The Night Country

25

Come home.

Ella’s last text to me before I’d turned off my phone. And I wanted to, so badly. I wanted to kick the bottom of our front door to unstick it when I came in, and fit my fingers into the grooves of the fugly hand-thrown pottery mugs we ate our yogurt from. I wanted to see the crown of Ella’s hair under the living room lamp, the sides of the couch too high to know what she was reading till I came in close. I wanted her to flip back to the pages with folded corners, to read aloud the lines she’d liked and had saved for me. I wanted to slip back into our domestic routine like it was warm wax.

Instead I walked on shaky legs to the parking garage’s elevator, my body feeling like it had been run through a laundry wringer. I texted Sophia as I went.

If you’re working on clearing my name work faster. Hansa’s parents just threatened to kill me with a wrench.

Then, because it looked a little more dire typed out than I thought it would: I’m sorry btw. Does it suck that your best friend’s such an asshole?

Seriously though I’m sorry

She still hadn’t gotten back to me when I walked into the hotel lobby. Felix was gone from behind the desk, replaced by a pink-haired woman I’d never met. Even her brows and lashes were the color of bubblegum. She looked like something in a bakery window, a cake that bit you back. When she spotted me her face went from bored to pin-sharp. She had a phone in her hand, and I was pretty sure she used it to take my photo. I threw her a dirty look as the elevator doors closed.

The air inside it pushed against my ears. As the elevator rose the pressure climbed, climbed, then cracked like an egg when the doors opened. I was left rubbing away the memory of pain, and the sense that I’d been about to hear something when the pressure let up. That if I’d just listened closer, words would’ve broken through.

The hallway was empty as ever, and I wondered who slept behind these doors. Who read or stared or waited for some unfathomable thing. Were they fearful? Were they angry? Were they trying to figure this out, too?

In my room I checked under the bed and inside the closet before stepping into the shower, because I’d been on the receiving end of vigilante justice once today already, and that was enough. The shower I took was so cold it made me gasp, but when I stepped out, the mirror was fogged all the way over. I stopped, one foot out and one foot in, because words were written in the fog in slashed uppercase letters, like a scattering of toothpicks.

YOU’RE NOT LISTENING.

I stared a few seconds, my skin prickling over in goose bumps so sudden they hurt. Then I banged my elbow yanking my towel down and around me, and slipped out of the bathroom sideways. I pulled clothes on over damp skin, the grossest feeling in the world, and hightailed it to the lobby.

The pink-haired photo-taker was still at the desk. She looked a little scared as I stalked over, a little thrilled.

“Hey. Is this hotel haunted?”

Her face relaxed. “Oh. Yeah. Of course it is.”

“By who?”

Now she looked downright skeptical. “Really? By us. By Hinterland. You think only the living came through?”

The ex-Stories carried ghosts with us. The figurative kind, mainly—all those who hadn’t made it here, or hadn’t chosen to come. The echoes of our stories, all the things we’d done or hadn’t when the Spinner still held us in her grip.

Some of our ghosts, though, were literal.

Fairy tales were thick with them. Slain brothers, punished parents, a skin-crawling volume of dead brides, all those white-wrapped girls perched on the spindle point between maidenhood and the wedding night. I couldn’t believe I’d never considered that some might have slipped from the Hinterland after the rest of us.

The pink-haired girl’s name was Vega, and it didn’t take much prompting to get her to tell me how I could summon a ghost.

“You could lay out a dish of cat’s milk,” she said, ticking it off. “Just don’t let your reflection show in it, whatever you do. Reciting poetry can do it, if the ghost likes your voice. Burn a bridal bouquet, that one’s easy. Pull out your eyeteeth and hold one in each hand. Let’s see, what else?”

“I think that’s enough,” I said hurriedly. “Really helpful, though, thanks.”

I started to walk away, then stopped.

“Did you take my picture earlier?”

“Um.” She fiddled with the ends of her hair. “Yes?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re her, right? Alice-Three-Times? The one who…” She made a series of furtive hand motions. “You know.”

“I’m nobody,” I said firmly. “I didn’t do anything. If anyone asks, if anyone talks about it, you tell them that. And watch out for yourself, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, looking disgruntled. Then, in a louder voice as I neared the door, “Another thing you could try is having sex. Ghosts are drawn by desire. Or they might just be nosy.”

Faced with the decision of coming back with a bunch of flowers or downloading a dating app, I headed to the good bodega a few blocks away, where flowers were sold but cat’s milk was in short supply. I grabbed a bouquet and a dollar lighter and a carton of whole milk just in case, and threw in two Kit Kats because I hadn’t eaten in ages.

Back at the hotel, Vega had left her post. I dropped a thank-you Kit Kat next to her bell and headed upstairs.

YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, said the message in the mirror. I hadn’t been. To the voice following me in and out of dreams, to the Trio, the words of the little one in white: Every story is a ghost story. If you’re looking for answers, seek out your ghosts. But I was ready to listen now.

I could attempt the summoning in the lobby, but Vega struck me as nosier than a pervy ghost. And I didn’t like the idea of inviting the dead into my room. The hallway, I decided. I’d head up to my floor and pick a patch of carpet.

I waited till dark, then crept out of my room, a clutch of cheap carnations hanging from one hand and the milk in the other. In a bag around my wrist was the lighter and a paper coffee cup. The hallway had the aggressive, destabilizing sameness of hotels everywhere, even the haunted kind. I walked down and around, till I found a little alcove holding a dusty rubber plant and a sconce with one burned-out bulb. I pushed the plant into the corner. Then I knelt, filled the coffee cup with milk, and lifted the lighter.

And realized I hadn’t thought this through. What would I do with the flowers when they really started to burn? How quickly could I stamp out the carpet if it caught?

Fuck it. I held the lighter up to a carnation’s frilly cup. The flame lapped at the petals, but they didn’t catch. Then it popped and blinked out, the lighter’s hot metal burning my thumb. I dropped it, cursing, and tried again. And again. Finally I pulled the receipt from my pocket and lit that, sticking it in among the flowers.

The flame took. The flowers released the barest breath of green before starting to stink. When they were just fiery enough to make panic bite at my neck, I started to recite.

“I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire—”

I shook my head and started again.

“Out of the ash,” I whispered. “I rise with my red hair. And I eat men like air.”

Daphne flashed in front of my eyes. I blinked her away.

And I thought of the ghosts who might be gathering over my head, even now. Thumbprints on their throats and bellies bright with blood. Yellowed lace, embroidered slippers. Eyes full of retribution. Or jealousy, because I lived.

Good thing I’d had a goth period. Or maybe I was a goth period. At any rate, I could still dredge up some Poe.

“The ring is on my hand, and the wreath is on my brow.” I raised my voice, and the hand holding the bouquet. “Satin and jewels grand, and many a rood of land, are all at my command, and I am happy now.”

The words were already spooky in the quiet room. But the last handful of them bent, refracted as they hit my ear, making my voice sound strange to me. The flowers smoldered, orange rills and blackening petals. I waited.

“Do you think it worked?”

The voice, right by my ear, made me shriek. I looked at the girl sitting cross-legged beside me and almost did it again.

She was, in fact, a bride. Her hair had been red, I think, her face lushly freckled. A wedding dress gripped her by the neck. She was a glass chess piece in a thousand shades of blue, hands resting on her knees.

She nudged at the milk with an incorporeal toe. “What am I, a fairy?”

“I … um…”

“Why don’t you try pouring it on the flowers.”

It took a few startled seconds for me to understand. Then I dropped the flaming carnations and tipped the entire gallon over them. Milk doused the flames, drenched the carpet, splashed and seeped onto my jeans. The bride rose a few inches off the ground, as if the milk might damage her dress.

“Sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t mean to…”

“No harm. I hate this dress. I didn’t even die in it.” She looked down its long white body. “I died in a nightgown.”

What do you say to that? “It’s a pretty … it was a pretty dress.”

“It was a monstrosity. I was the first bride, you see. Before they learned to stop wasting the lace. Just a harbinger, really. A lesson for the final bride.”

“What happened to her?”

“Nothing good.”

I crouched in milk, beside the wreckage of burnt flowers, but I didn’t dare move. “Thank you for coming,” I said, too solemn, sounding like the host of the world’s saddest dinner party.

“Took you long enough to invite me.” Her fingers dipped into the mess of the milk. “Next time try whiskey. It made my husband’s breath sour but it looked like a jewel in the cup. I’ve always wanted to taste it.”

“Why did you want to talk to me?”

“I knew your grandmother. In the Hinterland. We were friends.”

Althea. “She wasn’t really my grandmother.”

“All the same. She asked me to tell her my story. I hadn’t known I had one.”

“Well, she wasn’t doing it to be nice. She was stealing it, to make money.”

Her voice cut its teeth against the air. “Two things can be true at once.” She wavered out, then in again, like her attention was elsewhere. It probably was. Maybe she could split herself into two pieces, or three, or ten, make the lights blink on Broadway and a phantom wind whistle down Second Avenue, all while sitting here with me.

“That’s really it? You wanted to talk to me because of Althea?”

“No. I’m willing to talk to you because of Althea. She helped me once, and a debt weighs heavier than a wedding ring. What I have to say has nothing to do with her.”

She closed the lit lamps of her eyes, appearing to breathe in deep. Then she flickered out completely. Every light in the place pulsed, one by one, like her spirit was a kite whipping through them. Then she was back in front of me, gaze keener than the rest of her.

“I forget,” she said, “what we were speaking of.”

“You have something to tell me.” My fingers made impatient indents in my thighs. “You’ve been trying to speak to me.”

“Oh.” She considered, tilting her head to the side. And tilting, till it hung unnatural, and I could see the mottled bruising around her throat. “Yes. I’ve been wanting to tell you that you’re haunted. Did you know it?”

My heart squeezed, quick as a fist. “Haunted by who?”

She reached out one thin blue hand and gently, gently placed it on my chest. The feeling was awful, an ice cream headache right down to my spine. “Ghost within, ghost without. How do you carry it?”

“What are you talking about?” I kept my voice level, just barely. “Who’s haunting me? What do you mean, ghost within? What does this have to do with the murders?”

“I mean just what I say, and that’s all you’ll get out of me.” She smiled, brightening as she did. I could count her freckles now, and see the gap between her front teeth. “I get to speak in puzzles if I like, it’s the purview of the dead.”

I was suddenly curious. “Are you happy, then? You don’t want to … to rest?”

“Rest where? In the Hinterland the dead could walk Death’s halls. We could eat at his table. If we pass on here, we only—”

“Stop,” I said quickly. “Please.” There were still some things I didn’t want to know.

“You’ll learn for yourself in time,” she said coolly. “And when it is your time, consider making a haunting if you can. This world is a far better place to be dead. I love it here. I curdle their milk. Beat the eggs in their shells. Turn their clothes inside out and rattle their windows with stones.” When she smiled, her teeth glistened like bits of sea glass. “Here, they call me nightmare, hallucination, curse. They don’t believe in ghosts.”

“So you really know nothing about the murders? No hints, even? You can tell it in riddles if you want.”

“It’s not such a disastrous thing, dying,” she said tartly. “It’s very nice once you’re used to it.” A tremor ran through her, like she was a flicked water glass, and she started to fade. She was dim as an Edison bulb when her eyes snapped back to me. I could see the long hollow of the hallway, visible behind her lips.

“One more thing. You have a friend who waits for Death. Yes?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Tell her I talk to him sometimes. Tell her she won’t have to wait too long.”