Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

“Neither fear nor pain sway you from your objective. Excellent.” This time, the thing’s voice was coming from the far side of the convenience store. “But there’s no knowing the true temper of the blade until it has been tested. Even the strongest-seeming steel may have hidden flaws. This may be interesting.”

I paused, frowning, and looked up at my faerie godmother, who still sat at the edge of my grave, listening raptly. “I . . . Godmother, I’ve heard it said that ghosts are memories.”

“Indeed,” Lea said, nodding.

“Are the memories truth?”

Lea arched a rather caustic eyebrow at my words. “You ask your first question before finishing the tale?” Her mouth twisted in distaste. “Your storytelling form leaves something to be desired, child.”

“Yeah, I never did too well in English class. Will you answer the question?”

Her eyes became very, very green and glittered with a wild, gleeful light. “They are the facts, the events as you experienced them.”

I frowned. “I never really had a clear recollection of exactly what the thing said to me,” I said. “I mean, that blow to the head gave me a headache for days.”

“Ah yes,” Lea said. “I remember your pain.”

She would. “Yeah, uh. Anyway. I’m remembering the conversation now, word for word. Is that real? Or is it something that guy in black made up to fill in the blanks?”

“They are your memories,” she said, “the record, the impression of what you lived. Your brain isn’t the only place they are stored—it is, in truth, often a poor facility for such a purpose.” She paused to consider her next words and then spread her hands, palms up, an odd light in her eyes. “It is the nature of the universe that things remain. Nothing ever disappears completely. The very sound of Creation still echoes throughout the vast darkness: The universe remembers. You are currently free of the shackles of mortality. Your limited brain no longer impedes access to that record. The only blocks to your memory are those you allow to be.”

“That’s either very Zen or very . . . very crazy,” I said. “So, this memory—this is all the actual event?”

“Did I not just say as much?” she asked crossly. “It would make a ridiculous fiction. Why would I bother listening otherwise?”

I honestly wasn’t sure. But I decided not to push the issue. Ghost Harry, wise Harry.

“Now,” the Leanansidhe said. “If you are quite finished holding hostage my imagination, pray continue.”

“Get away from me,” I snarled, clutching the money. Sparks spat fitfully from the fried security camera. They were most of the light in the place. Even if the creature had been something solid and physical, it might have hidden in the stretches of shadow between the flickering motes of light. I didn’t see it anywhere.

So it came as a shock to me when something gripped the back of my neck and effortlessly flung me into an end cap of various doughnuts and pastries.

I went through it and hit the shelf behind. It hurt more than I could have believed. Years later, I would have considered it a minor foothill of pain, but at the time it was a mountain. The sweet smell of sugar and chocolate filled my nose. I figured my backside must be coated in about half an inch of frosting, cream filling, and powdered sugar. The scent made my stomach howl for food, gurgling loudly enough to be heard over the sound of items falling from the shelves here and there.

Like I said. Sixteen.

“Such a useless scrap of meat contains you,” the creature said, its voice unchanged by the violence. “It is entirely inconsequential, and yet it molds you. Your existence is a series of contradictions. But here is certainty, mortal child: This time, you cannot run.”

The hell I couldn’t. Running had always served me fairly well, and I saw no reason to change my policy now. I scrambled to my feet and ran for the back of the store, away from the presumed direction of my attacker. I rounded the far corner of the aisle and pressed my back up against it, panting.

Something hard and hot and slimy settled around my neck, a noose made of moist serpent, and just as strong. It jerked me up and off my feet, a bruising force that threw me into the air and released me almost instantly.

I had an enormous flash of empathy for Jerry, facing the raw power and amused pleasure of a large, invisible Tom.

“You cannot escape what is always behind you,” it said.

I landed on my ass, hard, and scrambled toward the other aisle on my hands and knees, only to feel another terrible force strike me, a contemptuous kick in the seat of my pants. It flung me forward into a glass door on a wall of refrigerated cabinets holding racks and racks of cold drinks.

I bounced off the door and landed, dazed, staring for a second at the large cracks my head had left in the glass.

“No one will save you.”

I tried to crawl farther away. I made it only far enough to reach the next cabinet, and then a blow struck me in the ribs and flung me into the next glass door. My shoulder hit it this time and didn’t break the glass, but I felt something go pop in my arm, and the whole limb seemed to light up with abrupt awareness of pain.

The unseen presence of the creature came closer. Its voice lowered to a bare, pleased murmur. “Child of the stars. I will destroy you this night.”

My head was full of pain and fear. I could sense it getting closer again, coming up behind me—always there, I somehow knew, where I was weakest, most vulnerable. That was where it would always be.

I had to move. I had to do something. But the terror felt like lead weights on my wrists and ankles, sapping my strength, making muscles turn to water, thoughts to noise. I tried to run, but the best I could do was a slow, slippery scramble down the aisle of cold drinks.

“Pathetic,” said He Who Walks Behind, growing nearer with every word. “Whimpering, mewling thing. Useless.”

Terror.

I couldn’t think.

I was going to die.

I was going to die .

And then my mouth said, in a damned passable Pee-wee Herman impersonation, “I know you are, but what am I?”

He Who Walks Behind stopped in his tracks. There was a flickering heartbeat of uncertainty in that inevitable presence, and the creature said, “What?”

“Ha-ha!” I said in the same voice, double-tapping my own fear with the character’s staccato laugh. A thought came shining through my head: Maybe I can’t stop this thing from coming at my back.

But I can choose which way I turn it.

I struggled to my feet and started town the aisle, spinning with every step, whirling-dervish style. The whole time, I heard myself spewing Pee-wee Herman’s cartoony laugh—which, in retrospect, was possibly the creepiest thing to hit my ears that night.

I hit the door with a hip and an elbow and blew through it, still spinning, out into the parking lot. Once there, I realized that my escape plan did not have a part two. It hadn’t been concerned with getting me any farther than the doors of the store.

I’d achieved the objective. Now what?

The darkened parking lot was a mass of shadows. The nearest lights were a hundred yards away, and seemed somehow dimmer, more orange than they should have been. There was a heaviness in the air and a faint, faint stench of death and rot. Had that been something the creature had done? Had that been what it meant when it said it had made sure of our privacy?

Stan was in the parking lot, out between the two islands housing the convenience store’s gas pumps. He looked like a man who was trying to run in slow motion. His arms were moving very slowly, his legs bent as if sprinting, but his pace was much slower than a walk, as if he’d been trying to run through a rice paddy filled with peanut butter. He was looking over his shoulder at me, and his face was distorted with terror, a horrible mask that hardly looked human in the shadow-haunted night.