Chapter 27: Marina Murders (7)

I had to reforge it.

“By the Hallow name,”  I croaked out, tears streaming down my face.  The book had outlined specific words and phrases, but I made most of them up, trying to get the general idea across. “Spirit, tell me your name.”

I thought the command would come with some special effects.  Maybe my voice would boom supernaturally loud or there would be some movie-like SFX around me.  Neither one happened, of course.  But I did feel the paranormal pressure of the ghost’s presence ease up on my psyche.

…Name is…. Susan…

I managed to get on one knee and one foot, halfway to standing.  I had to keep her talking.  Already, I could feel the ghost trying to turn inwards, feeding in on its own death-memories to fuel its ghastly presence.

“Your full name.”  I demanded.

Susan… Susan… R –my name… Hurts…

“Give me your full name, Susan.”

…Rightly…R,R,Rightly… Susan Rightly…

Her form flickered.  Stuttering across my reality, like a film roll that’d been played too many times over.  My Third Eye immediately homed in on it, identifying it as a weakness.  Even though Susan Rightly was my first ghost, I could tell she wasn’t a strong one.

For one thing, she lacked Will.  Unlike the Magpie or the Fox-sister, she was like a shell.  A computer that was designed to act a certain way, but with the right commands and know-how, I could hack her.  Use her.

“Susan, tell me where you are.”  I was on my feet now, rubbing my hands against each other to try and get some warmth into them. They’d turned scarlet from being nipped with ice.

Home…

“Where is home, Susan?  Tell me where you live.”

She still had her hands covering her face.  Eventually she said her address, including the zipcode.

…Staten I,Island.  She gasped for breath in between her crying.  New York.  Oh god, so cold.

The more I questioned her, the more my Third Eye began to pick up on little details.  Her memories became more organized and readily available, but they flitted out of reach.  At the same time, a tenuous connection began to form between us, growing stronger with the trivia session.  

Instinctively, I knew that it was a link that went both ways.  I could use it to anchor her spirit to the world, giving me greater control over her but at the same time…

If she wanted, she could willingly give me the psychic whammy too.

A mental tug-of-war, a fragile balance that I had struck; a tightrope act between having better control at the risk of exposing myself to attack.

I wanted to slap myself.  That’s what Circles were for.  The first line of defense against this connection, to stymy the field for a conversation.  The Circle was the substitute for a connection that posed danger for both the practitioner and whatever otherworldly being was in there.

More things began to make sense.  Guest rights.  Circles.  Words, Oaths, Promises, Spells and the Chanting.  All just tools which, when used in the right way, were supposed to provide a better variety of options and safety.

And here I was, just winging a ghost-summoning.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, me.

It was almost enough to make me forget what spurred this whole thing.

“Susan,”  The breath-fog floated like mist, and I realized how dark it was getting.  “Why are you here?”

Abruptly, the spirit turned her back to me.  I recognized the body language.

It was someone who was afraid of getting hurt.

“Please, no more.  No more.  Someone please–”

Her voice was stronger now.  More her, less a part of the background.  Then more memories, filled with pain and fear, being flung at me like icicles.    I grunted from the backlash, and the whole world went hazy along with my connection to her.  With minor effort, I focused on her with my Third Eye once more.

I tried again.  “Susan, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“I went for a walk… my evening walk.  I ate too much for dinner today.  Ever since Edward… oh, Edward, honey.  Where are you? Where is this?  I,I, too much, it’s–”

Abruptly, she was clawing towards the air, like trying to fend something off.  I still couldn’t see her face though.

“Where, Susan?”  I gasped as something cut me again.  But when I touched my face, there was no blood.  It was all in my head.

“By the old marina.  The evening wind is–, someone help!”

She shrieked and my head reeled back like someone just socked me on the nose.  The pain came after.

One last push.  Just to have enough of an answer to fulfill my end of the bargain.

“What happened, Susan?”  I tasted blood on my tongue.  Real this time, not just an echoed memory.

“A–, I was just, it grabbed me and–”  She shrieked again.

But this time, it was different.

Her voice multiplied upon itself, imploding and layering on top so that it felt like a dozen people were screaming all at once.  At the same time, she turned around, showing me exactly why she’d been covering her face.

Her skin.  It’d been flayed off.

Loose muscle and gristle hung like mistletoe ornaments in one part and ground beef in the other.  Her eye sockets were hollow, empty and plucked out.  Like someone took a spoon to scrape all the melted ice cream off of a sundae bowl.  The worst parts were her lips and nose, they’d been peeled off clean so that everything was just flat.

And with those hauntingly empty sockets where her eyes were supposed to be, she stared right at me.

She screamed again.

This time, the force of it was great enough to overwhelm the feeble mental defenses I thought I had set up.  In reality, I knew better: I wasn’t even close to anything resembling a real practitioner.  Her mental scream bowled over my concentration and showed me a single image.

A face made completely of shadow.  No nose.  No ears.  Just an eye and a mouth.

Yellowed eyes with orange pupils.

A hole that was more of a sucker than a mouth, serrated teeth lining the inside like a lamprey’s.  It was with a sickening realization that I knew this mouth was exactly what had been used to peel Susan's face.

The next thing I knew, the face on top of me.  Biting, gnashing and cutting –I freaked out– all over my face.  I tried to get him off me, but my limbs felt weak, like they were limp somehow.  Immediately I fell to the floor, trying to cover my face, trying to slap away this thing that was on top of me.

Everything happened in a blur.  The… thing, for a lack of a better word, used its dirty nails that were like razor blades and started sticking them under the sides of my face.  He kept spinning his hand, trying to carve out the extremities, all the while using his teeth to trim it.  At the same time, I could feel its other hand plunging into my stomach, again and again.

Then nothing.

Just cold.

The blissful numbness that came with cold.  Snow everywhere.  

Then just like that, the image was over.

And so was Susan.

Someone was lifting me up out of the pleasant snow.  A part of me agreed that it was probably a good idea.

“Hallow!”  It sounded like Penelope but so far away.  The snow crunched nice and even underneath her shoes.  I tried to say something, but it came out like a gurgle.  “Lev, let’s get him to the car.”

“...What the fuck was that?”  Lev’s voice was fainter, like it traveled through a tub of water to reach me.  I did catch the faint note of alarm in his voice, however.

“I think he just delivered on his promise.”  She answered calmly.  “Let’s get him to the car first.  He’s freezing.”

They began dragging me.  I tried to help by shuffling my feet but they weren’t listening at the moment.

“Pen, you sure about this guy?”

“If you can find another Practitioner who wants to work with us, be my guest.  In the middle of a blizzard, no less.”  Their voices were close to my ear, but strained with effort.  Lev didn’t answer, and Penelope took that as cue that he didn’t have any alternatives.  “He’s just like us, Lev.  Alone.  He could use allies.  And we could use someone like him..”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m worried about.  If people see us with him…”

“We’re not important enough to warrant someone’s notice.  Which is one of the reasons why we went to him in the first place.  No one else would even spare us a glance.”  Pen answered.  “Win-win situation.

The truck beeped as it unlocked and thumped as someone kicked open the door.  They smooshed me in the backseat somehow and within minutes, the truck was up and running with the heater on full blast.  It was only then that I realized I was soaked and shivering.

“Hallow, I’m taking your jacket off of you.”

“...Dinner… first.”  I tried to make a joke.

“Uh huh, you’re a real gentleman.”  With the no nonsense attitude about her, Penelope went about stripping me of the jean jacket, as well as the hoodie.  “Do you have any spare clothes?”

“There’s a throw in the back.”  Lev answered automatically.

Said blanket was immediately tossed on top of me, smelling of dust and old closets.  Not the worst thing I’ve used as a blanket in the middle of winter.

It took a good while for the shaking to stop and for my headache to die down to a mere shadow of what it was.  I don’t remember much about it, because I fell asleep.