Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

I turned, very calmly and slowly, reminding myself that I didn’t have a heart to pound wildly, and that there wasn’t really any sweat on my palms. I didn’t need to shiver from fear any more than I needed to shiver from cold.

My self apparently found its own assurances unreliable. Stupid self.

There was a tall and menacing figure floating in the air behind me, maybe three feet off the ground. It was swathed entirely in a rich cloak of patina, its hood lifted, creating an area of completely black shadow within. You could see the dim suggestion of a face in the blackness. It looked like the old images of the Shadow, who clouded the minds of men. The cloak wavered and billowed slowly in a breeze with the approximate viscosity of a lava lamp.

“Um,” I said. “Hi.”

The figure drifted downward until its feet were resting atop the snow. “Is this preferable?”

“Aren’t we literal?” I said. “Uh, yes. That’s fine.” I peered at it. “You’re . . . Eternal Silence. The statue on Dexter Graves’s monument.”

Eternal Silence just stood there in silence.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “I guess you aren’t really just a local statue. Are you?”

“Your assumption is correct,” Eternal Silence replied.

I nodded. “What do you want?”

It drifted slowly closer. The deep voice—and this guy made James Earl Jones sound like Mickey Mouse—rumbled out. “You must understand your path.”

“My path.”

“That before you. That behind.”

I sighed. “That’s less than helpful.”

“It is more than necessary,” Eternal Silence said. “It is essential to survival.”

“Survival?” I asked, and I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled. When you’ve faced off with enough Grim Reaper wannabes, it gets kinda routine. “I’m already dead.”

It said nothing.

“Okay,” I said, after a minute. “Survival. Of who?”

It didn’t answer for a long moment, and I shook my head. I began to think that I could probably spend all night talking to every lunatic spirit in this freaking place and never make sense of any of them. And I didn’t have all night to waste.

I had begun to focus my thoughts on another series of Nightcrawler hops, when that deep voice spoke—and this time, it wasn’t something I heard. It just resonated in my head, in my thoughts, a burst of pure meaning that slammed into my head as if inscribed on the front of a cruise missile:

EVERYONE.

I staggered and clutched at my skull with my hands. “Agh!” I stammered. “Hell’s bells! Is it too much to ask you to turn down the volume?”

UNINTENTIONAL. MORTAL FRAILTY. INSUFFICIENT UNDERSTANDING OF VOCALIZATION. PRECONSIDERED VOCABULARY EXHAUSTED.

I actually discorporated at this full-on assault of thought. My freaking spirit body spread out into a giant, puffy cloud of vaguely Dresdencolored mist. And it hurt. I mean, that’s the only word I can think of that really applies. It wasn’t like any kind of pain I’d felt before, and I’m a connoisseur when it comes to pain. It wasn’t pain of the body, the way I had known it. It was more like . . . like the way your head feels when you hear or see an image or concept that flabbergasts you so hard that the only thing you can say about it is, “That is so wrong.”

That. Times a million. And not just in my head, but full body.

It took a full minute for that feeling to fade, and it was only then that I could see myself coming back together again.

“Don’t explain!” I said, almost desperately, when I looked up to see Eternal Silence hovering a little closer to me. “Don’t! That hurt!”

It waited.

“We have to keep this simple,” I stuttered, thinking out loud. “Or you’re going to kill me. Again.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and said, “I’m going to ask yes or no questions,” I said. “For yes, stay silent. For no, indicate otherwise. Agreed?”

Nothing. Eternal Silence might not have even been there, except that his cloak kept rolling and billowing, lava-lamp fashion.

“Is your cloak red?”

The hood of the cloak twitched left and right, once.

“Fantastic,” I muttered. “Communication.” I mopped at my face with my hands and said, “Okay. When you say everyone, are you talking, like, everyone I know?”

Twitch.

“More than that?”

Silence.

“Um. The whole city?”

Twitch.

“What—more?”

Silence.

“So . . . you mean . . . like . . . everyone-everyone. Everyone. The whole planet.”

Silence.

“And me understanding my freaking path saves them?”

Silence. Twitch.

“Great,” I muttered. “Next you’ll want me to take a pebble out of your hand.”

Twitch.

“I wasn’t being literal . . . . Okay, yeah, you and I aren’t going to communicate well this way.”

Silence. Somehow . . . emphatic.

I stopped and pondered for a moment. Then I said, “Wait. This is connected, isn’t it? With what Captain Murphy sent me to do.”

Silence.

“Find my killer?” I asked him. “I don’t get it. How does finding my killer save the world?”

The deep voice repeated earlier phrases. “You must understand your path. It is more than necessary. It is essential to survival.”

“There’s a little irony in Eternal Silence being stuck on a looping sound bite.” I sighed.

A wraith’s moan drifted into the air, and I tensed, looking around.

One of those ragged-scarecrow shapes was rising from the earth of a grave, like something being hauled up out of deep mud. It moaned in mindless hunger, its eyes vacant.

Then there was another moan. And another. And another.

Wraiths were coming up out of graves all around me.

I started breathing harder, though I didn’t need to. “Yeah, okay, brilliant idea for a safe house, Harry. It’s a freaking graveyard . Where else are ghosts going to be?”

Eternal Silence only stared at me. There was an amused quality to its silence.

“I have to go,” I said. “Is that all you had for me? Understand my path?”

Silence. It lifted a green-shrouded limb in a gesture of farewell.

The first wraith finished with what was evidently its nightly routine of slogging out of the earth and moaning. Its empty eyes turned toward me and it began to drift my way, immaterial toes dangling down through the snow.

“Screw this,” I said, and vanished. One, two, three hops, and I was to the nearest brick wall of the cemetery. I gritted my teeth and plunged into it.

And slammed my face into cold stone.

Pain lanced through my nose, and I snarled at my own stupidity. Dammit, Harry. Walls are built to keep things out—but walls around graveyards are built to keep things in . I’d known that since I was a freaking kid.

I checked behind me. The wraiths were drifting after me in a slow, graceful horde, adding members as they went. They weren’t fast, but there were dozens and dozens of them. Again I was reminded of documentaries I’d seen showing giant clouds of jellyfish.

I gritted my teeth and thought fast. When walls are built, they are intended as physical barriers. As a result of that intention, invested by dozens or scores of builders, they took on a similar solidity when it came to the spiritual, as well. It’s why they held most ghosts inside graveyards—and it probably had something to do with the way a threshold formed around a home, too.

But where human intention had created a barrier, that same intention had also created an access point.

I turned and began vanishing in a line, straight for the gates of the boneyard.

I don’t know what I would have done if they had been closed. Shut gates and shut doors carry their own investment of intention, just as the walls do. But open gates are another matter entirely, and the gates of Graceland stood wide-open. As I went through them, I looked back at what seemed like a modest-sized army of wraiths heading for the opening.