Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13)

by Jim Butcher

I folded my arms and stared at Inez. My voice came out ragged and harsh. “You aren’t the ghost of a little girl.” Her little face lit up with another smile. “If I am no ghost, why do you look so haunted?”

My self apparently found its own assurances unreliable. Stupid self.

The deep voice—and this guy made James Earl Jones sound like Mickey Mouse—rumbled out. “You must understand your path.” “My path.” “That before you. That behind.” I sighed. “That’s less than helpful.” “It is more than necessary,” Eternal Silence said. “It is essential to survival.”

“Mortimer gave them something they needed to turn aside from their madness: a home. If you do not restore him to freedom so that he may care for these poor souls, they will kill again. As sure as the sun rises, they won’t be able to help themselves.” He exhaled wearily and closed his eyes. “Fifty years of maddened shades unleashed upon the city all at once. Preying on mortals. Blood will run in buckets.” I stared at him for a moment. Then I said, “How am I supposed to do that?” “I’ve not the foggiest,” Sir Stuart replied.

“Help Mortimer,” he replied. His shape began to flicker and fade at the edges. “I’m sorry. That I couldn’t do more. Couldn’t teach you more.” He opened his eyes again and leaned toward me, his expression intent. “Memories, Dresden. They’re power. They’re weapons. Make from your memory a weapon against them.” His voice lost its strength and his eyes sagged closed. “Three centuries of playing guardian…but I’ve failed my trust. Redeem my promise. Please. Help Mortimer.” “Yes,” I said quietly. “I will.”

Before I died, I might have been Harry Dresden, wizard at large. Now I was Harry Dresden, immaterial messenger boy, persuader, and wheedler. I desperately wanted to blow something into tiny, tiny pieces—and then disintegrate the pieces. All things considered, it was probably not the best frame of mind in which to handle a confrontation in a rational, diplomatic manner.

I won’t bore you with the details. I don’t like to think about it. They were stronger than me, better than me, more experienced than me when it came to spiritual conflict. They got me. The monsters got me. And it hurt. Until footsteps crunched toward us through the snow. The lemurs never took notice.

“Harry!” I stared at him and said, through the blood, “Butters?” “Stop them,” Butters hissed. “Save him! I release you for this task!” “On it, sahib!” shouted another voice.

“Hey, Bob,” I said. “Could you relay my voice to Butters?” “Don’t have to, former boss,” Bob said cheerfully. “On account of the fact that Butters is a whole heck of a lot more talented at magical theory than you.” I frowned. “What?” “Oh, he doesn’t have a lick of magical talent,” Bob assured me. “But he’s got a brain, which, let’s face it, hasn’t always been your most salient feature.” “Bob,” Butters said in a scolding tone.

I had Bob go over your notes from the Nightmare case, Harry. Bob said you created a radio that he could communicate through. So…”

I take this as full and total confirmation of my being right about these being Harry's journals. Until I get proven wrong, of course.

Its license plates read: MEEPMEEP.

Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. “There are no words. It was like The Lord of the Rings and All My Children made a baby with the Macho Man Randy Savage and a Whac-A-Mole machine.”

He nodded. “No one wanted to be the one to tell you the details. But Murphy’s pretty sure. She says that if she was still working as a cop, she’d be convinced and digging as hard as she could to turn up enough evidence to let her put the perp away.” “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I get what she means by that.” I swallowed. “Why hasn’t she?” “We need Molly,” Butters said. “She’s made the difference between happily ever after and everyone dying in two raids against the Fomor.”

No big whoop, Dresden. Oy, but you are such a little girl sometimes.” I blinked several more times. “Oy?” “My mother calls me twice a week,” Butters explained. “He listens in.”

“This is my house,” I said after a moment. “I mean…where my house was.” Things had changed.

Someone had turned the ruin of my home into a freaking fortress. A plaque hung over what had to be the main entrance. It read, simply, BRIGHTER FUTURE SOCIETY.

I felt anger stirring in me, irrational but no less real. “My home…is a supernatural flophouse?” “And armory! And jail!” Bob said enthusiastically. Ghosts can sputter in outrage. “Jail?” “And day care!” Bob continued. I stopped in my tracks and threw my hands up. “Day care? Day care?!”

“Butters,” rumbled Skaldi Hair Ball. If he really had broken fingers, it didn’t look like they were bothering him much. “When are you going to get in this ring and train like a man?” “About five minutes after I get a functional lightsaber,” Butters replied easily, much to Hair Ball’s amusement.

Murphy hadn’t said much—but she’d not said a whole hell of a lot more. She had never, not once, mentioned Kincaid.

I opened my eyes, standing on a random Chicago sidewalk, immaterial and unseen. I turned my right hand palm up and focused upon that sudden kindling of light and hope, crystallized by the memory of that moment of triumph and joy. “Flickum bicus,” I whispered. The fire was every bit as beautiful as I remembered.

That will do for now,” said the woman’s voice. “Tomorrow we will move up to knives.” Molly shuddered and looked down. The speaker came walking calmly down the alley to stand over Molly. It was my faerie godmother, the Leanansidhe.

“Harry didn’t believe that,” Molly said, her voice brittle. “He never hurt me.” The Leanansidhe stooped and seized Molly’s chin, jerking my apprentice’s face up to meet her inhuman gaze. “Then he wronged you badly, child,” Lea replied, enunciating each word sharply. “He cheated you of the legacy he lived—and suffered to acquire. I am not teaching you how to tie knots in rope or to bake pastries. I am making you ready to face battle and emerge alive.”

My jaw dropped open. I mean, I had known the kid was good with illusions, but Hell’s bells. I might have been able to do one of the illusions Molly had just wrought. Once, I had managed two, under all kinds of mortal pressure. She had just thrown out six. Simultaneously. And at the drop of a hat, to boot. My gast was pretty well flabbered.

“Oh, child,” the Leanansidhe said, smiling. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time. All teaching involves an element of risk.” “Yeah,” I said, “and look at what happened to your last student.” Her eyes glinted. “Yes. From nothing more than a terrified child, in a mere score of years he grew into a weapon that all but utterly destroyed a world power. The Red Court lies in ruins because of my student. And it was, in part, my hand that shaped him.”

“What is teaching but the art of planting and nurturing power?” Lea replied.

“So. You’ve finally been inside me. I feel like I should be offering you a cigarette.” I choked and had to clear my throat. “Um. It wasn’t like that, kid.” “Of course it wasn’t,” she said, an edge in her voice. “It never was. Not for you.”

“So?” Molly was silent. I didn’t push. Five minutes went by before she closed her eyes and whispered, “It’s easy. It shouldn’t be so easy.” Technically, I didn’t have a heart anymore. It couldn’t twist. It couldn’t break. It did anyway.

I sat there, stunned and heartbroken, unable to think of anything to say or do to help Molly. I watched my mad apprentice stalk out of the silent restaurant and into the frozen night.

I shuddered as I wondered how many other men’s little girls had been hurt and killed as a result. And, God help me…I would do it again. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t good. I’d spent less than three hours in the company of my daughter—and so help me, if it meant keeping her safe, I would do it again.

Sweet home Chicago. The people here were my family. They were in danger, and I was part of the reason why. That made things pretty clear. It didn’t matter that I was dead. It didn’t matter that I was literally a shadow of my former self. It didn’t matter that my murderer was still running around somewhere out there, vague prophecies of Captain Murphy notwithstanding. My job hadn’t changed: When demons and horrors and creatures of the night prey on this city, I’m the guy who does something about it. “Time to start doing,” I whispered.

But… Maybe I should pause for a moment. Maybe I should think. Maybe I should reject both anger and fear and strive for an outcome beyond kicking down the door and smashing everything in my way. Play it smart. Play it responsible. “Little late for you to be learning that lesson now. Isn’t it, dummy?” I asked. No. It was never too late to learn something. The past is unalterable in any event. The future is the only thing we can change. Learning the lessons of the past is the only way to shape the present and the future.

(It burned down.) (I was not responsible.)

Right? Sure. Just because the lemurs still outnumber you more than a dozen to one doesn’t mean they’ll see you as an easy victim, Dresden. You’ll be fine. There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.

So, once it got dark, I, uh… Look. I was sixteen. Once it got dark, I sort of knocked over a convenience store.

My verbal incantations have actually gotten more sophisticated and worldly over the years, not less. I know, right? It shocks me, too.

And the Thing standing just inside the door. It was huge. I mean, it was taller and broader than the door was. It was more or less humanoid. The proportions were wrong. The shoulders too wide, the arms too long, the legs crooked and too thick. It was covered in fur or scales or some scabrous, fungal amalgamation of both. And its eyes were empty, angled pits of dim violet light.

It had a head whose shape was all but obscured by growths or lumpy scales or matted fur. But beneath its eyes I could see a mouth, too wide to be real, filled with teeth too sharp and serrated and yellow to belong to anything of this earth. That was a smile from Lewis Carroll’s opium-inspired, laudanum-dosed nightmares.

This was something different, something vaster, more timeless, and deeper than any ocean. It was a poisonous hate, something so ancient, so vile, that it could almost kill without any other action or being to support it, a hate so old and so virulent that it had curdled and congealed over its surface into a stinking, staggering contempt.

A forked tongue slithered out from between its horrible shark-chain-saw teeth, and it whispered, in a perfectly low, calm, British accent, “What you have just sensed is as close as your mind can come to encompassing my name. How do you do?”

“I have several times been called by the same phrase.” “O-oh? W-what’s that?” “He,” purred the thing, “Who Walks Behind.”

“Pathetic,” said He Who Walks Behind, growing nearer with every word. “Whimpering, mewling thing. Useless.” Terror. I couldn’t think. I was going to die. I was going to die. And then my mouth said, in a damned passable Pee-wee Herman impersonation, “I know you are, but what am I?”

He had been caught up in violence that he had done nothing to earn or expect—and it had killed him. Something in my head went click. That wasn’t right. Stan shouldn’t have died like that. No one should.

I was not a victim. I was not a powerless child. I was a wizard. I was furious. And I was finished running. “This isn’t your world,” I whispered. “Not now,” He Who Walks Behind murmured, its smile widening. “But it will be ours again in just a little time.” “You won’t be around to see it,” I said.

I met the thing’s eyes in the reflection, reached down to the well of energy and pure will I’d built inside me, extended my hand toward the creature, and screamed, “Fuego!”

The creature let out a scream, more surprise and anger than pain, clutching at its eyes with its huge hands.

A voice emerged from the fire, something huge and terrifying, a voice that belonged to gods and monsters of myth. “HOW DARE YOU!” it roared. “HOW DARE YOU RAISE YOUR HAND AGAINST ME!” Then that not-figure crashed to its knees and fell limply onto its side. The roaring flames swept in and consumed it. And my first true battle was over.

But the Fomor are dangerous folk with whom to make bargains.” I lifted my eyebrows. Considering the source, that was really saying something.

“Once, they were the enemies of my people, Winter and Summer alike,” she said, lifting her chin as her emerald eyes grew distant. “We banished them to the sea. Now they are the exiles of myth and legend, the outcasts of the gods and demons of every land bordering the sea. Defeated giants, fallen gods, dark reflections of beings of light. They are many races and none, joined together beneath the banner of the Fomor in a common cause.” “Revenge,” I guessed.

YOU MUST NOT. Eternal Silence’s voice wasn’t quite the same mind-destroying artillery shell it had been the first time the verdigris-encrusted statue had thought-spoken to me, but that might have been a function of me being sheltered in what amounted to a foxhole. The force of it blew Lea’s long hair straight back, and her head snapped to one side as sharply as if she’d been slapped on the cheek.

“I can say no more, Godson,” Lea said. YOU HAVE ALREADY SAID TOO MUCH.