Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

The orange lights flowed together into a manlike shape again, this time straddling the lemur’s prone form. The being of light rained blows down on the lemur’s head, over and over, striking with the speed and power of a motor’s pistons. Within ten or twelve seconds, the head of the lemur had been crushed into ectoplasmic guck, and his sparkles of light—his memories—and the same odd, tiny gems began to well up from his broken form.

The light being rose from the form of the fallen lemur and scanned the area around us, his featureless face turning in a slow, alert scan.

“What the hell!” Butters said, his eyes wide. “I mean, what the hell was that, man?”

“Relax, sahib,” said a young man’s voice. It was coming from the fiery figure, which nodded and made hand-dusting motions of unmistakable satisfaction. “Just taking out the trash. Scum like that are all over these old mortal cities. Part of the posthuman condition, you might say.”

I just watched. I didn’t feel like doing anything else.

“Yeah, yeah,” Butters said. “But he’s safe now?”

“For now,” the being said, “and as far as I know.”

Butters crunched through the snow and stared down at me. The little guy was one of Chicago’s small number of medical examiners, a forensic investigator who analyzed corpses and found out all sorts of details about them. A few years ago, he’d analyzed corpses of vampires that had burned to death in a big fire someone started. He’d asserted that they obviously were not human. He’d been packed off to an institution for half a year in response. Now he treaded carefully in his career—or at least he had when I was last alive.

“Is it really him?” Butters asked.

The being of light scanned me with unseen eyes. “I can’t spot anything that would suggest he was anything else,” he said cautiously. “Which ain’t the same as saying it’s Harry’s ghost. It has . . . more something than other ghosts I’ve encountered.”

Butters frowned. “More what?”

“Something,” the being said. “Meaning I’m not sure what. Something I’m not expert in, clearly.”

“The, uh, the ghost,” Butters said. “It’s hurt?”

“Quite severely,” the being said. “But it’s easily mended—if you wish to do it.”

Butters blinked at him. “What? Yes, yes, of course I wish it.”

“Very good, sahib,” the being said. And then it whipped and darted through the night air, gathering up all the floating, glittering gems from the vanishing remains of the lemurs. It brought them together into a single mass and then knelt down next to my head.

“Bob,” I said quietly.

Bob the Skull, formerly my personal assistant and confidant, hesitated beside me as I said his name. Once again, I became aware of his intense regard, but if he saw anything, it didn’t register on his featureless face.

“Harry,” he said. “Open up. You need to restore these memories to your essence.”

“Restore what?” I asked.

“Eat ’em,” Bob said firmly. “Open your mouth.”

I was tired and confused, so it was easier to just do as he said. I closed my eyes as he dropped the mass of gems into my open mouth. But instead of feeling hard gems, fresh, cool water flowed into my mouth, swirling over my parched tongue and throat as I eagerly swallowed it down.

Pain vanished instantly. The disorientation began to fade and disappear. My confusion and weariness followed those others within a moment, and a deep breath later, I was sitting up in place, feeling more or less as sane and together as I had been when I had woken up that evening.

Bob offered me a hand and I took it. He pulled me to my feet as if I’d weighed less than nothing. “Well,” he said. “At least you don’t seem to be a bad copy. I was half-afraid you’d be some kind of demented Winter Knight wannabe with an eye patch and a goatee or something.”

“Um,” I said. “Thank you?”

“De nada,” Bob said.

“Bob,” Butters said in a firm voice. “You’ve fulfilled your task.” Bob the Skull sighed and turned to bow in a florid gesture of courtesy toward Butters, before dissolving into a cloud of orange sparks again and flowing back toward the flashlight. I saw then that the spotlight casing hadn’t contained lightbulbs and batteries and such—just Bob’s skull, a human-bone artifact of a long-dead enchanter who had built it as a haven that could harbor the essence of a spiritual being.

“Hey, Bob,” I said. “Could you relay my voice to Butters?”

“Don’t have to, former boss,” Bob said cheerfully. “On account of the fact that Butters is a whole heck of a lot more talented at magical theory than you.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Oh, he doesn’t have a lick of magical talent,” Bob assured me. “But he’s got a brain , which, let’s face it, hasn’t always been your most salient feature.”

“Bob,” Butters said in a scolding tone. Then he fumbled in his parka’s pocket and produced a small, old radio. “Here, see? I had Bob go over your notes from the Nightmare case, Harry. Bob said you created a radio that he could communicate through. So . . .”

I refrained from hitting my own head with the heel of my hand, but just barely. “So it wasn’t much of a trick to turn it into a baby monitor. You just needed an old crystal radio.”

Butters listened with his head tilted toward the radio and nodded. “I explained the concept to Molly this morning and she put it together in an hour.” He waved the spotlight housing Bob’s skull. “And I can see spooks by the light of the spirit’s form. So I can see and hear you. Hi!”

I stared at the skinny man and didn’t know if I wanted to break out into laughter or wild sobs. “Butters . . . you . . . you figured this all out on your own?”

“Well . . . no. I mean, I had a tutor.” He bobbled the spotlight meaningfully.

“Ack! Don’t make me puke,” Bob warned him. “You won’t like me when I puke.”

“Hush, Bob,” said Butters and I in exactly the same tone at exactly the same time.

We both turned to eye each other for a moment. He might have tucked the skull close to his side in a protective gesture of possession.

“You shouldn’t stay here, with all the official types around,” I said.

“Just thinking the same thing,” Butters said. “Come with me?”

“Sure,” I said. “Uh. Where?”

“Headquarters,” he said.

From Butters’s other pocket, there was a hiss and a squawk from what proved to be a long-range walkie-talkie. He picked it up, looked at something on its little display, and said, “Eyes here.”

“We’ve got nothing at his old place,” said Murphy’s tired voice. “What about you, Eyes?”

“He’s standing right here talking to me,” Butters said, and not without a trace of pride.

It looked good on him.

“Outstanding, Eyes,” Murphy said, her voice brightening with genuine pleasure. “I’m sending you some shadows. Bring him in right away.”

“Wilco,” Butters said. “Out.” He put the radio away, beaming to himself.

“Eyes?” I asked him.

“Daniel kind of gave me the nickname,” he said. “They kept putting me on watch, and he wanted to know why they kept making the foureyed guy our lookout. It stuck as my handle.”

“Except we have six eyes,” Bob the Skull said. “I tried to get him to get me a pair of glasses, and then we’d have eight . Like spiders.”

I nodded, suddenly understanding. “You still work for the morgue.”

Butters smiled. “There are plenty of people listening to our transmissions. Murphy wouldn’t let me use my name.”

“Murphy is smart,” I said.

“Extremely,” Butters said, nodding agreement.