmurs.

Chastity reaches over and strokes her arm. Lunging, I throw her hand off Leesel. “Don’t you touch her,” I warn. “Don’t you dare touch her.” I squat by Leesel, who’s already back asleep. Holding my head in my hands, I try to think.

I’ve got to get home. Save Emmy. Warn everyone.

Chastity speaks softly. “The missionaries came to my world with their plan of evangelization. They are the reason I’m in Memento Mori too, though I passed over differently than you. I killed one of them—one still living—and was caught up in the wake of his ghost as it returned to its home world.”

“What happens if you break a crystal ball? These missionaries, they trapped my sister in one the crystals. I found it at her grave, and I cracked it with a hammer. Then her ghost, her life, was all around me—in a vortex. I freed her. Didn’t I?”

She meets my eyes. “No. You touched the crystal, and the identity within was temporarily projected out into the vortex for you to see. That is all. You did not destroy the ghost of your sister. It resides in the crystal. This matters not.”

I gape at her, incredulous that she could say this so calmly. “How can you say it doesn’t matter? You don’t know her! You don’t
love
her.”

“Let go of your sister’s past,” she demands, her voice stern, not caring about my tears. “Know her now, not then. Hear me, if you have ears to hear. The true purpose of an exorcist is to empty many crystals, and not by projection.”

Emmy needs me.

“Tell me how to get home, Chastity. Please. Tell me how to stop all this. I need the help of the Holy Ghost…I need an offering, the witch’s broom…”

She comes to me, wraps her arms around me. I pull away, shake her off of me.

She bites her lip, her face flushes red, and it occurs to me that she’s as young as I am. Having first seen her with the flaking skin, and hearing her husky voice, I’d thought she was old. She’s not.

“I am bewildered,” she says, casting her eyes down. “Shame fills my heart when you recoil from me. Why do you do this, when now I am born again? I have shed, and I am beautiful.”

I need her help. I mumble an apology.

Her unblinking eyes shine. “It wasn’t by accident you witnessed my shedding. I let you see on purpose. To teach you.”

“Teach me what?” I croak.

“On my world, we perceive beyond the veil.”

The wind stills around me. Night sounds cease, and there is
silence. I speak without thinking. “Are you all mediums on your world?”

Her head tilts slightly, but her eyes keep hold of me. “Of course. Being a medium is natural and necessary. Otherwise, as with you, separation is perceived. I cannot imagine such pain. I cannot imagine such grief.”

I grab her hand. Her skin is silk. “Can my world be like your world? Is it possible?”

“You are haunted by phantoms. On my world, we know the difference between ghosts and gods—or holy ghosts, as you may call them. And so we shed. It is a ritual. A death. It is symbolic for shedding the ghost. And so I feel a special affinity for you, Exorcist.” She smiles at me. I’m careful not to flinch when she takes my hand. “Now that I have met you face to face, I realize you have no idea what Fate will bring you. You believe you cast out ghosts, but that is not true.”

“I do cast them out, but I’m not interested in debating that.”

“No, Jesse. The truth is something that I held back from telling Elspeth. If she knew, she would kill you.”

Elspeth wouldn’t kill me. She’s as interested in me as I am in her. “What are you talking about?”

“Jesse, look inside. You know the truth of who you are, do you not? In your presence, ghosts are not sent away to haunt again. In your presence, ghosts are destroyed. Forever.”

“No.” I shake my head. That’s not who I am. “I wouldn’t…” I tried to destroy Emmy’s ghost. I did, so that she wouldn’t have to relive her murder. There was no other choice.
I had no choice
.

“Mommy?” Leesel’s eyes open. She sits up. “I’m very, very sleepy. I’ve never been so sleepy, ever.”

“Yes. Close your eyes a bit longer.” Chastity whispers into Leesel’s ear, and her eyelids flutter, then close. Chastity stands. “I must go soon. I do not wish to speak to Elspeth.”

“I didn’t want to lose my sister.”

“Is it true that you’ve lost her?”

Her words pierce me. I lost Emmy’s crystal. I meet Chastity’s weird gaze.

“Elspeth comes,” she whispers, her unlidded eyes staring into my own. “For you.” Biting her lip, she looks nervous. “The fault is mine. I knew Elspeth. Before her death. I knew she was vulnerable, but also unusual and explosively dangerous with the power inside her. Yet I could not leave her buried. Somehow her body revived, whole, without decay, and I knew. Could I leave her buried? I lifted her, mind empty, out of the ground. She searched for her crystal, her ghost, but it was gone, stolen. She suspects someone named William of the theft.”

My mind whirls, replaying events in my head. “William? I’ve been told to seek out someone named William. In the City of Sacristies. Wait—it was Elspeth, possessing Bethany, who told me to seek out William.” Frustration rises within me. “She lied. She told us that William could get us home. But she just wants her ghost back, right?”

Chastity considers this. “Perhaps it is true that William can get your friends home. Elspeth does not lie. She may, however, be mistaken.” Her voice falling, she continues. “Elspeth was confused at first, seeking her missing ghost, but growing ever more peaceful…until a roaming ghost possessed her. She is more dangerous than before.” Chastity licks her lips. “Do you under-stand?”

I answer honestly. “No.”
Inexplicably, the truth is the very mention of Elspeth’s name affects me
.

Chastity touches me. I meet her eyes, her eyes that are so open, and my feeling is that her very soul is open, honest, incapable of lying. “Jesse, Elspeth is…tempting with what she can offer. But beware. She is obsessed with finding her original ghost. It’s one reason she wants you, though there is one greater. She has misconstrued my teaching. Do not be deceived by her.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to hear this. Is it true? Is Elspeth deceiving me? What Chastity says seems to be the truth…I feel
excited, as if at last I’m on the right path. God is answering me. Here sits a medium before me, voicing the necessity of being a medium so that death isn’t painful. Being a medium isn’t sinful. It’s the key to everything.

Exhilaration fills my soul. God has brought me to this world to understand the crystals so that I can save Emmy. And then I’ll be a medium and communicate freely with my sister. The two things I most want are here in Memento Mori for me to decipher…

A stick snaps somewhere in the dark Eden. Elspeth?

Chastity holds her breath as she peers into the woods, but there’s nothing there. Reaching beneath my coat, she grabs a fistful of shirt fabric and rips it. Surprised, I can only watch as she goes to a tree limb and plucks a crystal ball, using the fabric to protect her hand from the cold burn I know it gives. Rolling the ball out of its fabric hammock, it floats inches above the ground. Chastity squats to peer inside it.

“What do you want to see?” She asks me.

An image of Emmy comes to me.

I close my eyes, and speak like I’m praying. “Let me see Emmy. Help me to know where her crystal is. I…I lost it.”

“Enter the crystal to find what you seek. Bilocate.”

I open my eyes. “What?” The crystal ball is out of focus, blurred with blowing contents, but then it settles. “Chastity, I can’t see, please…”

The vortex takes me. My hair blows, my life passes before my eyes—all in an instant. I’m falling.

I feel a jolt.

A speck of light appears before my eyes. Distorted shapes and pale shadows shift around me. There’s laughter, low and cruel.

29
graves and guilt

I find myself standing on familiar ground. Holy ground. It’s the cemetery where my sister is buried, back in my own world. The oaks are barren of leaves. The night is breathless, and I feel the cold of winter. My legs carry me to her grave. I kneel, laying my hands on the frozen earth covering my sister.

More laughter. He mocks my grief. I lift my face.

Here is Death, standing a short distance from me. His cowl is deep. I can’t see his face.

“Emmy,” he says, his voice full of gravel, and he spreads his arms wide.

The ground shakes beneath my feet.

“A Resurrection,” he says, and laughs again.

Crystal balls appear all around God. He reaches out a gloved hand and clasps one. He examines it closely, holds it out for me to see.

I turn away. He follows me. Leaves rustle as his robe drags the ground. I know from the intense smell of incense that he’s closer. I face him. I slowly look at the crystal ball he possesses. It contains Emmy, as I knew it would. Emmy, on the sidewalk in front of our old house, drawing with chalk.

She’s two years old in the scene.

Death pulls the crystal back when I reach to snatch it away from him. He opens his robe slightly, tucks the sphere inside.

Groaning, I stagger toward him.

He glides, backwards, away from me.

I throw myself at him. “Stop it. Please. Don’t steal her from me.”

His skeletal jaw lowering, he blows a foul breath on me that knocks me backward. I crack my head against something, maybe
a tombstone. Flying to me, God breathes. In. He’s sucking away my own breath. He bends closer, his robe falling open, and I plunge my hand into his cavernous chest, grabbing Emmy’s crystal ball.

Yet somehow, I know I grab the wrong one.

Chastity is beside me, speaking urgently in an alien language, and the world around me spins. Forms arise and dissolve.

My hands are empty. I’m lying on the ground, back in the sick Eden.

Chastity pulls her robe tightly about her. Closes her eyes. Spits. “The vision was so full of dirt that I taste it. Your mind reflects it. Dirt and death. Graves and guilt.”

“My spiritual secrets,” I agree. It’s what I call my sins. I roll to my hands and knees. “God is the Reaper,” I tell her, choking.

“The vision was symbolic, not wanting to be revealed. You must translate it.”

Dizziness. “How?”

She shakes her head. After a moment, she speaks. “You took your body with you.”

I stare dumbly at her.

“I expected you to bilocate, Jesse. You cannot?”

“No. I cannot. Can you?”

She looks surprised at my question but doesn’t seem to notice my sarcasm. “Bilocation developed in my species long ago,” she says. “It helps us to connect, so that separation is minimized. I knew you could summon vortexes and so assumed you could bilocate. I am…curious as to why you cannot. Our own evolutionary process did not include this ability to make bodies go away and come back. What is its purpose?”

What the hell is she talking about? I’m done with this. I don’t want to be special.

She stares thoughtfully at me with her unblinking eyes. “Humility may yet come to you and impoverish your ghost. Blessed are the poor in ghost. You are an exorcist, yet you seem
not to understand.”

I lift my face. “Wait. What did you say? Emmy…told me the poor in ghost are blessed.”

Chastity wraps the torn fabric from my shirt around the crystal ball. “Yes. Her presence spoke to you. It is a good sign that you could hear. Those who have ears to hear…” She drops the crystal ball in my coat pocket. “Keep it. So I can find you.”

“Wait. I don’t understand. I—”

Signaling for silence, she listens. A grimace passes over her face. “A last warning. Though I need the crystal to help me find you as you journey, Elspeth…does not.” Moving quickly, Chastity pulls a burlap bag from behind a tree. She darts around the fire, gathering lengths of skin she shed earlier and stuffing them into the bag, but she does it in such a way that I think she’s ashamed.

Yes. When she turns, I can see she’s crying. She won’t meet my eyes.

“Chastity? I have more questions. Where is the Holy Ghost? And what offering do I give to obtain passage home?”

Slowly, she lifts her face. Gazing long at me with her unblinking green eyes, she bows her head and hands over her bag filled with skin.

She runs.

I chase after Chastity, my messenger from God, but quickly lose her to the dark forest. I stand beneath the wind-blown trees, calling for her, begging her to come to me, begging for help with Emmy and learning how to be a medium. But she’s gone.

Returning to the fire, I discover Elspeth.