you can get rid of other people’s ghosts, but not me?” griped Frank in a tone that would sound like he was grinding his teeth, if he had any.
“Shut up, Frank,” hissed Kat. “We talked about this. Not at my fucking job.”
Kat was waiting in the mid-sized but lavishly decorated lobby of the Mohan Theatre, inspecting the hand-carved gold-leafed woodwork and lovingly maintained plush carpets in red, tan, and black. The lobby was busy – a dress rehearsal for the press – and Kat did her best to stay out of the way of the better-dressed crowds. She felt out of place, somewhat self-conscious, in her battered old military bomber jacket, rapier and revolver strapped to her left hip.
“Don’t exactly blend in, do you?” Frank, the ghost trapped in her gun, needled her.
Kat bit her tongue until it nearly bled. She hated that no one else could hear Frank. She looked unstable, perhaps even dangerous, when she talked to – or yelled and swore at – her gun.
She’d taken the job at the Mohan Theatre to take her mind off the ghost and the dream that had been haunting her for weeks. It might have worked, too, if Frank could shut the fuck up for ten gods-damned seconds. She thought they’d come to a fragile arrangement, but he’d been on edge and angry again since…
Focus on the job, she thought, as Frank jabbered on about whatever came to his bitter, sarcastic mind. Kat looked around and spotted a tall man with too many belts, pockets, and pouches, as well as an unnecessarily-heavy short-range radio. His head and eyes darted around as if in a hurry and uncertain of exactly what he was looking for.
That must be him, Kat thought. She wove through the crowd of theatre critics from various radio stations, newspapers, and magazines, hoping her forced excuse mes and sorrys sounded at least a little sincere.
“Technical director Latch Mungal?” she asked, and extended her hand. “Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr, Double S Investigations. We spoke on the radio about your, uh, situation.” She suppressed a wince; she spoke too loud, covering up Frank’s insults and chatter by instinct.
With a sigh of relief, the technical director gave her a tired smile. He took her hand and shook, only once before pulling away with a shiver at the frigidity of her skin. “Latch is fine,” he said. “You brought an instant camera, I hope?”
Kat nodded and pulled the camera out of her bag, as well as a thick stack of instant photo paper. She’d borrowed the camera from “uncle” Vopota, dad’s old friend – he’d been ecstatic to help get Kat back on her feet after her death and revival by any other method than the dream blocker pills she kept requesting. She’d ended up getting the pills from her new therapist anyway, but Vopota didn’t need to know that. In any case, she was grateful to borrow the camera. She was short on cash, off work for weeks, and hadn’t been able to buy one new.
“Why don’t we move somewhere quieter,” suggested Latch, guiding Kat without touching her, his hand behind her back. She blinked, shook her head, and followed.
The technical director brought her upstairs to the balcony, which wouldn’t be in use for the audience for the press showing. Latch offered her a seat at the front of the balcony, but Kat declined and stood – sitting in a cozy, dark theatre filled with the soft murmur of whispered conversation would be entirely too relaxing, given how exhausted she still was from her recent ordeal.
Not that Frank would let her get comfortable. “You promised you’d get me out of this mess,” said the ghost, “But here you are dealing with someone else’s ghost.”
Kat clenched her jaw again. “Why don’t you tell me about your problem in detail?” she asked the technical director.
“Well,” said both Latch and Frank. The ghost talked over the technical director, and Kat slapped the gun in its holster, hard, twice. Latch frowned.
“Itchy,” she shrugged. “Sorry, please continue.”
“The ghost appears in every photograph taken inside the theatre,” resumed Latch, “Every one, without fail. And on a night such as this one,” Latch said, motioning toward the press below, cameras in hand, “You can imagine how I’d hope to have this resolved before the show begins.”
Kat nodded, hesitant. “How long?”
“Twenty minutes until scheduled curtains,” said Latch with an eye on his watch, “But I may be able to delay a short while longer by citing technical problems, if absolutely necessary. I understand that this is very short notice, and it’s not a demand – I’m authorized to pay you a substantial bonus if you can get it done before showtime, but we do need the problem resolved regardless.
She blow a long breath from pursed lips. “Twenty minutes is awfully short, but I’ll do my best.” She didn’t bother to explain that this wouldn’t be her first time dealing with a ghost, but it would be her first job dealing with one. “Who is this ghost? How long has it been around? The more I know, the better.”
“Who cares who it is, I’ve been stuck here for weeks. Did you know ghosts don’t sleep? I’m always conscious,” Frank whined.
“We’re not certain who the ghost is, unfortunately,” Latch said, oblivious to Frank’s tantrum. “Despite appearing in every photograph, the ghost is always facing away from the camera. The clothes look at least a century old, and we have reports of a ghost dating back about that far, but we can’t even be sure about gender.”
“The photo thing is new, though?” Kat asked. She tapped her foot, both to try to help keep awake and as something else to focus on that wasn’t Frank.
“Yes,” nodded Latch. “Only in the last few weeks or so.”
A violent shiver started from Kat’s left hip and worked its way up her spine and into her jaw. “What… Did anything change a few weeks ago?” she forced herself to ask.
“Yeah,” shouted Frank, “It sure fucking did!”
Latch shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. This production began two weeks before the ghost started showing up in photos, and rehearsal didn’t start until several days later. No work has been done on the theatre itself beyond standard general cleaning, maintenance, and advertising.”
Kat slapped the revolver again. “Okay, Latch, the ghost appears in all photos, no matter where they’re taken?” He nodded. “Then could you please take me somewhere inside the building that’s as far as possible from all these people? Just in case.”
“There’s an old attic where we keep a lot of decomissioned antiques. Will that do?”
“Perfectly,” Kat nodded.
She followed down softly lit corridors lined with portraits of founders and donors, and up a tight, not-quite-decrepit wooden staircase. Latch unlocked the door and asked if Kat needed anything else; she shook her head and closed herself inside.
She held the tarnished brass doorknob, ear to the door, listening for the sound of footsteps to fade away. Frank jabbered at her about what they were doing here, the same bullshit again and again, complaining that she was working on a different ghost when she should be helping him.
When she could no longer hear Latch, Kat counted to thirty, reached down to her holster, yanked the gun from her hip, and hurled it into the dark with a raw, frustrated scream ripping itself from her chest. The revolver clattered off looming half-seen piles of old hardware and fixtures draped in dried-out cobwebs, yet the distance did nothing to soften Frank’s voice.
“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Frank, as if from beside her. “You know damned well you can’t get rid of me that easy. What the hell is your problem anyway? You’re not the dead one here, I -“
“I fucking died a few weeks ago, Frank!” shrieked Kat, her voice breaking, hot tears running down her cold cheeks. “That fucking dream I can’t get rid – the night I – you – it literally fucking killed me, Frank, do you -” she gasped, choked – “you don’t -“
“Yeah, well, you got better, didn’t you? I sure as fuck didn’t!” yelled Frank, his ghostly voice as shrill as hers. “A year since you killed me, a whole year I’ve been stuck in this hunk of metal with no one to talk to, and then you go and die on me? And suddenly now you can hear me? What happens if you don’t come back next time – am I just stuck here forever?”
Kat gave a half-sob, half-hysterical-laugh. “That’s what you’ve been harassing me about for weeks? I thought you were unloading a year’s worth of hate on me, but all it’s been is that if I die again you’ll be alone? I didn’t even know you existed until your dream fucking killed me! I’ve got bigger fucking problems right now than your petty gods-damned insecurities!”
“Well I don’t!” Frank spat. “And it’s not my dream, it’s your own gods-damned problem!” Kat thought he would continue his tirade, but the ghost fell silent.
Kat held her face in her hands for a moment, then wiped her tears away with the soft leather sleeves of her jacket. She tilted her head back, bumped it against the door – at some point she’d slumped against it, dusty floor hard beneath her. She tucked loose, greasy hair away from her eyes and, for the first time, surveyed the room.
The attic, roughly square, was lit by one bare light bulb hanging froma stapled-up cord in the centre of the room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were raw lumber, the grain smoothed by time, dust clinging to every board. Overstuffed shelves and boxes were buried behind less careful piles of pre-electric lamps and fixtures, light shields and reflectors, rusty hooded lanterns once carried by ushers, pulleys and cable and hardware from decommissioned hand-cranked lifts, and unused stacks of promotional material and backdrops from forgotten shows.
The place looked as disorganized as she felt: full of messes left to be dealt with another day, and never addressed. Her therapist had been trying – gently and tactfully, Kat had to admit – to get her to address the nightmare that had plagued her since she’d accidentally shot Frank. Maybe she would, one day, but for now, what she urgently, desperately needed was to stop having the dream and to get back to some semblance of normalcy.
On that topic… Kat sighed and reached for the instant camera with shaky fingers. She held it up, looked around, shrugged, and snapped a random photo, the flash casting momentary sharp shadows and reflections. She advanced the photo paper until she could pull it out, and held it by its edges, waving it in the hot, arid atmosphere of the attic.
“Look,” she said in what she thought was Frank’s direction, her voice nearly recovered, “I get it. I get not wanting to be stuck alone forever. I get that you don’t particularly like or care for the person who murdered you, and now that I can hear what… I mean, I just…” She took another shaky breath, checked the photo, kept waving it. “I just went through… well, something pretty similar to what you went through. I know you know how it feels, so can you give me a little time to get back to something kind of like normal?”
She waited, eyes roaming over mounds of old junk and harsh shadows from the single bulb. “Yeah,” came Frank’s voice, “I guess so.”
“We’ve been trying to figure out how to get you to move on since the minute I got out of the hospital,” she reminded him. “You know perfectly well that I want to be stuck with you just as much as you want to be stuck with me.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Sorry,” he added after another pause.
Kat deflated and hugged her knees to her chest. That exchange had been more civil and understanding than they’d ever been with each other. She hoped that asshole could keep to –
“Hey,” she said, and held the photo to her face. “Hey, it worked.”
“What did?” asked Frank.
“The photo. I got the ghost.” She held it close, scrutinized it. The crooked shot of the stuffy attic was interrupted by a faint, translucent, blue-grey figure radiating wisps of ectoplasm, a person in outdated attire facing away from the camera.
“Hello?” Kat called out, her voice unsteady again, this time with discomfort. “Can you show yourself? Who are you?”
To Kat’s surprise, Frank didn’t make some sarcastic quip – but neither did the theatre’s ghost respond. She loaded another photo paper into the camera, snapped a shot with another half-blinding flash, and waved the sheet until it developed.
She squinted, then grunted. In the second photo, the ghost was nearer, reaching toward her. Kat took a step to the side, then felt stupid – the photo developed so slowly that if the ghost had been trying to touch or grab her, it surely would have already.
Right?
“What?” Frank asked, on edge again. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure,” she said, and snapped a third photo. This time, in the flash, she saw the ghost reaching for her chest. “Ah!” she gasped, and stumbled over a box of burned-out light bulbs that cracked and tinkled beneath her.
Kat felt a cold in her core, piercing through her sheepskin coat. She tugged the photo out of the camera, loaded a new one while crawling over piles of bruise-inducing lamp fixtures. She tumbled over behind a case of promotional records and flashed another photo – now the ghost had its hand inside her chest, and the chill grew deeper, spreading through her. She still couldn’t see the ghost’s face.
“Frank!” she cried out, panicked, nothing else coming to mind. Kat turned over, fumbled, crawled in the dark, and her fumbling hand found itself on the barrel of her revolver. Frigid fingers weak and unsteady, Kat spun the gun around and tried to jam her finger under the trigger guard.
“What am I supposed to do?” Frank asked. “I don’t – I mean, what -“
Shivers wracked Kat and she pulled the trigger. A faint, near-invisible puff left the barrel of the unloaded gun, and the cold was cut off. She lay there, panting, gun still pointed in the air. She dropped it, scrambled for the camera, took another photo. Nothing in the flash this time.
“What’s going on?” Frank asked again. He was scared, but trying not to panic this time.
“I’m okay,” Kat replied, “Not that you really care, but I think – maybe I got it? What did you do? Something came out when I pulled the trigger.”
“I don’t know. We’ve never done this before. Ghosts, I mean.”
Kat nodded, trying to get her spasming muscles back under control. The photo developed… with no ghost in sight, merely blurred junk and the out-of-focus light bulb in one corner.
She let herself collapse into the thick layer of dust, which irritated her nose until she nearly sneezed, but didn’t. “I think it’s gone,” she said.
It’s gone. The ghost was gone? What had she done? Had she just destroyed a person’s soul? The shakes began again, working their way from her fingertips up her arms. She held herself, curled up, breath ragged.
“Wow. Get over yourself,” groaned Frank.
Kat halted mid-sob. “What?”
“You’re beating yourself up over shooting a ghost that was attacking you. Right?” She didn’t reply, so he continued. “Ghosts are already dead. You didn’t kill anyone. Suck it up.”
She frowned. “But the soul -“
“Had already been stuck here for a hundred years. Maybe it wanted you to get rid of it. We already know from your days in the library and churches that souls don’t have anywhere to go. Besides, what did you think was gonna happen when you took a job to stop a ghost?”
She needed to yell at him, to throw the gun away again careless of how it would inevitably return to her in a way that even Frank didn’t understand. But… she thought about what he was saying and… it made sense?
“You did an exorcism. Big whoop. You’re not the first.”
Kat closed her eyes and breathed deep, taking in a lungful of dust that made her hack and cough.
“Actually, you know what? You could make a business out of this. World’s only quick-draw shoot-em-up exorcist.”
Kat snorted – that one got her, even through the jumble of emotions roiling inside her skull, the loathing and self-loathing. Still, every interaction with Frank would remind her of…
She shook her head, stood, brushed dust off her jeans and coat. “Well, I guess I’m done here. And with time to spare, I think, if your whining didn’t slow me down too much.”
“Sure, yeah,” Frank said, and then lapsed into silence.
Kat looked around, gathered the photos she’d dropped, straightened a few things, and then gave up. The place was already a mess; she hadn’t made it much worse.
She tromped down the stairs, hand tight on the wobbly rail. She’d spent weeks in a different kind of nightmare than the one that had killed her. Frank had helped her stay awake, to avoid the dream again, by screaming vitriol and insults at her. She knew now that he’d only done it out of a selfish phobia of being alone again, but at least she’d lasted long enough to get the dream blocker pills from the therapist.
Kat had spent the weeks since then trying to figure out how to get rid of Frank. He’d been somewhat cooperative, as she did research, spoke to priests, went on ghost tours to verify if she could talk to other ghosts and to see if they had anything she could use. Somewhat cooperative, as in he also wanted to be rid of her, but he made her look crazy when she couldn’t help yelling back at his constant hair-pullingly maddening malicious sarcasm.
Still. She knew what he wanted, and he’d tipped his hand that he wanted it badly enough to be civil, even help, if he thought it would get him closer to leaving. She was still bone-weary from the ordeal of her death, the near-impossibility of sleep aided only by pills and whiskey, from Frank’s aggression… But she saw, now, the possibility that she could function day-to-day.
Frank stayed quiet as she made her way down to the lobby, which had emptied out when the press found their seats. Now it was almost eerie, reverberating with the muffled thrum of a bass cello as the show began.
The only person remaining was a bored-looking apprentice, who tilted his head up when he spotted Kat. “Latch told me to wait for you,” said the kid.
“Job’s done,” she shrugged. “No ghosts in your promo shots.”
The kid nodded, whispered into his bulky radio. “He said to give you this.” He pulled a cheque from a pocket, with a whole extra zero above the fee Kat had quoted. “Won’t clear if the owner sees any ghosts in the paper tomorrow.”
“It’s done,” Kat snarled as she snatched the cheque.
“Whatever,” said the kid, and he left to head off backstage or wherever apprentices worked.
Kat shoved her way outside, slamming the push-bar of the theatre door harder than she’d meant to. She stepped out into the cool foggy sea air of Old Ravenshore and took a deep lungful, the damp penetrating her core and sending another chill through her perpetually-cold body.
The sun had set, but still a raven called, its deep throaty voice harsh in the night. Comforting, though. She couldn’t be certain, but Kat felt that it was the city spirit, watching her, sending her a message. Reminding her that there were people who cared for her – Nilo, Vopota, the soul of the city itself. Maybe even the therapist, Wenzi. Kat wasn’t alone.
Not that she could ever be alone, as long as Frank haunted her gun.
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