I caught a glimpse of something at the periphery of the property.
Which would get to me first? A clever Other or the cold?
“I’m feeling less confident,” I said. “Being outside.”
“We’re a few paces from safety,” she said.
I frowned. “Let’s make it fast.”
“Give me a second. Trying to wrangle two different books.”
I could hear her turning pages. I fidgeted, partially to keep warm.
“Salt,” she said. “Is a pure substance, and any ghosts that actively want to hurt us are going to be naturally impure. Tainted by anger and hatred.”
“I’m following.”
“Easiest way is to bleed,” Rose said. “If you’re okay with cutting yourself again?”
I looked at my hand. I still hadn’t healed from the cut that I’d made in my finger so I could draw the sigil on the mug, after getting my power. Blood didn’t bother me, but I didn’t want my fingertips buried under calluses either.
“We chant the spirit’s name. This should establish a tenuous connection. You put power into that connection.”
“How?” I asked.
“Blood. Draw a symbol, like you see in the book, the median line running parallel to any line of connection you see between yourself and the ghost. Blood is power, basically the most distilled and direct form you can offer. The caveat being that when you deal with some Others, you give an inch, they take a mile. And you don’t want them taking a mile of your blood or personal power.”
I shook my head. “No danger of that with ghosts?”
“There shouldn’t be.”
“Okay,” I said. “Anything else?”
“We chant, you draw the line, feed just enough blood into things to bring the ghost into earshot. After that, we can try communicating with it.”
“Communicating with the ghost.”
“They’re not real beings, they’re echoes of major events that happened. Typically painful, sad, or angry events. Sometimes moments of sheer brilliance. Sometimes other things. Chances are pretty good that the ghost is going to have a limited script to work with. They’ll be single minded. But you should be able to negotiate something. Remember that every second that you’re using your blood to keep it here, you’re making yourself just a bit weaker. There isn’t time to hit your head against a brick wall. Don’t argue with them if they aren’t listening. But if you find leverage, then use it. Roll with whatever happens.”
I nodded.
“Another thing? Misery likes company, and ghosts tend to try to bring others down to their level. Whatever grips them, they spread it. Anger, pain, sadness, madness…”
“Fuck,” I said.
“It shouldn’t be so strong that it overwhelms you. Especially not with the salt circle. But just in case, I want you to keep listening to me,” Rose said. “Even if you’re so angry you can’t see straight, even if you want to hurt yourself.”
“Right.” Listen to Rose. “Roll with it, except for the big part of this where I shouldn’t roll with it.“
Rose ignored my quip. “Let’s start with a ghost that isn’t too new and isn’t too old. The new ones are stronger, and the old ones have generally held on only because they’ve connected to other spirits or power sources, which is complicated and dangerous. June Burlison. She died in the forties, somewhere in the glades back there.”
June Burlison.
I drew out the salt. Slowly, with care, I layered it in a circle around me. By the time I finished closing the circle, the ice beneath the first bit of salt was melting.
I could see more shadows in the fringes of the area. I was fairly sure I could make a break for it if it came down to it. The door was only two paces away, I had the axe.
“Watch my back?” I asked. I moved the bike mirror around until it hung between my shoulderblades.
“Will do.”
And the wind, though blocked by the short brick wall, had blown a few stray grains in my direction.
We had to be quick.
I set my bag, hatchet and bat aside.
“Hi there, June,” I said. “June Burlison.”
I switched to my other sight. “June Burlison.”
I could see the connection. Frail, spirits reacting between me and the book, me and Rose, and between me and something out there in the woods. Too general, indirect and fleeting to point the way to anything.
“June Burlison,” Rose said. I could see the same connections forming. The connection passed to me, then out to the woods, like the aftermath of lighting that darted between conductive targets.
Would this same strategy work for finding people? Objects? If I wanted to find Laird, could I call out his name until I could make out the connection?
“June Burlison,” I said. I was having an easier time making out the connection. Was she drawing closer, even without the blood being offered?
Of course. The connection wasn’t a one-way street. There was an exchange. If I tried to find Laird by establishing some kind of tenuous relationship, he’d know. He could probably use it against me.
This was the same thing as the lawyers. Calling their names until they took notice.
“June Burlison,” I said.
The line was clear enough, now. I used the hatchet’s blade and sliced a fingertip that didn’t have any cuts on it. I reached past the border of salt and drew out the symbol, copying what was on the open page in the book.
As if lured in by the blood, I could see the Others drawing closer. Slipping in through my blind spot, popping their heads up around terrain features. Every time my back was turned, they closed the distance. Since they were surrounding me, there were some approaching with every second.
“Might have to make a break for it,” Rose said.
“Might,” I said, but I started on the diagram.
“Blake,” Rose said. A little more urgent.
I glanced back. “Is it something that the salt circle will stop?”
“Can’t make promises,” she said.
I clenched my teeth, then set to drawing out the rest of the diagram. When I drew the line of blood against the edge of the salt line, I got salt on the cut.
“Fuck, ow,” I said, swearing under my breath.
I could feel the connection momentarily flare, with that.
June appeared, down at the tail end of the hill, near the treeline.
It wasn’t a fluid appearance. She stuttered, like a film feel with missing frames. Her movements were jerky, following the same repeated pattern, as she crawled towards me, clawing in the snow for purchase as she pulled herself forward with one hand and pushed herself another foot or two with one foot. She was half dressed, her clothing old-fashioned. The one hand she wasn’t using to crawl was clutching at her collar, the fingers black.
The cold cut deep into me. She was moving slowly, and I wasn’t dressed warmly. Much less standing still in the cold.
Except there was more to it. The onset of cold seemed to match her approach a touch too evenly.
Where June didn’t have the ‘program’ for how she was supposed to look or act while climbing the steeper portion of the hill, she simply disappeared. A second or two later, she was back, as if she hadn’t left at all, and she’d managed to close the ten or so feet in the meantime.
For all that the image was imperfect, it was remarkably clear. She wasn’t translucent, as ghosts tended to be in film.