Four Ghosts Read online

  "Stop this!" she crumples to the floor, moaning in agony and terror.

  Then, a fusillade. Powerless, her nerve endings respond to the invisible assault as if it were real, but there is nothing boring through her flesh, although it feels like it. Her hands clench and her muscles spasm and she expects great gouts of blood but there is nothing but the light, and the pain, and . . . a microsecond of respite. On her side, flesh aflame, the crib's glow is so intense it hurts her eyes.

  It's feeding off of her pain.

  Like microscopic droplets siphoned from the ocean, that grotesque thing is sucking anguish from her as if it were--

  "Mother's milk."

  The light falters. Mallory lies in the dark, moments ticking past. The teeth chitter again, a fitful tattoo of frustration and impatience.

  "You can't have me, you little fucker."

  Army-style, she crawls to her nightstand. She tugs at the top drawer and a lance of searing agony impales her right hand. It rips a scream from her throat, twists the hand and bends the elbow until her fingers are frozen in a palsied claw, her arm rigid and immobile against her chest.

  She reaches for the drawer again, but her fingers won't move.

  Rolling over to release her left hand, she reaches up and tugs hard at the drawer. Too hard, it comes crashing off the rollers and strikes her forehead.

  A wave of heat drips from her hairline and she blinks away blood while digging into the detritus of receipts, gum wrappers, bibs, and other garbage before her fingers clutch the rounded handles of a pair of ornate, antique, silver filigreed scissors.

  Mallory tucks the weapon beneath her body, and slithers herself to the bassinet. Somewhere inside, she knows that she used to love what was in that crib, but for the life of her she can't imagine why.

  The thing must have had its fill, as the invisible hail of barbs momentarily ceased. On shaky legs, she stands, peers over the edge of the crib.

  She tries to scream but the abomination staring back at her with glassy anthracite eyes sunk deep into a raw crimson tangle of physiology is so hideous her throat clenches shut.

  "Be still," she says.

  Her left arm is large in the curdled light. The thing lasciviously clicks it's curved, limestone colored teeth. She brings her hand down and the scissors puncture first the belly, for it was hunger that birthed such blasphemy.

  Up and down. Her hand goes up and down. Every time, the red light goes one shade dimmer but her hand comes up one shade darker.

  Soon, there's nothing left but stringy, pulpy piles of tissue and a few glistening bits of solid shapes she thinks might be bone.

  ~*~

  The scissors slip from her gore slicked hands. Warm. The blood that came out of her baby was warm.

  Samira tears her hands from the railing of that charnel crib, scrabbles backward across the room with such force that the back of her head bangs against the opposite wall. The impact is a crackling pain in her skull but somehow a rejuvenating tonic to her mind.

  “Out let me out get out get out!”

  She stands, words still dribbling from her mouth, nonsense things she can’t and doesn’t care to understand. She rushes toward the door, mind bloated with memories of Mallory and Jaxson and the thing in the doorway—

  She stops mid-stride, a hand’s length away from the door. Her heart does not beat. She does not breathe. She does not move.

  The surface of the door glistens with a sudden . . . colorlessness. Not darkness, not shadow, something closer to the smothered light of a sackcloth covered moon.

  An icy dread fills her belly.

  She should have never come to this house.

  She should have never brought her unborn into this house.

  Like a cancer, her mother, Jacaranda, metastasizes from the portal.

  Mater Nihil, in the flesh. Samira’s mother is a foot taller than her daughter, more slender, long black hair falling in polished waves down her back. She smiles. Samira takes a step backward.

  “My daughter, the hopelessness in your eyes is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Samira’s body feels empty, cold. Insubstantial. Perhaps the presence of Jacaranda has withered the child growing inside her already.

  “You’re still in the same dress you wore when I killed you.”

  Her mother holds her hand out toward her. Resting in her palm is a pair tailor’s shears. Twelve inches long, made of stainless steel, the blade’s dark with blood.

  ~*~

  Samira had always hoped that when the day came that her mother would return to destroy her, that she would not be afraid. Why would she be? The two of them had already done this dance once before. However, she never envisioned even the merest possibility of her life as it is now: she has carved a place for herself in the world despite a past that would have made suicide an act of benevolence.

  Samira never imagined that when her mother returned she would find her wanting to live. Samira never imagined that she would have found and nurtured some worth in herself. She never imagined she would become an alchemist of her own soul, transforming her affliction into something that could serve and save others, nurturing her tenuous gifts of shaping and refining into a lucrative business, finding and loving – loving so goddamn hard it felt sometimes as if it would pulverize her from the inside out – someone like Varju, and then, in a paradoxical turn of damnably blessed fate, becoming a mother. A mother to a child not yet wholly human, but still loving it and more eager for its existence than anything she can imagine.

  ~*~

  “Yes,” her mother says, still smiling still showing off her scissors. “You know I could have come back for you at any time, but for what? What would I do with your nothing? I take away and give back the void, child. I’m going to empty you with these. I’m going to pry that little red squirming peapod out from between your legs and then,” she laughs, a sound like knives and precious torment, “I’m going to make you eat it. Isn’t that funny? It’s all very poetic, if I say so myself.”

  ~*~

  The fear is so strong Samira’s body can’t contain it; she is shivering, her teeth clattering together. “Sometimes, it’s alright to be afraid, baby. Sometimes fear is all you have. But fear is better than nothing.”

  Her grandmother’s voice. Is that a memory? She can’t recall but the words steady her.

  You have always been stronger than she is, Samira. Her grandmother says. You are your mother’s child, but you are also your father’s.

  Granny Aspen never told her about her father. Only after digging through a moldering box in the attic of their farmhouse did nine year old Samira start to piece together the life her mother lead. That life, tormented as it was, seemed to be without mention or memory of her father.

  Once she entered her twenties, an image of a dust-colored man with shadows for eyes would blossom in her mind when her consciousness was stretched between the poles of sleeping and wakefulness. Strangely, the man’s presence never scared her. His appearance, certainly, but his expression was not one of malice or rage. Instead he had the sort of relaxed countenance characteristic of a doting parent watching their child sleep.

  ~*~

  “Who is my father?”

  Jacaranda’s smile falls as if the muscles and cords in her face have been snipped away. Behind her deceptively rich brown eyes is the great void that her being conceals. That body, the voice, the smell of her, all of it is just costume and façade. Jacaranda Holland is an outfit Mater Nihil wears, nothing more. Whatever the thing is beneath the skin, Samira is sure she hopes to never see it.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You aren’t real.”

  Jacaranda laughs, without mirth or joy. Just a sound to fill up the yawning silence. “No? That mother and her baby sure thought me real. The dog too. Oh, and the father. We met. Don’t you have a dog?”

  “We do.”

  Her mother stares off into space, mouth turned down in thought. She shakes her head, “You know, I’m no
t quite sure yet what I’m going to do with the dog.”

  Samira nods and kicks her mother in the stomach as hard as she can.

  Jacaranda gasps, doubles over and the scissors fall from her hand. A grunt, a deep, smelly grunt of rank air forced out from her belly bursts from her mouth as her body collapses into the door.

  Samira steps onto the scissors and kicks them away, then lunges at her mother. Another blow to the belly, Samira drives her fist into the woman’s guts and she crumples to her knees.

  The empath raises her hand, curled into a fist, just like Mallory’s but this time the right one will die.

  “Wait!” her mother gasps, “Samira, please wait!”

  The woman is on her hands and knees, one hand in the air and she turns to her daughter with panic-filled eyes that peer at her through the loose tresses of her hair.

  And Samira is fourteen years old again, alone at her last foster family’s house, standing at the front door on a bright summer day because the doorbell just rang. There’s a woman on the porch, a very pretty, very tall woman with gorgeous black hair and brown eyes sweet as sun kissed honey.

  It was the person she had longed for, every second, with every heartbeat, in every thought. The need for her mother had permeated her whole being.

  “Mom?”

  “You’ll never stop needing me. Before your birth, in my sleep, you haunted me. You are a parasite, the way all children are. I just want to be empty.”

  Jacaranda lunges up from the floor and knocks Samira onto her back. The breath knocked from her lungs, spots of blue dancing in her vision, she can’t breathe, can’t see. Her mother straddles over her waist, traps her arms between her sides and knees.

  “Now,” her mother says and raises the shears in her left hand. “Where were we?”

  Chapter Four

  The moment the door closes a verse from a poem he had to read in college shoots through time like an arrow and strikes Asher dead in the heart:

  I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

  I lift my lids and all is born again.

  (I think I made you up inside my head.)

  ~*~

  I didn’t get it then. The rest of the class and I spent an entire session parsing and dissecting and analyzing the poem and by the end, we were still just as confused as when we began. We ss begged the instructor to explain, but the man just smiled and said one day we’d figure it out. And now I get it.

  ~*~

  Asher knows exactly what the poetess was talking about now, with Samira locked (on the inside, the fucking inside, was that even necessary?) and alone in that room. For reasons he could not discern, Samira had taken care to shut the door quietly. But to Asher it is like the final thunderous rumble of the earth imploding before crumbling into dust.

  Arms across his chest, legs slightly spread, feet planted firmly; Asher knows he’s being melodramatic at worst, a creepy obsessive at best. Infatuation. No big deal. It happens.

  Asher glances over at McBride. The man is leaning against the wall, face lit up by the cold, bluish light of his smartphone screen.

  His hands curled into fists. McBride’s petulance had grated his nerves all morning and if something ha—it won’t, of course – but if something happened to her, Asher was pretty certain he’d snap and pummel the senior detective into a weeping pulp. His whole adult life, Asher had been praised for his compassionate and humane demeanor. He was a patient man, a kind man, a man who tries very hard to be understanding. But every now and again he crossed paths with people who somehow, someway, were able to bring out the beast in him.

  It was only through years of physical, mental, and spiritual discipline was Detective Corsino able to temper the rage that had blazed inside of him since adolescence. McBride was absolutely an odd and distant person, but the senior detective compensated (as far as Asher was concerned) with his meticulous attention to detail during especially complex investigations. Landry’s insistence on McBride’s involvement was disappointing but necessary and Asher was smart enough to understand that. They were going far outside the realm of protocol and for any level of credibility to be maintained if they found something useful from Samira’s contributions, there’d have to be no doubt that the investigation was structured, thorough, and legitimate.

  Plus, Asher had circumvented McBride’s seniority by consulting Captain Landry without discussing his plan first with his partner. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to know that the moment Asher suggested the involvement of an “empathic investigator” McBride would’ve laughed in his face and told him to get back to doing the “real detective work.”

  Under normal circumstances, he would’ve been fine with that. Asher liked the real detective work. But what had been happening over the last six months sure as shit wasn’t normal. By the time the third murder-suicide was discovered, his intuition was screaming for Samira’s insight.

  Maybe something else inside of him was screaming for her too.

  ~*~

  Uncomfortable, he shifts his weight although he knows his displeasure has little to do with his posture. Looking down at his wrist watch his stomach flips with impatience and worry. It’s only been three minutes since she stepped through and locked (locked!) the door.

  ~*~

  Shame burned the back of Asher’s neck and ear lobes. He wasn’t ashamed because of her involvement with the investigation; he was certain Samira’s . . . abilities would catch something that they had missed. He also didn’t feel any shame about exploiting a horrific tragedy all in the ill-fated pursuit of a (somehow) seemingly happily married woman. No, Asher’s shame was that the truth of his exploitation and eagerness to become an adulterer were only symptoms of a much bigger, more complex condition. A compulsion, really. He was exploiting a series of senseless tragedies in the hope of ruining a marriage, but in order to do so he needed to have some time alone with the subject of his infatuation.

  And maybe that meant that what he has wasn’t infatuation after all.

  Their shared interest in the occult meant that they both traveled in similar circles and more often than not, their groups of friends overlapped. As such, they’d had multiple opportunities over the years to chat and catch up at festivals, ceremonies, workshops, house parties, gatherings of general debauchery.

  But she was never alone and he was sick of sharing her. In the almost ten years of their shared social space, he could count the number of times he’d encountered Samira alone. Her husband rarely left her side and while it vexed Asher to the point of wanting to chew glass, he obviously couldn’t blame the guy. What really frustrated him however was her devotion to her husband. What was it about that strange, silent, Slavic summoner that garnered such devotion?

  ~*~

  Sighing, Asher shifts from the middle of the hall to lean against the wall opposite his oblivious partner. The air is cold and still faintly carries the bloody smell of meat and the sour reek of fear.

  Asher doesn’t know what’s to be discovered behind that door. Two weeks ago he is on scene twenty minutes after the call and he has to heave in the Kirkman’s bathroom twice before he can assist the techs with evidence collection and begin building a chronology. The realization smacks him in the face and a sound, halfway between a grunt and a gasp lurches out of him.

  “What?”

  McBride is still looking at his smartphone, thumb dancing ludicrously over the screen.

  “Oh,” Asher clears his throat. “Nothing, just . . . swallowed the wrong way.”

  No nod, no grunt of acknowledgement. He wonders how much of what he said McBride actually heard. It’s irrelevant because the only thing he can think of now is how stupid he’s been. She might be in danger: Because I put her there. Encouraged her to go there, have a look around, and uttered no protest when she locked herself alone inside of it.

  His palms itch. The door handle (lever, to be precise) is burnished in nickel and appears frosty to the touch. Flimsy. He’s certain that a few well-placed kicks would crumple the
tumbler and render the lock useless.

  Remember guys, wait twenty minutes for me. If I’m not out by then, do not come in. No matter what you hear, do not come in. Call Crow.

  The cords in his neck bulge as a wave of searing frustration wells up in his throat. What could Crow – and what the fuck kind of name is that anyway– possibly do to help her that he couldn’t? He has a Glock on his hip, a badge on his belt, and a body built to perfection after mastering a myriad of martial arts for twenty eight years and counting.

  Which is exactly the problem; Asher makes a fierce opponent in the physical world but anything beyond that is treacherous, unknown ground. He identifies as neopagan, not because he has any fierce sense of wildness or divinity too large for monotheistic religion, but because he likes the idea of it. He believes in nothing, but finds the accoutrements of ritual magic aesthetically pleasing. And while this is something he hardly realizes consciously, he has always sensed that there is something else behind the world, some other layer, a shroud that only needs to be pulled back. What’s behind that veil? He has no idea, no real expectation, but hopes that whatever is there will someday reveal itself to him. Checking his watch, eight minutes, he wonders if he even has Varju’s (that’s a stupid name too) number and why on earth Samira would trust he did.