Norman Partridge - Wildest Dreams

I looked into Circe Whistler’s young eyes. A dozen questions sprang to mind. I wondered if she had any idea what had happened to her, or if she realized that she existed in two worlds at the same time. I wondered what she’d forgotten, and what she remembered, and how much of it could hurt her.

I didn’t want her to be hurt.

I kept my questions to myself.

But Circe had questions of her own. “Did I do something wrong? Is that why this is happening to me?”

“No,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Don’t worry, Circe. Everything’s going to be okay.”

It was the first time I’d called her by name, and she brightened at the sound of it. “Did you always know who I am?”

“Not always, but I know now.”

“I should have told you before,” she said. “I wanted to tell you at the bottle house, as soon as I heard that lady say she was taking you to my father’s estate. But she scared me, and I was afraid to come out of hiding while she was there. After you left, I was all alone again. I started wishing that I’d gone with you. I thought that maybe I could help you if you were going to meet my father. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the house. I knew the address, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to get there. I walked all the way to Cliffside, but everything was closed. Finally, I saw a map taped to the window at the gas station and-”

“It’s not important how you found me,” I interrupted. “What’s important is that you did, even though you were afraid.”

“So you really do know my father?”

“We’ve met,” I said, because it wasn’t quite a lie.

“You work for him?”

Now I did lie. I didn’t have another choice.

“Your father is a very important man,” I said. “He was worried that someone might try to hurt you, so he hired me to take care of you.”

“Can you do that?” she asked, glancing over my shoulder at Lethe’s ghost.

“I can,” I said, and there was no way I would let my words become a lie.

Circe believed me. Trust shone in her blue eyes.

That was good. I needed her trust.

“Can we leave now?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not yet.”

She started crying again. She couldn’t help it, staring at the cleaved face of the ghost who held her prisoner. “I know she’s not really my sister,” Circe said. “She can’t be-my sister’s only three years old.”

“I know,” I said, wanting to spare Circe from the truth. “But sometimes people lie, and ghosts are just people. Or at least they used to be. Ghosts can lie, too.”

“She is a liar, and she’s crazy, too. She told me all sorts of horrible things. She even told me that I was dead.”

The little girl nearly broke down. A hard knot of anger tightened in my chest. I took a deep breath, but I was shaking badly and I knew it.

Circe saw my reaction. “It’s not true, is it?” she asked. “I’m not dead, am I?”

“No,” I said. “You’re not dead.”

I think she believed me. I hope she did. But when she reached for my hand, I took a step back. She couldn’t touch me.

Not with her fingers. She couldn’t touch me that way. I wouldn’t let her try.

“It’ll be all right,” I said, but my promise was no more than a whisper in the darkness. Circe was afraid again. She retreated into the shadows and hugged the inverted cross.

Gooseflesh prickled my spine as Lethe came closer.

“Make her go away,” Circe begged.

I turned and faced Lethe Whistler’s deathgrin. “What is it you want?” I asked.

Laughter broke her bloodstained teeth. “You can’t give me what I want.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“To talk to the man who can.”

She turned and started up the staircase.

I knew I had to follow.

“Don’t go,” Circe begged.

“I have to.” I spoke the words as quickly as I could. “But I’ll be back.”

It was a promise I intended to keep.

A stone grunt as the trapdoor fell closed, and I stood in the bottle house with a guttering torch in my hand.

I’d save the flashlight for later. One way or another I was certain to need it, and I didn’t want to waste the batteries. In this place, the torch seemed more appropriate anyway.

After all, this was a haunted house. Lethe Whistler seemed right at home here, and she wasn’t alone. She had mentioned someone else-a man who could give her what she wanted.

I wondered who that man might be, but Lethe certainly wasn’t going to tell me. “I’ll see you again,” she said. “Soon.”

She drifted through the stone floor, ghostly remnants of tattooed skin whirling around her shoulders like leaves made of midnight neon, and then the darkness drank her in and she was gone.

I fanned the torch at arm’s length. No one waited for me in the shadows. I watched the door. Outside, the storm had diminished to a complacent drizzle. Without the wind, the bottles were silent.

Just bottles again. They couldn’t howl or scream. They couldn’t share whatever secrets they might hold. They couldn’t speak a single word-with a wind, or without a wind. They were only glass. That’s what I told myself. Or tried to, until the silence was broken by a deep, resonant voice.

“We meet again, Mr. Saunders.”

The words echoed in a hundred glass throats.

A dark figure skirted the golden edge of torchlight.

It was a man. A cloak of shadows roiled at his shoulders, wild with bristling nettles. He carried his darkness with him, and it seemed to slice the light as he approached, slashing as silently as the sharpest of razors, leaving menacing refractions that lit the shadows gathered tightly around his throat like a wreath of spikes.

Tattered ribbons of light streamed upward from the torch, revealing the man’s face-a collection of savage angles with an expression as uncompromising as a wrought iron spike.

The ghost of Diabolos Whistler nodded at me, and his barbed sneer became a smile.

I held the torch and held my ground.

“I hardly recognize you,” I said. “But then again, I’m not used to seeing you with your head on your shoulders.”

Whistler threw back his head, and for a moment I was afraid it would fall off. But the nightmarish collar held firm and he only laughed, a big booming empty sound that nearly made me reach for my knife-even thought I knew that the weapon was completely useless.

“If I had to die,” Whistler said, “I’m glad a man like you killed me.”

“I’m glad someone’s happy. As for myself, I’m still waiting to be paid for the job.”

“You’d better collect soon.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because very soon my daughter will be dead, Mr. Saunders.”

“You’re dreaming,” I said, and my words were as much for Whistler’s ears as my own. With his cloak of spiked shadows, he might look different from the other ghosts I’d encountered-but that didn’t mean he was different. No matter what he claimed in life, and death, and prophecy. If Whistler wanted to scare me, he was going to have to show me more than shadows.

I figured I’d make the first move for him. “You can’t do anything,” I said, plunging the torch through his spectral face. “You’re dead.” Amber flames flickered behind his eyes. “You’re about as dangerous as a wisp of smoke.”

“Smoke comes from fire,” Whistler said. “And fire is very dangerous, my friend. I will kill my daughter. Mark my words.”

The flames brightened, but Whistler’s eyes burned with a zealous fire all their own. Instantly, I could see what had drawn people to him, and to his pulpit. The bastard really believed his own twisted gospel.