Kelley Armstrong - Haunted

I looked up. Sky. A night sky, overcast.

"Okay," I called to the Fates. "You can skip the detention. I'll do my homework."

A high-pitched laugh answered me. Now, I'm sure the child Fate would get a giggle out of their trick, but the voice sounded too old to be hers, and neither of her sisters was the giggling type.

When no one answered, I headed in the direction of the laugh. If there was someone else in this ghost-world wasteland, it probably wasn't someone I wanted to meet, but a little danger would at least liven things up.

The wind picked up to a whine that cut right through my thin shirt. I thought of willing myself a jacket, but didn't. In the ghost world, you could pass weeks, months, even years without ever feeling temperatures that went beyond pleasantly warm or pleasantly cool. Once in a while, discomfort wasn't so bad.

I walked into a deep dip that sheltered me from the wind. I rubbed my ears. As they thawed, my hearing improved. Not that there was much more to hear, just the whistle of the wind overhead. No, wait, something else. I cocked my head to listen. A thump, then a swish. Silence. Thump, swish . Silence. Thump, swish .

I readied an energy-bolt spell.

The thumping sound could be slow footsteps. But the swish? I didn't really want to think about that. The next thump brought a nails-down-a-chalkboard screech. A muttered oath. An exchange of words, one voice male, one female. A grunt. A thud. Then it resumed. Thump, swish. Thump, swish .

I cast a blur spell-if it worked in this dimension, it should distort my shape enough to let me sneak past anyone who wasn't looking for me. Then I climbed to the top of the knoll. Less than twenty feet away stood a young woman holding a flashlight. I quickstepped back down the hill, then sharpened my sight.

I peered over the hill. The woman was shining the flashlight on a man digging a hole. That was the noise-the thump of the shovel digging in and the swish of the dirt as he tossed it aside.

The couple were both in their twenties. The man was small and skinny with a greasy mop of hair. The woman was blond, with her hair piled high in a god-ugly outdated do. Her clothing was equally out-of-date-miniskirt, high boots, and a car coat. That wasn't surprising. In the ghost world you get used to seeing a historical fashion show. Most ghosts stick with whatever style they enjoyed in life. Well, unless that style included corsets or other instruments of torture.

Here we had two ghosts, circa the sixties… or the seventies. Being my "growing-up years," the two decades merged into a shapeless whole of miniskirts, tie-dyed tees, go-go boots, and disco.

"Deep enough?" the man said, rubbing his hands together. "Bloody cold out here tonight."

The woman leaned over to peer into the hole, then nodded. She laid the flashlight on the ground and the couple walked into the darkness beyond. They returned carrying a long, wrapped bundle between them.

"It's not big enough," the woman said. "He's taller than I thought."

The man nodded, lifted his shovel, and resumed digging. As the woman watched, she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Given the cold, and the task at hand, a shiver was not out of place. But the look on her face was, her eyes gleaming, tongue darting out.

"It was good," she said. "Better this time. We shouldn't wait so long next time."

"We need to be careful," the man said without looking up.

"Why? No one can catch us. We're invincible. This…" She shivered again and waved at the body. "It makes us invincible. It makes us special."

The man looked up at her with a small smile. He nodded, then reached out of the hole and grabbed the wrapped body. As he dragged it, the other end flapped open in the breeze. A young boy's dead eyes stared up at the night sky.

The scene disintegrated into darkness.

I've seen dead bodies before. Sent many into the ghost world myself. You screw with dark forces, you have to accept that an early grave may be your reward. But by "early grave" I mean dying before you're old and gray. The murder of anyone too young to defend himself is the only act that is unforgivable under any circumstances.

So this woman was the murderous spirit the Fates wanted me to find? Consider it done. The only reward I wanted was to be there when they cast her back into her hell dimension. The darkness lightened, and I looked up, expecting to see the throne room. Instead, I stood in front of a frost-covered window. I touched my fingers to the glass. Cold and slick, but my fingers left no marks on the pane. When I peered through a clear corner, I could see sunlight shimmering through falling snow. Strange. Like seeing sunbeams through the rain.

A woman's laugh made me jump and my mind jumped with it, right back to the grassy plain and the laugh I'd first heard out there.

"Oh, wait!" a woman said. "This is the best part. Slow it down."

I turned from the window. On the other side of the room, a young couple was curled up on the couch, watching television. The man had a remote in his hand, pointed at the VCR.

Did they have VCRs in the sixties? No, wait. It was a different man. So I was someplace else. Or was I? My gaze snagged on the young woman. A blonde, early twenties, round face, marginally pretty. Same woman. Or was it? The hairstyle was still overdone, but in a style I remembered from high school. And her skirt was still mini but, again, a modern mini. I tried to zoom in on her face, but it was turned to the television, giving me only a quarter-profile.

"Okay, here it comes."

The woman leaned toward the television. Her eyes glowed. Another jolt as I recognized the same rapturous expression I'd seen on the woman at the grave-site.

"Come on, turn it up," she said, socking the man in the arm.

He laughed and raised the volume. From where I stood, I couldn't see the screen, but I could hear the tape. The voices on it were distorted. Home-movie quality.

I cast a blur spell and crept across the carpet until I could see the screen. It was blocked by a light green shirt. Someone with his back to the camera. Typical. The shirt moved aside. A shot of flesh. A naked female leg. Oh, yeah. A very typical home movie, the kind video recorders were made for. This I did not need to see.

I started to turn away when the camera pulled back and I saw the full image. A girl, no older than Savannah, naked and bound to a bed. Bloodstained bedding.

"Here it comes." The woman's voice rose a few notches, and she imitated the girl's sobs. "I want my mommy!"

With a roar, I launched myself at the woman on the sofa. My hands flew for her throat, nails out. I hit her, passed right through, and tumbled into darkness.

I LANDED HARD ON THE MARBLE FLOOR OF THE throne room. It didn't hurt. I wished it did. I even slammed my fist into the floor, hoping for a jolt of pain to knock the rage from my brain, but my hand only bounced off as if I'd socked a pillow.

I scrambled to my feet. The middle Fate stood there, watching me.

"Send me back," I said.

"Eve, you-"

"Send me back now! You can't show me that and then rip me out of there before I can do anything about it."

"You can't do anything about it," she said softly. "It's over. Long over. What you saw was a memory."

I rubbed my face. A memory. A glimpse into the past. I stared at the white wall, let it clear my mind. I didn't have a clue who the people had been. Obviously serial killers and probably infamous, but I'd never been one to follow crime. In my world, the killers I had to worry about were the ones in my little black book, not the ones on the eleven o'clock news.

When I glanced up, the elderly Fate was at the spinning wheel, and I braced myself, sure she'd jump on me for an answer. Yet she didn't even look up. Just clipped off the length of yarn the middle Fate had measured out for her, then handed it to a wraith-clerk. Then the child Fate took over and threaded the spinning wheel. She lifted her eyes to mine, then quickly looked back down.