Stacia Kane: Close to You

Just as Chess figured, Vincent’s body—well, it wasn’t much of a body at that point, just a skeleton covered in scraps of fabric and scraps of things Chess didn’t want to think about—lay at Mrs. Hudson’s feet. A pillow supported its skull. Around it several items were arranged like afterlife tokens at a Viking funeral: a wallet, a pair of worn tennis shoes, what looked like baseball cards, a pair of socks and some underwear. Very personal, so very powerful. One of the items was a hammer, which was awesome because what they really needed was for Vincent’s ghost to have a deadly bludgeoning tool within easy reach.

She had to admit, though, that she was a little impressed. Despite Mrs. Hudson’s obvious lack of training and her failure to mark a circle, she’d planned her little ritual awfully well, substituting personal items, anniversaries, and a corpse for real magical ability, thus enabling herself to bring the whole thing off even without Chess’s power. But Chess figured she’d had years of practice at that; something told her this wasn’t the first time Eliza had tried this. Maybe it was a yearly ritual, too, just like the decorations and presents.

What Chess didn’t see was her bag. Shit. Not only were all of her magic supplies in there—including the black chalk she’d use to mark protective sigils on herself and Terrible—but her fucking pills were in there, and maybe not all of the itching she felt was magic. Maybe some of it was early withdrawals, which meant she really really needed to find it and end this mess. It was too late to escape and call the Squad, because even as she started to jump toward the window, Eliza stabbed herself in the hand. Blood poured from the wound onto the decayed corpse. Magic blasted like a mushroom cloud, blue light flared, and Chess’s skin erupted in stinging, burning itches as that magic grabbed her own power and the runes and sigils tattooed on her body reacted to it. She gasped and stumbled, suddenly weak, and especially suddenly a lot more pessimistic about their chances of surviving, because the flash of blue cleared to reveal the ghost in the living room.

Vincent Hudson had arrived.

He was wearing a Santa suit.

A fucking Santa suit.

Ghosts always appeared pale ice-blue, clothes and all, but Chess had seen images of Santa Claus in the Church archives and museum, and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that this ghost was dressed like Santa, even down to the weird hat.

The itching all up and down her arms and across her shoulders grew worse. That seemed like an awful lot of itching, actually, for just one ghost. Which it might not have been. The room was full of junk and the area around the house even fuller, so who the hell knew what else might come through the hole Eliza had opened—if she was using personal objects as totems and power-generators, she could raise half the City with all the old crap in that place.

For that matter, who the hell knew how big the hole was? Anything could be ready to materialize, in a place that was basically a deadly-weapon-smorgasbord for ghosts, and without her bag Chess couldn’t do a damn thing to stop them. Or to stop them from turning Eliza and Terrible and herself into ghosts who would then leave the house and join the slaughtering fun. Ghosts didn’t stop killing until either someone stopped them or the sun came up, and it was just a couple of days past the longest night of the year.

Vincent’s face—the same one from the pictures, only a little older, and obviously not flesh-colored—broke into a wide grin at the sight of his wife. Chess wasn’t fooled.

Eliza was. She opened her arms, threw back her head. Her voice came tinny and jubilant through the glass. “Vincent! Oh, Vincent! I did it! I did it this time!”

“Come on.” Chess started hunting through the fog for something to throw through the window. “My bag’s got to be in there somewhere, once I find it I can—”

Terrible’s hand hard on her arm, stopping her. She turned to him, ready to ask what the fuck he was doing, but the look on his face stopped her. It was serious, and sad, and he said in a quiet low tone, “Let she have it.”

“He’s going to kill her, we can’t just—”

“What she’s wanting, aye? Be why she’s done all it.”

“But—”

“Chessie.” He dipped his head toward the house. “C’mon. Look.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. His eyes were full of sympathy, and she turned to the window and realized he was right. Eliza just stood there with her arms outstretched. Her face shone. Her chest heaved.

Vincent stepped forward, the slow, horrifying stroll of a ghost ready to claim a victim. His grin widened into a rictus of glee, like a parody of joy, and he took the knife—still Chess’s knife, damn it—from Eliza’s hand while Eliza stood, watching him. Waiting.

Chess and Terrible waited, too. Terrible slipped his arm around Chess’s shoulders and drew her close; she wrapped hers around his waist and pressed her head against his chest, right over the sigil carved into his skin beneath his shirts. The sigil keeping him alive. Her eyes stung, and she couldn’t even say why—or maybe she could, and just didn’t want to think about it.

The pale light cast by Vincent’s ghostly form and the bright Christmas bulbs bathed Eliza’s face, made it glow. Maybe it wasn’t just the lights. Maybe it was happiness, the way the years seemed to melt away as she smiled at her husband. “I love you,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

The knife flashed across her throat.

Time, already running incredibly slowly, stopped altogether. It seemed to take an hour before blood poured from the wound over the lace collar, another hour before it oozed over the too-big bodice, before it soaked into the dress in a wide dark stain and dripped into the messy tulle.

Eliza’s lips moved. It looked like “Thank you,” or maybe “I love you,” again, but Chess couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter, either. Eliza’s body crumpled.

Terrible’s feet hit the porch before Eliza’s body hit the floor. All those planters lining the wall; he hoisted one and pulled it back, ready to throw through the window. Vincent didn’t pay attention, because Eliza’s ghost rose from her body like Venus from the shell.

Chess had never seen ghosts exhibit affection to each other. Of course it happened in the City, but outside of it was different. Outside of it she’d never seen them really interact with each other, except when they ganged up to kill people. But Eliza and Vincent looked at each other. Really looked at each other. They reached out in unison. The song kept playing, playing so loud, and Chess’s vision blurred so she could hardly see the two of them embrace, reunited by death.

They broke apart when the planter crashed through the window. Identical snarls appeared on their glowing, eerily perfect faces. Vincent lifted the knife.

Terrible hurled himself through the gaping hole in the wall; in his hand was a length of pipe he must have picked up from the porch. Chess followed with no clear idea what the fuck she was going to do to help him except finding her bag, which could take forever in the piles of junk everywhere.

It wasn’t in the living room; a quick scan showed her that, which was all she had time for because while Terrible wrapped his hands around Vincent’s knife fist, Eliza found her own weapons.

That woman had been holding on to her Christmas shit for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years worth of projectiles to fling at Chess, and her aim was really damn good. A china Santa hit Chess in the shoulder. One of those ceramic light-up houses with snow painted on it hit her in the chest. She stumbled; her foot slid on a piece of broken Santa and she fell to the floor.