Chapter 97: I've Seen a Ghost
Jared didn't slow, his pace relentless. He ran with me through several city blocks, only setting me down when we had finally reached a secluded, forgotten corner of the city. The entire way, he carried me tucked under one arm, a single hand clamped around my waist, as he vaulted over obstacles and leaped across gaps with an impossible, terrifying ease.
He finally set me down in a secluded corner, and I watched him, my own lungs still burning from the short distance I had run. He wasn't even breathing hard. There was no flush on his cheeks, not a single bead of sweat on his brow. I stared at him, a new kind of awe mixing with my fear. What was he? A special forces soldier from my old world might have been able to pull off such a feat, a forced march carrying a heavy load. But Jared wasn't a soldier. He was a half-starved guttersnipe, his body a testament to a life of malnutrition, though not as bad as Parula's. For a boy of sixteen or seventeen to carry another person for miles at a dead sprint and not even be winded… it wasn't just impressive; it was impossible.
“How… how did you do that?” I finally asked, the question a breathless whisper. He had carried me before, and I knew, with absolute certainty, that he had not possessed this kind of strength then.
“I… I don’t know,” he said, looking down at his own hands as if they belonged to a stranger. “I was surprised too. I didn’t have that kind of strength before. And I don’t feel tired at all.”
“Well,” I said with a sigh, my mind too weary to grapple with another impossibility, “after everything else I’ve seen, I suppose you suddenly developing superhuman strength isn’t the strangest thing. It’s a good thing you did. We would have been caught for sure.” I looked at him, at his pale, still-frightened face. “What happened back there? What did you see that made you scream like that? Was the master of the house still inside?”
“No,” he whispered, his voice trembling, his earlier bravado completely gone. “It was… it was a dead person. The landlord… he murdered his wife!”
“A dead person?” I asked. “You mean you saw a body? A gruesome one?” Jared was no stranger to death. For a simple corpse to frighten him so badly, it must have been a truly horrific sight.
“No, not a body,” he stammered, his eyes wide with a terror that was all too real. “A ghost! The room… it was haunted!”
“Calm down. Just breathe, it’s alright, Brother Jared.” I helped him to sit, steadying his trembling frame. “The room was haunted. Tell me what you saw.” As for the matter of ghosts, I believed him, of course. In the past few days, I had seen several myself. I was just lucky that none of them had taken an interest in me.
“It was a woman,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “She was… translucent. Covered in blood. Her body… it was all wrong, broken. Her head was half-severed, just hanging by a thread of skin. And she spoke to me. She said she had died a terrible death. She said her husband, the landlord, had killed her and hidden her body in the room.”
“The body… it was under the dressing table. I could smell it the moment I stepped inside. A foul, rotten smell. And when I touched the cosmetics box, she appeared. The ghost. She was crying. She said her husband killed her because she caught him with one of the maids.”
“And then… and then a hidden door under the dressing table sprang open, and her body… it fell out. It was… it was already rotting.”
“There, there, I know,” I said, my voice as soothing as I could make it. “It’s over now. We’ve escaped. We’ll never go near that house again.” It was a rare reversal of our roles; for once, it was I who was comforting Jared. But his story… it was a genuinely terrifying one. If I had seen such a thing, I would have likely been paralyzed with fear, unable to escape, unlike Jared.
As for this whole affair, it was best to pretend it had never happened. Five days ago, when I had first arrived in this world, my first instinct would have been to run to the authorities. A nobleman murdering his wife—it was a horrific, sensational crime that demanded justice.
But now? I wanted nothing to do with the peelers. And besides, how could we possibly explain how we came by such information? We could hardly tell them that the lady's ghost had confessed her own murder to us, could we? It was a pity we hadn't gotten the cosmetics, but it didn't matter. There would be other opportunities, other rich houses. This had just been a sudden, strange, and bloody complication.
As if reading my thoughts, Jared, having calmed down a little, reached into the sack he was still clutching. “Here,” he said, his voice still shaky. “The cosmetics you wanted.”
“What? You still managed to steal them? But… the ghost!” I stared as he pulled a small, ornate box from the sack. It was a beautiful thing, made of a dark, polished wood, inlaid with gold and silver, its surface covered in intricate carvings. It looked more like a music box, or a case for a priceless jewel.
“Well,” he said with a weak, sheepish grin, “When I saw her in the mirror, the ghost, I’d already picked up the box. So I just… put it in the sack. Instinct, I guess.”
“You’re a madman,” I breathed, taking the box from him. The red of the wood was a little too bright, a little too much like the color of fresh blood. And then a chilling thought occurred to me. This box… it had belonged to the murdered woman. The woman whose body had been hidden beneath the very dressing table this box had sat upon. The woman who was now a vengeful, tormented spirit. I have always been squeamish about taking things from the dead. And taking something from a ghost… it felt like a terrible, foolish risk. But then I remembered what it was for. An offering to a demon. Perhaps... that made it alright.
I found the clasp and opened the box. Inside was a neat row of colored powders and a set of eyebrow pencils. And, most importantly, a small, beautifully framed mirror. I looked into it, and saw Parula’s face, small and cute and pale with fear. But I was not alone in the reflection. Behind me, a woman, her face a mask of blood, smiled. She was beautiful, with golden hair and an expensive dress, but her beauty was marred by the great, gaping wound in her neck, a wound made by a hatchet or a scythe.
A vengeful spirit, a new piece of knowledge, cold and sharp, downloaded into my brain. A soul bound to this world by a great and terrible hatred. It despises all living things, but most of all, the one who wronged it.
The ghost, she was still smiling, her head tilted at an unnatural angle, and in the reflection, her ghostly hands wrapped around my neck. A profound, deathly cold washed over me, and my legs gave out from under me. I could feel it, the touch of her cold, wet hands on my shoulders.
“Brother Jared!” I cried, my voice a strangled gasp. But I held out no real hope. He had just been terrified by this very same ghost. What could he possibly do?
“Hmm? What is it, Parula, you like the box?” he asked, looking up from the dagger he was cleaning. He was smiling, a proud, pleased-as-punch expression on his face, as if he were waiting for me to praise him for his successful theft. He couldn't see her. He couldn't see the bloody, broken woman who was holding me in her cold, dead embrace.
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