Unholy Ghosts

Not that Bump would have heard of Freud. The Church kept a pretty tight grip on such things. But Chess had been allowed to study in the Archives, had spent months reading late into the night, every night. Gazing at Bump’s ode to the id she wondered if Freud was as full of shit as she’d always thought.

The blonde led them down a glaringly bright red hallway—more id—and into a large red room. Everything was red, the carpet, the furniture, the walls. Different shades of red, like a nightmare. Chess’s eyes dilated as the room shrieked at her. Being in this room straight would be bad enough. Being here while 400mg of narcotic simmered in her blood was like being trapped in the womb of a fiery spirit prison.

“Sit you down,” Terrible said, urging her onto one of the velvet couches. “You wait for him.”

“Don’t think I’d be going anywhere, even if I tried.”

“Naw, I’m guessin you wouldn’t be.” Those heavy sideburns moved as he showed her his teeth. “But we wait, just the same.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes, shutting out the horrible red. It remained imprinted on the back of her eyelids, chasing her even into her own head. Her lips curved. Plenty of demons in there already.

Outside, the Market was slamming, full of bodies and radios and live music. In the office next door, people were fixing, lining up against the walls for their turn, heading downstairs to hit the pipes. She shifted in her seat. Pills were what kept her going, but the pipes were something else entirely. She’d been hoping to get down there herself before the night was over, to fill her lungs with thick honey smoke and float home to bed. That was looking less and less likely by the minute.

How much was she into Bump for? Three grand, four? The Sanford case turning out to be real had seriously hit her finances. Debunkers were paid shit, barely enough to cover her rent and bills. The bonuses were where the real money came from, paid for her supplies and…everything else she needed.

Three or four grand wasn’t that much, though. She’d owed him more than that before and always paid.

Metal clinked and heat brushed her skin as Terrible lit a cigarette from a flame half a foot high. Chess sat up. “Can I have one?”

He made a “why not” face and held out the pack, then spun the wheel on his black lighter for her. She had to tilt her head to avoid burning her nose.

They smoked and waited for another few minutes, until finally a door opened in the red wall and Bump slouched into the room.

He moved like he was riding a platform with oiled wheels, silently and smoothly, faster than he looked. Rings glinted on his fingers and diamond studs sparkled in his ears, but his clothes were surprisingly nondescript. Chess imagined it was his “at home” look, because the few times she’d seen him out on the streets he looked like a bedraggled medieval king. Tonight, though, he wore a plain burgundy silk shirt—another shade of red to add to the off-tune chorus—and black slacks. His feet were bare save a gold toe ring on his right foot.

He pulled a wilted sandwich bag out of his pocket and tossed it casually onto the table in front of her. Pills slept inside, each one whispering a promise. Pink Pandas snuggled against green Hoppers, blue Oozers and red Nips looked patriotic set against the pure, clean white of the Cepts. Every one was a different ride. Up, down, sweet, or sleazy. Two months’ worth of good feelings, right there in front of her. Her mouth filled with saliva; she swallowed it, along with some of her pride for good measure.

“You into me, Chess.” Bump’s voice slurred low through the room, adding to the impression he gave of a man who thought slow, moved slow. It was a lie. Bump hadn’t become lord of the streets west of Forty-third by being slow. “You into me fuckin good, baby.”

With effort she tore her gaze away from the bag and focused on his scraggly beard.

“You know I’m good for it,” she said, hating the faintly whining tone that crept into her voice. She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “I’ve always paid before, and I’ll pay again.”

“Naw, naw. This ain’t like before. You know what you owe? I give you the number, you see what you fuckin think. Fifteen, baby. Fifteen big ones you owe. How you pay that back?”

“Fift—I do not, there’s no way—”

“You forgetting the interest. You owe Bump money, you pay interest.”

“I never did before.”

He shrugged. “New policy.”

New policy, my ass. What the fuck game was he playing? She’d expected to be threatened, maybe. She hadn’t expected this. “Even if that’s your new policy, my actual debt can’t be more than four grand. What interest rate are you charging, two hundred percent?”

“Don’t matter what the rate is. I fuckin charge the interest I want to charge.” He leaned back against the arm of the other couch and pulled a knife out of his pocket, then started cleaning his fingernails with it. “I says it’s fifteen, so it’s fifteen. When you pay me?”

“I can go somewhere else.”

“Aw, sure, ladybird. You go anywhere you want. You head on over to Slobag on Thirtieth, see how them tattoos get ’preciated by the fuckin scum down there. But you still owe me.”

Again she glanced at the bag. Bump smiled. “You want one? Go ’head. You have one. Whatever you like.” He picked up the bag and held it out to her so it gaped open. “Go ’head.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What are you going to charge me for that?”

His laugh seemed to come from his feet and roll up his body. “I don’t gotta charge you none for it, baby. You owes me enough already, ain’t you?”

He folded his knife and tucked it into his pocket. “Course…now I’m thinking…could be I know a way you pay. A way you work off your owes.”

“Forget it.” She started to stand up. She’d never go that low, no matter what. Even she had a little self-respect, and the thought of letting a grease stain like Bump have his sleazy way with her…ugh.

“Aw, baby, I know what’s in your head. Not that. Though if’n you wanted to I could take you on a real sweet ride. That’s a promise from Bump. The ladies never had it so good as when I give it them.”

He laughed, then shook the bag at her. “Go on. You take one. I know what you need, don’t I? Don’t Bump always know? Bump’s your fuckin friend, yay? So you trust Bump. Take what you want, then we have a chatter. Maybe we help each other.”

Warily she reached for the bag. Her impulse was to grab an Oozer, but she managed to refrain and took another Cept instead. She had a feeling she would need her brain for this one.

“Good, that’s real nice. Now, why don’t Bump tell you what? You hear my plan?”

She nodded, dry-swallowing the Cept.

Bump sat down next to her, close enough for her to smell the pipe room on his clothes. He smiled. “Maybe I got a problem. Maybe you help me with it.”

Uh-oh. She was going to have to turn him down. The only people who ever asked witches for favors were those who wanted either unholy luck or unholy deeds done, and she didn’t much feel like doing either. Especially considering Bump was already a pretty lucky guy, and she wasn’t a killer.

“What’s the favor? I’m not agreeing, I’m just asking.”

“Oh, I think you agree, ladybird. I think when you hear, you say yay. Let me run this down. You know the airport?”

“Muni?” Even if the third Cept had kicked in—which it hadn’t—she wouldn’t have been more mystified. Triumph City Municipal Airport was a major hub, and one of the few areas that was heavily policed. Most Downside residents, especially drug dealers, stayed as far away from Muni and the surrounding factory district as they could.

“Naw, naw, what you fuckin say? Muni. Not Muni. Chester. You know Chester Airport.”

“Chester’s been shut down for years.”

“Yay, it have. But maybe Bump open it back up. Maybe Bump expand his fuckin business, he open it up.”

This was starting to make some kind of sense. “I don’t have enough pull in the Church to lean on the city leaders for something like that, nowhere near enough.”

“Bump got the pull. Bump already got that place wide up, see, wide up. But Bump gotta problem. Bump’s planes—planes carrying them sweet pills you ladybirds like—Bump’s planes crash. Something attacking planes, dig? Make they go all silent. Turns they off.”

“I don’t know anything about planes. I’ve never even been in a—”

“Not planes, ladybird. Ghosts. Say Chester haunted. Don’t guess on that. Somebody sending signals, making planes silent. Electromagnetics and such, yay? You find sender. You find sender, you rid they.”

He leaned back and lit a cigarette, letting smoke wreath around his head. “You catch me them fake ghosts, so my planes they fly. You catch, ladybird, and we even. No more debt to Bump.”

Chapter Three

“Above all, to work for the Church is to be entrusted with the protection not only of yourself and your loved ones, but of the human race. You must never forget this responsibility.”

—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin

Pleading exhaustion was not the best idea for getting out of doing something for a drug dealer. Or, to put it a different way, it was a very good idea. As Terrible drove them out toward the airport, Chess’s entire body felt sparkly, light, as if someone was about to tell her the punch line of a very good joke at a fabulous party. At least that’s how she imagined it would feel.

He’d even chopped up four more Nips nice and fine for her and bagged them, so she could snort them tomorrow if she wanted to. There had to be some advantage to having him grab her by the balls—figuratively—and squeeze, right? And this job wouldn’t take long, probably only one night, so she should milk it for all it was worth. The kind of equipment that would down a plane couldn’t be easy to conceal. She’d find it, she’d tell Bump, and four thousand dollars worth of debt that had magically grown to fifteen would go bye-bye. Not a bad deal, really.

She felt so damn confident and good in that moment she would have agreed to walk naked into a Church service.

Something cold and wet nudged her arm. “Oughta have you some,” Terrible muttered, pushing the bottle of water up to her face now. “You don’t realize the thirsty until morning. That speed, she make you dry.”

“Got my own.” She pulled hers from her bag and took a long swig. “Thanks for the reminder, though.”

He shrugged.

They were out of Downside now, speeding along the highway. Chess couldn’t see the stars through the city lights but she knew they were there, winking above them, forming patterns and shapes in the sky. She sighed and settled back in her seat, glancing at the speedometer.

“Are you really driving a hundred and twenty?”

Terrible shrugged again.

“Not real verbal, are you, Terrible?”

This time he glared at her, the greenish lights from the dash highlighting the astonishing ugliness of his profile. His crooked nose—it must have been broken several times—the way his brows jutted out like a cliff over the ocean, the set of his jaw. She held her hands up, palms out. “Okay. Just making conversation.”

“Dames always wanna talk.”

“Not like there’s anything else they’d want to do with you.”

Terrible reached forward and turned up the radio. The Misfits blared from the speakers, singing about skulls. It somehow suited the moment. Chess rested her head on the door, trying to see the stars.

She blinked, and they were at the airport. How in the world did Bump think he was going to smuggle drugs into an airport so close to town? Didn’t he know people would hear the planes, see them?

Silly thought. Bump didn’t care. Neither did she. In fact, the easier it was for him to get his drugs, the better for her.

Terrible rolled the car—a black 1969 Chevelle, built in the period known as Before Truth—to a stop just outside the remnants of the old airport building, now just boards impaling the sky. Chess had no trouble seeing with her pupils dilated like they were.

Grass grew on the runways in fitful patches like a rash. Nothing had landed here in decades, she guessed, since the Church made Triumph City its headquarters and the Muni was built. This whole area looked forgotten, felt forgotten. Neglect oozed from the ground into the sky.

Terrible came around and opened the door for her, a courtesy that surprised her so much she almost forgot to get out of the car. She did, though, grabbing her bag from the backseat.

He watched without comment as she pulled out her Church-issued Spectrometer and handed it to him, then grabbed a piece of black chalk and her knife, just in case. Some witches used salt to mark their skins, but Chess had better control over the chalk, found it worked for her and was easier to clean up. It was more efficient, and efficiency was its own reward.

“Come here, please.”

Terrible obeyed, dipping his head as she reached up and marked it with the chalk, pressing her fingers to his jaw to help her balance. A protection sigil, crawling across his forehead like a scorpion. He closed his eyes for a second. Did he feel it? He didn’t seem the type, but maybe she didn’t either.

She was feeling something, too, wasn’t she? Below the cheerful buzz of her body, or rather, inside it. The subtle, familiar creep of power, and the even more subtle slide of arousal.

She shook her head. She was standing in an abandoned, weedy parking lot with Terrible, for fuck’s sake, and she was getting turned on. It was the Nips. Speed always had this effect on her. Too bad fucking on speed was so worthless. If it wasn’t she might have Terrible drop her back at the Market, find a man who wouldn’t ask questions and wouldn’t ask for anything else either.

She shook her head to get her focus back and drew the sigil just above the bridge of her nose. Not necessary—most of her protection was in her tattoos—but something about this place gave her the creeps. It was probably Terrible. The idea that for even one tiny second she’d come remotely close to entertaining the thought of letting him touch her would give any sane woman the creeps.

“Okay,” she said, stepping back from him. “You know this place or what?”

He nodded. His eyes glittered like dirty jewels in the shadows below his brow.

She took back her Spectrometer and turned it on. “Let’s go then. Give me the tour.”

He led her to a hole in the bowed, rusty chain-link fence and watched as she slipped through it, then followed.

Their footsteps crunched faintly in the bits of gravel still remaining by the fence, then went silent again as they crossed the cracked remains of the cement walkway. Weeds grew here, too, sliding over her boots, making her think with some discomfort of hands scrabbling for purchase on the scuffed thick leather.

The airport was larger than it had looked when they pulled up outside, the runways stretching back as far as she could see in the darkness.

A spot of light appeared on the destroyed wall in front of them. Chess jumped back, her heart pounding, and stumbled into Terrible’s chest. He held a flashlight in one large hand.

“You scared the shit out of me! I thought that light was—damn it, please don’t do that again.”

“Sorry.”

She had to be the stupidest woman on the planet. There was no other answer, because it had just occurred to her that she’d agreed to come to an abandoned airport in a slum neighborhood with the most feared drug enforcer in the city. If he left her body here, it would be months before it was found, years, if ever.

“Hey, Terrible. Um, you ever heard what happens to someone who kills a witch?”

He grunted. She decided to take that as a no.

“They’re haunted for the rest of their lives. Especially when you kill a Church witch like me. The Church makes a special dispensation, did you know that? No compensation, no disposal. The killer’s haunted every day and every night, no escape. Pretty awful fate, huh?”

“Nobody plan to kill you, Chess.”

“But if you did you wouldn’t tell me, right? I mean, you wouldn’t just turn around now and say, ‘By the way, Bump told me to kill you, so if you’d be kind enough to come closer I can wrap my hands around your throat,’ right?”

He stared at her, then uttered a sound somewhere between a creaky door and the gurgle of an old furnace. It took her a moment to realize he was laughing.

“You one crazy dame,” he said. “The speed crazy you up, don’t it? Nobody’s gonna kill you here. Bump need you. No other witches he got something on, aye? He needs you right.”

It was probably the longest speech she’d ever heard from him, and she believed him. Not enough to tuck the knife back into her bag, but enough.

“Come now. What that box do, anyways? It supposed to beep or light up or something?”

“Something. Just show me around. We’ll see what happens.”

He took her arm again as he led her through the gaping darkness of the doorway to the building itself. Only part of the roof remained, rusted tin supported by rotten wooden pillars, but it was enough to blot out what little light the moon cast into the interior.

And it stunk, like woodlice and dead things and fuel, a cocktail of disgusting that made her sensitive, empty stomach twist.

They shuffled through layers of bones and garbage, while things scuttled away from them across the floor. The boards that had once been solid walls looked like zebra stripes, like camouflage as they picked their way through the bombed-out interior.

Still the Spectro remained silent. Of course, they hadn’t explored very thoroughly yet. Who knew where the gadgets might be hiding? They could be anywhere, in the building, in the tall grass, under a rock…

She refused to believe the alternative, and more to the point, she didn’t feel the alternative, the distinctive sensation of her tattoos warming, the hairs on the back of her neck moving. Something was off—an unusual energy was starting to wrap itself around her—but not ghosts, unless of course the Spectrometer wasn’t working. Her body’s reactions could be muddled by the speed, much as she hated to admit it, but the Spectro should work no matter what.

“Hand me that flashlight.”

He slapped it into her palm with vigor.

She ran the light over the cracks by the roof. That was usually the place electronics could be found, especially something big enough to mess with airplane computers. Actually, she’d never seen anything big enough to do something like that, but old habits died hard.

People never looked up. They looked down, they looked from side to side, but almost never did they think to tilt their heads back and see what was above them. That little human idiosyncrasy left a lot of room for error, so Chess always checked above first, a task she could tick off her list.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary up there, so she cast the light down. More difficult here, with all the debris. What she needed was a broom, but she somehow doubted Terrible would be carrying one with him. Instead she headed for the wall and shuffled along it, moving her feet in tiny increments. “Feel for anything solid,” she said. “Anything heavy.”

If they made a silly picture—the tattooed witch in her tank top and jeans and the hulking guard in his bowling shirt and trousers, black pompadour slipping down into his eyes, sliding their feet along the walls like they were trying to ice-skate over garbage—she didn’t care. Nobody was there to see them, anyway.

Except the thing creeping silently along outside. Chess caught a glimpse of it through a gap in the boards, hunched and dark.

“What’s in the eyes?” Terrible’s voice rumbled across the empty space. “What you seeing?”

She smacked her hand down through the empty air, signaling him to be quiet. Blessedly he seemed to understand, and stood stock-still while she waited. They both waited.

She glimpsed it again, hovering just outside where Terrible stood, and pointed.

She knew he was fast, but didn’t know how fast until his arm shot out through the gap and grabbed the apparition by the throat. It let out a distinctly unghostlike squawk as he pulled it through the boards. They crumbled like wet toast.

“Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! I’s just passing, I swear, I don’t know nothing!”

Terrible didn’t speak, but he didn’t loosen his grip either. The flashlight’s beam passed up and down the figure he held, little more than a child in ragged trousers and a stained poncho. The hood had slipped off when Terrible sucked the boy into the building.

“What business you got here?”

“I’s just passing—”

“Nobody just passing here. You speak, boy, you tell me. What business?”

The boy glanced at Chess, his eyes wide and dark in his dirty face. “Lady, don’t—”

The sound of Terrible’s hard palm striking the boy’s peaky face seemed impossibly loud. Chess stepped forward, her hand out, before she remembered. Lots of gangs used kids to do their dirty work. Just because the boy said he was innocent didn’t mean he was.

“You tell me, or you get worse.”

The boy rolled his eyes at Chess again, then looked down. “I heard there was ghosts. Wanted to see me one.”

“Who told you?”

“Nobody.”

Another slap. Chess refused to watch.

“Okay, okay. I tell you. It were Hunchback, you know him? From Eighty-third. Say he heard from somebody else, who was told by somebody else, that if you comes here some nights, you see them. The ghost planes, right? I came to see, that’s all.”

Terrible considered this for a minute. “What Hunchback look like?”

“Small guy, dig? With a limp. Crazy eyes and no hair. He call me Brain. Said I got one in my head.”

“You don’t, you come playing here,” Terrible replied, but he let go of the boy. The marks made by his meaty palms were fading. “No place for kids here.”

“I come here all—I sorry. I just wanted to see me some ghosts, is all.”

“You here before? You see others here?”

“No, I never did. Just me. My friend Pat. We come, but we ain’t seen planes yet. You gonna see them, you here for them?”

“Here on business.” Terrible glanced up, saw Chess watching. She dug her notebook out of her bag and flipped to a fresh page. Hunchback. If he was spreading rumors about the ghost planes, he was as good a place as any to start asking questions.

Terrible must have thought the same thing. He folded his arms across his chest. “Go now. No ghosts to night.”

Brain had one leg over the edge of the hole Terrible had made in the wall when Chess’s skin blazed with heat, her tattoos practically tearing themselves from her flesh. At the same time the Spectrometer made a long, solid yowling beep, every light on it turning bright red, casting an eerie glow against the damaged walls for a split second before the room lit up like day and the roar of an airplane directly overhead made Chess dive down to the filthy floor.

Chapter Four

“You will not raise the dead, nor will you seek to commune with them outside the Church. To do so is to court thy own doom.”

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 26

It went on forever, the waiting to die, while her heart beat triple-time in her chest and Brain’s thin, high scream hit her ears, barely audible over the noise. It was coming, it was coming to smash into them all and destroy them in a quick flash of rocket fuel and smoke. She tried to scramble out of the way but there was no way to get out of. The lights didn’t dim or change direction, and she had somehow managed to fall against the only unbroken section of wall in the ramshackle place. She wrapped her arms around her head, knowing it wouldn’t make one damn bit of difference.

Wood exploded next to her, splinters catching her cheek and bare arms. She tried to duck away from it but something grabbed her arm, something hard and hot, ripping her through the wall.

Terrible. He dragged her through the hole he’d punched in the rotted wood and out of the building, to her feet, and as she stood she realized the noise had stopped. There were no lights. There was nothing but Brain’s panting sobs and the terrible rushing emptiness filling her ears.