The Ghosting of Gods Read online

  She’s Ava’s seven-year-old adopted daughter. The real mother is dead, like so many following the last wave of plague induced by spiritual warriors. Leesel follows me around and tells me how she loves my funny weird way of exploring, especially in someone so old. I’m eighteen. Of course, her “mommy” is only nineteen. There are few older people left since the threshing holocaust, of course, so Leesel doesn’t really remember what old looks like.

  You would think she’d be scared to leave the town boundaries, but then, Leesel is a little scary herself. She’s a bona fide genius, and like many true geniuses, she’s different in unsettling ways. I love her like she’s my own blood.

  Unbelievable she’s tracked us so far without us knowing it. Makes me nervous who else might be out here with us. I shoot her a stern look. “Leesel Lily. I thought you had testing today after school.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I’d rather know what you’re doing. I told you yesterday I had no intention of submitting to their evaluations of my brain. They’re ruining my life.”

  “So you’ve said. Does your mommy know where you are?”

  There’s no immediate answer. She takes her time tying her shoelace. “Sure. With you,” she says.

  The shoelace…Emmy…

  Poe optimistically fakes a smile. “Hi, Leesel. You look cute in your pink rain coat. Neon! And I like those matching boots. But are you warm enough?” He tugs at his hair. “I think maybe you should go home.”

  She ignores him. Stares straight through him, as if she were blind or something. Poe flinches.

  I sigh.

  He bugs his eyes at me, but I’m not going to send Leesel home by herself. She knows this and beams at me. Zipping her rain jacket higher, she smoothes her crazy hair that’s thick and kinky. Ava makes her tie it down in two waist-length braids for school, but once she’s home, Leesel undoes the braids, letting her hair go wild so that you can hardly see her face beneath the bush. She’s a cute little girl—hair dusky blonde, skin coffee and cream, eyes blackest black.

  Poe massages his temples. I’m not real happy with Leesel myself. I can’t have her shadowing me like this. What if she’d seen me go in the cemetery? As a witness, she would be guilty. Unless she turned me in.

  She runs circles around us, singing something about a princess in the woods.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” Poe whispers to me. “She needs to play with little girls her own age.”

  Using my forearm to block the limb Poe lets snap back at me, I keep my voice low. “You know the other kids don’t like her. Give her a break. Keep being nice to her. Maybe she’ll come around. They’re working with her, according to Ava, trying to help her with her social issues.”

  Poe risks a glance back at Leesel, a mixture of hope and fear in his eyes, but she makes a show of falling into a coughing fit. He gives me a hurt look. “She doesn’t want me to be.”

  There’s no way to argue with this. Once Leesel decides to ignore someone, they are, in fact, nonexistent to her. Poe’s feelings are hurt by this, but really, Leesel refuses to acknowledge the majority of people she meets. It’s one of the most obvious ways of how she’s different. It scares me and Ava when the priests frown over it.

  I feign interest in a crow that perches on a swaying branch over our heads. Cawing into the wind, it takes flight again. My attention falters while Poe chatters about his preference for ravens over crows.

  Blessed are the poor in ghost.

  What does it mean? Emmy’s suffering. I’ll go back to her grave. Tonight.

  My stomach clenches, but I ignore it.

  Poe laughs at something he’s said, and I manage a smile as if I’m amused. This is the hardest part. Making sure my friends know nothing so they can’t be judged guilty. It makes me alone. Worse, it makes it hard to get to Emmy’s grave. There can be no witnesses.

  Leesel sings a rhyme.

  Poe bends his head to mine. “Look, Jesse. You could make her go home. She’s too smart to get lost, right?”

  “If she stays, she’ll have more of a chance to get to know you. Anyone named after Edgar Allan Poe is bound to be special. Or at least intriguing.”

  “Maybe Ava Lily doesn’t like me because of how Leesel doesn’t.”

  Mist turns heavier, seeping inside my collar, soaking my undershirt. I hunch my shoulders like Poe and keep a close eye on Leesel. With the stormy late afternoon sky and canopy of trees, there’s little light to navigate by. I hold out my hand to Leesel, but soon I’m carrying her on my back. Poe strides ahead, familiar with the way to the chapel. He’s been hiking this path for weeks, spying on his chosen work space, walking a perimeter around it.

  Poe slows his pace, cueing me that we’re getting close. We creep forward until the chapel is in view. It sits in a large clearing, dead center.

  “First we’ll knock,” Poe says.

  “Okay.” I crane my neck to look at Leesel. The top of her head is snug against my shoulder. “Wake up,” I tell her. She slides down my back. Rubbing her eyes and yawning, her eyes follow where I point. I want to keep things normal for her. “What do you think, Leesel? That’s where Poe will write brilliant poetry that scares people and turns them to God.”

  She doesn’t comment; she’s not intrigued with the spiritual world the way Poe and I are, but I keep hoping. She pulls away from me to skip up to the front porch of the tiny chapel.

  “We have to knock first,” Poe yells, panicked.

  She ignores him and peeks in one of the two windows, standing on tip-toe to see inside. Apparently, the window is too dirty to get a good look, and she uses her forearm to wipe a circle clean.

  Haunted dwellings don’t always appear so, from the outside looking in. This is one of those. Decades old, the chapel needs repairs to its board and plank construction, but its white paint, though dingy, gives a vibe of purity rather than evil. A few steps lead up to a thin landing where the small door offers the impression of a child’s playhouse. Simple in its box shape, it must have served a small congregation who were unconcerned with adornments.

  The porch landing shifts with Leesel’s movements, indicating it’s not stable. A shutter hangs loose, rattling in the wind. Shingles are missing from the roof.

  My guess is that Poe won’t have a thing fixed.

  The sole feature of the building that identifies it as a place of worship is the steeple. It leans to the left. I can see where it’s partly separated from the roof at its base, as if something tried to pry it up.

  Poe is agitated over Leesel, pulling at his hair again. I hold up a hand to indicate I’m going to take care of things. Though I don’t share Poe’s sense of good manners at knocking first to alert any spirits of our arrival, I should be the first one inside, not Leesel. “Leesel, wait.”

  No worries. Leesel, unimpressed by the innards of the chapel as seen through the dirty window, leaves the shelter of the porch to join me on the steps. “Want to see the graveyard, Jesse? No one will know. We’re alone out here.”

  The chapel property includes a small cemetery.

  “We should knock now,” Poe says.

  I adjust the hood of Leesel’s raincoat to protect her face better, then lift her chin with my finger to make her look me in the eyes. “You must not go in the graveyard, Leesel. Not this one or any other. Do you promise me?”

  Holding my gaze, she crosses her arms.

  Poe clears his throat. In a show of bravery, he stands on the porch and knocks at the door of the dollhouse chapel. He looks at me as he does it. “No answer,” he announces and backs down the steps, stumbling over his own feet.

  “Are you ready for me to go in?” I ask him.

  “Not yet. What do you think? Isn’t it great?”

  I can’t help smiling. The one constant in my world is Poe. Poe, and all that he is. “Yeah. It suits you.”

  “The last time I came out, I brought binoculars to read the tombstone inscriptions. The people buried here all died within a year of one another. Weird. The deaths had to be
untimely. And you know what that means.” He rubs his temples as if summoning a psychic vision of whatever happened here. “The spirits are prisoners of their past. We may hear them screaming. This is scary, you think? Rapture.” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. This means he’s composing verse in his mind. After only a few moments he speaks:

  Weak veins once collapsed in death

  Entwine cords of voice…

  Descriptions of shrieking souls follow. In detail as poetic as it is disturbing. My best friend is spontaneously, freakishly talented. Meanwhile, Leesel’s catching rain in cupped hands and, I think, listening to Poe’s verse, judging by the way she casually steps closer to him, though she’s careful not to look directly at him.

  It’s not so much the haunted chapel I’m interested in. It’s the cemetery behind it. Just fifty yards away, tombstones hunker in the shadows. I feel drawn to the graves, like always. At the age of four I was identified by the church as being special. I’ve never known how they knew I was different. No matter. They set my purpose and my identity.

  But I doubt. Whatever the truth is, I want it. I really don’t care what priests believe. I don’t want faith. I want knowledge, and I’ll eat any forbidden fruit to get it.

  I’m sincere. I need a sign.

  The graves pull at me. Are crystals here too? Every burial ground in town has them now. Sometimes, I don’t even have to dig. Sometimes, they come to me of their own volition.

  …blasphemous blessed arise to

  Stalk familiar pews in tandem nightmares

  With these ones who pray awake

  Emmy’s murder is a nightmare. And the vortex that took me there. Was it real? Did it happen, or was it a hallucination?

  The forbidden fruit and Emmy both lie in graveyards. I know this in my soul. And so I defy my priests. But I’ve endangered my friends. Poe, Ava…

  I reach for Leesel. She’s gone.

  3

  digging man

  My sweetheart little girl is in the cemetery. For anyone to see.

  She harbors no fear of graves or priests. Leesel slips in the mud as she skips around tombstones, patting each one and saying, “Duck, duck, duck—goose!” Squealing and laughing, her short legs pump with astonishing agility to escape me. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse disturbed dirt and catch Leesel just in time, grabbing her around the waist and yanking her back.

  Her laughter ends.

  An open grave gapes at us from the base of a tall, scraggly tree, positioned at the back of the small graveyard. The hole is the standard six feet deep, with tree roots knotted at one end, forming a kind of headstone in the absence of a real one. Dirt heaps around the edges of the grave. I lean forward to peer down into the earth. No coffin.

  I push Leesel behind me and hold her there. “Poe,” I yell.

  “What is it? A spirit?”

  “Get over here. Now.”

  I hear him sloshing around the chapel, but he stops outside the graveyard. He moans and crosses his chest. “What are you doing, Jesse? Come back, come back!” Out in the open, he ducks his head, trying to hide his six foot frame. It won’t work. His white hair glows on top of his head.

  Dropping his backpack to the ground, he rifles around in it, finds what he’s looking for, and uses two hands to aim a working flashlight into my face.

  I’m dumbfounded. “Where’d you get batteries?”

  “Traded.”

  I shield my eyes with one hand, point down at the open grave with the other. Leesel is free but stays put.

  The beam of light follows my finger and dances alongside the muddy hole. “Holy Mary,” Poe shouts. He fishes the crucifix out from under his coat and holds it up like a shield, pulling the chain so tight I think it’ll snap.

  “Take Leesel back over to the chapel,” I order, walking her over to him. “Wait there for me.”

  “Somebody desecrated that grave.”

  “Yeah, Poe, I see that. And so does Leesel. Can you take her back to the front of the chapel now?” He catches my meaning and takes Leesel’s arm. She pretends not to notice and he drops her limp arm. She does walk away though. Trailing after her, Poe keeps his eyes glued to the grave.

  Suspicion settles my nerves.

  Beer bottles lie scattered. Somebody must have been really drunk to go this far in staging a haunted dwelling. But why? I ponder this mystery while listening to Poe launch into more verse.

  Raindrops plop inside the grave. It’s muddy. Dark. I feel a strong impulse to reach down into the water. I wonder if there’s something down there. Checking over my shoulder to make sure Poe and Leesel can’t see what I’m doing, I sit at the edge of the grave, swing myself around and down.

  I nearly lose my balance. Something rolls beneath my boots. Crystal balls.

  Using my scarf so I don’t touch my skin to the crystal, I grab one out of the water and hold it up to my face, but I see nothing inside of it. Wishing I had Poe’s flashlight, I almost call him over.

  Clouds break, allowing moonlight to wash over me. Once out of the grave, I see that Poe and Leesel have their backs to me. They stand to the side of the chapel, with Poe shining his flashlight into the woods. He’s trembling.

  There’s movement in the trees.

  Leesel gasps when I grab her up. Poe twists around and clutches my shoulders. His mouth works for a bit before any sound comes out. “There’s…somebody…there.”

  Hell. I take his flashlight. Shine it into the woods. “Who, Poe?”

  No sound comes out of his mouth.

  “Leesel, sweetie?” I prompt, my voice calm and quiet as I hack the forest with the beam of the flashlight. “Did you see somebody in the woods?”

  “Yes, Jesse.”

  Oh, shit.

  Poe finds his voice. “Tall. In a long coat dragging the ground. Smelled awful, like the trash yard where stuff gets burned. Couldn’t see his face. I don’t think he had one.”

  Not what I need right now. This is typical of Poe. He says stuff like this all the time. We’d been friends for a year when he confessed his belief to me that I was being stalked by a vampire from Other London. Apparently it was the reason he asked to be my best friend in the first place. We were in first and second grades at the time.

  “Poe. Did you see a priest?”

  He only looks at me in bewilderment.

  I kneel in front of Leesel. “Was it a priest, Sweetie?” Please say no. “I need to know.” Because if it was, we need to run away.

  “We can’t leave Mommy. The priests would get her because I went in the cemetery.”

  Squeezing her hand, I don’t even bother giving her a reassuring smile. She’s too smart for that. “I wouldn’t leave Ava behind.”

  “Because you love her.”

  “Leesel. Are you telling me you saw a priest?”

  “I don’t think so. But whoever it was, might tattle.”

  Poe’s clutches my shoulders. “We’ll never make it back through these woods. This is where he lives. He knows where to jump out, where to drag us.”

  A light swings in the darkness.

  I slap my hand over Poe’s mouth before he can scream. Pulling him down, we run, crouching low to the ground, in the opposite direction of the approaching light. Safely in the shadows of the trees, we watch.

  Underbrush snaps, and a lean figure emerges from the woods. He holds high a lantern. Poe is right that the guy wears a long coat, only I would describe it as a monastery robe from old times, with a cowl that’s pulled up over the man’s head, hiding his neck and shadowing his face. It’s heavy looking, not at all like the fine, silky robes our priests wear. A Halloween costume?

  The man goes up the steps and stands on the landing of the chapel. Pacing back and forth on creaking boards, he raises an arm to pound on the front door. He calls out in a rough voice.

  “What did he say?” Leesel asks quietly. Her arms wrap around the tree trunk we’re hiding behind. Poe is humming with terror, so I answer.

  “Be there, I thin
k.”

  The man knocks again. No one answers. Trees drip softly on us as we wait.

  “I have to go to the restroom,” Leesel informs me.

  I hold a finger to my lips. The man has given up and is staggering down the steps. Bells jingle. His lantern throws light in our direction. He staggers back up.

  “Calm down, Poe,” I say, hugging him to me. We’re in trouble, something wrong is happening, but I pretend differently. “He’s just a drunk, okay? It must have been him who dug up the grave. Just an old crazy guy.”

  “Jesse, be realistic. Don’t you see how he hides his face with the hood? What do you think he looks like beneath there?”

  “I’ve gotta go,” Leesel reminds me. “Will you take me to the chapel? I need a restroom.”

  “There’s not going to be a restroom in the chapel, Leesel. Go in the woods. Not far.”

  She dances in place while I strain to see the robed man adjust his lantern, making it bright. He comes back down the steps and stands in front of the chapel. Bending over, he scratches at the ground with his free hand.

  Poe nudges me. “What’s he doing now?”

  “I don’t know. He’s drunk.” I shrug my shoulders, as if I’m bored. But I’m remembering something. The lantern in Emmy’s graveyard. There were bells tied to it…damn. Poe didn’t do it. I’m so stupid. This guy…he’s following me. He knows.

  For a moment, I’m stunned. I stare at Poe. At Leesel. With icy clarity, it hits me. We can’t go back.

  We can’t go back.

  They’ll never let me in Emmy’s graveyard again. How else can I save her? Where else do I find her ghost?

  My throat burns as I watch the drunkard, the spy of priests. He straightens and wanders in a circle, then heads back around the side of the chapel, toward the graveyard. Carefully, I pick my way through the dark, staying hidden in the trees, but keeping the man in sight.

  He’s tiptoeing through the graveyard, his arms out for balance, jingling lantern dangling from one hand.

  There’s no time to attack the man or question him. The priests are too clever.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whisper. Poe reluctantly agrees, though of course he doesn’t know what I really mean. I’m worried about Leesel. She’s so little. She won’t want to leave her mommy. But going back isn’t safe. We’ll have to leave Ava behind.