The ghost still didn’t let go. This was fucking ridiculous. What was he supposed to do, spend the entire time up here playing tug-of-war with a dead guy for a chair leg? While more of them wandered around, faster and faster, probably grabbing more weapons to beat him into a bloody pulp?
The thought energized him a bit. He pulled harder, pushing his entire body forward, and ended up taking five or six steps before he realized what was happening.
Maybe he could . . . ? Yeah, that would work, right? The ghost couldn’t cross that salt line, but he could, and the chair leg could.
It made him feel a bit like a sled dog, for some bizarre reason, but he did it, towing the ghost toward the line, pushing through the mass of them. The cold almost started to feel good, it was so hot up there.
He stepped over the salt line. Crossed the few feet between it and the wall, and gave the leg one last tug. The second the ghost’s hands touched the air over the salt line it let go.
Yes!
He ducked out of the way of a flying picture frame and headed back out. Through the translucent forms filling the attic he saw Chess, bending over slightly with her hand out. Trying to find the portal, he guessed. Or hoped.
Not for the first time the idea that he had only her word that she actually knew what she was doing crossed his mind, but he shoved it away just as quickly. If she didn’t, it really didn’t matter. He was in that attic and he wasn’t getting out until either she managed to fix the problem or they both died, so no point in worrying about it.
Terrible shouted from below, and Chess shouted back again that they were fine.
A few simpering china babies sat on the floor by the wall. A ghost picked one up, started advancing toward him. Rick ducked away, realizing as he did so that he had an advantage Chess hadn’t explained. He could walk through them. They couldn’t walk through each other.
He twisted his body, sliding through a ghost raising a shard of glass—that could not be a good thing, was there more broken glass around?—and around a heavy desk. More stuff, that was what he needed, stuff to get on the other side of that—
The china baby smashing into the side of his head stunned him, knocked him on his ass. Literally. For a second his vision blurred and shook; when the world snapped back into focus he saw light hit the shard of glass as it started to descend.
Without thinking he grabbed at the spectral hand that held it. It was solid. Solid and cold and damp, with a sort of horrible give to it, the kind of give all living flesh possessed but just felt wrong when the flesh in question glowed bluish-white and froze his own.
The ghost’s face leered above him, its lips stretching into a hideous grimace. His arms shook from trying to hold it off. The point of the glass came closer, a little closer, aiming straight for his heart.
“Chess! Chess!”
She didn’t reply, but he heard her footsteps, heard her voice as she yelled more of those makeshift syllables and flung something at the ghost.
Dirt. It landed on him and he realized it was dirt, dirt with a particular pungent smell. He also realized the ghost had frozen in place and he took advantage of it, snatching the glass from its hand and tossing it at the wall.
That was a mistake. Another ghost caught it. Fuck.
Chess glanced over. “I’ve found it. Get that glass to the other side of the line and come over to the corner. I might need your help.”
Okay, this he could do. He thought. The ghost grinned, holding the glass up, but it was still close to the salt line and wasn’t moving quickly.
And his mother had told him playing basketball after school wouldn’t actually teach him any real skills.
He looked at the glass, at the hand holding it. Focused on it. And ran, his hands outstretched. Another china baby smashed against the floor where he’d been; an old book glanced off his back. He ignored them.
His hands closed around the ghost’s, shoving it forward. The ghost immediately went transparent. The glass fell to the floor, and unfortunately Rick fell with it, and it drove itself into his thigh.
It took every bit of strength he could muster not to cry out in pain, but he managed it, remembering Chess’s warning about showing emotions. Instead he forced himself to get back up. They’d smell his blood, yes, and that was a bad thing, but he couldn’t really do anything about that. Instead he limped over to where Chess stood, shouting back down to Terrible that they were okay and had found whatever it was.
She turned to him when he drew up beside her. “Look.”
It was a wreath. What?
As he watched, another ghost slid out of it. It was horrible to see, like witnessing the birth of a grotesque baby. It swung at him, at Chess, several times, its expression growing angrier and angrier, until finally it passed through them, no doubt to hunt for a weapon of some kind.
When it had gone he realized that the center of the wreath wasn’t there, or rather, that he couldn’t see the floor through it. Instead the air appeared wavery, shiny almost, and tiny lights glowed in that space, lights and more shapes that could have been people.
“It leads directly to the City,” she said, ducking as a candlestick flew past. “Look. It’s mistletoe.”
“I thought that was illegal.” The second the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. Duh, asshole.
She must have seen his thoughts reflected on his face, because she didn’t point out his stupidity. “It opens the gate between here and the City, see? That’s why. Especially in a mistletoe wreath. The Church destroyed every one they could find right after Haunted Week.”
“Right.” Another ghost was forming in the center of the wreath. “So what do we do? I mean, what do you do?”
“I think I can try banishing them all, just sending them right back through without a psychopomp. Then we burn the wreath.”
He nodded, just as if he understood what she’d said, which he didn’t. He knew the words, knew that a psychopomp was an animal that carried spirits from this world to the City and that banishing was the act of summoning a psychopomp to do that job. But he had no idea what it actually entailed. It wasn’t exactly something people got to watch. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Keep collecting debris,” she said. “And tell Terrible to watch out. When I send them all back it will probably create a vacuum in here. So, um, when I give the word, grab on to something, okay?”
His stomach lurched. Was she serious?
Stupid question; he should stop asking it. Yes, she was serious, and yes, Terrible might kill him if the ghosts didn’t manage it first, and yes, this whole thing was a big mistake, and yes, if he made it out of there alive he was going to punch his brother-in-law in the mouth.
She touched his arm, gave him a sort of soft quiet smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
He nodded.
Over the sound of his own footsteps as he half-ran, half-limped around the attic collecting more potential weapons, he heard her voice, low and smooth like music playing in another room. The blood leaking from his thigh excited the ghosts, just as Chess had said it would. They swarmed him, followed him, spun around him in a dizzying pattern of light. The cold wouldn’t go away, even for a second. The feeling of them passing through him, as if he were one of them, or as though he didn’t really even exist, wasn’t really there, grew more and more unpleasant.
But not as unpleasant as the sound of the wardrobe scraping across the floor again.
He looked in that direction. Not just a few ghosts behind it now. At least a dozen or so of them, pushing the heavy piece of furniture. Pushing it right toward Chess. They must have figured out what she was doing.
As they picked up speed, more ghosts joined them. Within seconds, it seemed, he stood almost alone, watching the wardrobe slide across the floor.