A Great, Shifting Wrongness

Author’s note: this story is part of a series. Here you can read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth stories.

The decade’s calm wreaked its own sort of havoc on Amelia. Her sister Melanie had no more prophetic dreams, no more visits from angels or demons, nothing but the trials of a girl becoming a woman. For that, at least, she was grateful. After everything they had been through, she considered every day of normalcy a gift. Yet, she couldn’t shake the gnawing suspicion that all was not right between the heavens and the earth. After all, the angelically inspired ecto-lock technology continued its spread across the globe, and Amelia could still remember how a lone miscreant had sucked her up into a bag and dumped her into an ecto-lock chamber, saving her and three others so he could inhale them later for his own narcotic pleasure.

Now? Now miniature versions of those same chambers dotted every drugstore, soda shop, arcade, midway, and fair around the nation. These miniatures dispensed a diluted form of ectoplasm, which would induce a socially acceptable level of elation to anyone willing to sacrifice a penny. Of course, the ecto-lock technology continued to serve as an analgesic in hospitals, and everyone from the professionals to the masses considered the strange green gas within just another “chemical,” like laudanum or cocaine.

A howling cry shattered Amelia’s reflective mood. Melanie lay prone on her bed with her face buried in a pillow. This was neither the loudest nor the shrillest sound of the evening, but it served its purpose nonetheless. Indeed, after a good hour or so of uncontrolled sobbing and shrieking, Melanie now seemed to be testing her vocal chords to see which exact pitch and quality would prompt her family to ignore her previous warnings and try, once again, to comfort her. Their father had gotten a scream. Their mother had gotten a long string of curses. Amelia had gotten a discreet, but no less emphatic, hiss. Amelia knew this game all too well. She had played it herself, in life.

“What?” said Amelia, flatly.

“Hnnnnnnhhhh,” said Melanie, into the pillow.

“If you want to talk, you have to use your words,” said Amelia.

Melanie shifted herself downward so that her lips were free of the pillow, though her eyes and nose remained buried. This gave her voice a nasally timbre which made it even more difficult for Amelia to stifle her laughter.

“He’s an idiot. He’s a cold-hearted, stupid, ridiculous idiot.”

Melanie sat up then and leveled a deadly serious glare at Amelia.

“They do it on purpose, you know. It’s how they trap us. They charm us just to make the sting that much worse when they move on.”

“So that means you won’t be seeing him anymore?” asked Amelia.

Melanie tried to hold her glare despite the trembling in her lips. She even tried to speed up her blinking without giving herself away, but alas, her face contorted itself into the most horrible open-mouthed frown. By the time the next pealing sob escaped her, she had become the very mask of Tragedy itself.

“You don’t understand!”

Amelia felt a deep warmth in her green, cool, vaporous chest. Here was her sister getting her heart broken. Here she was living a normal life. Tomorrow she would go running back to that poor, stupid boy again, and in another month they would forget all about each other. Amelia held out her finger. Melanie sniffed, stared at it for a moment, then lifted her own finger up so that the tip of hers passed through the tip of Amelia’s.

“Who will always love you?” asked Amelia.

“My sister,” mumbled Melanie.

“And why?”

“Because you’re my guardian angel.”

“That’s right.”

Melanie dropped her hand. Her eyes narrowed back into a glare.

“You still don’t understand. You said so yourself: you only ever had admirers. You never gave anyone your heart.”

Amelia pointed to her sister’s chest.

“Science says the heart is the toughest muscle in your body. No matter how much it hurts now, it’ll spring back.”

“You don’t know that. I could die of my grief!”

Amelia cocked her head and smiled.

“You’re the authority on death now?”

“I’m the authority on love,” said Melanie. “It can give you life and it can take life away — that’s how powerful it is!”

Amelia frowned. Now she pointed to Melanie’s head.

“When it comes to life and death, that’s what you need to worry about. Let your heart have its fits, but don’t let it take control of your mind. Don’t let anything take control of that.”

Melanie plunged her face back into her pillow.

“I could drown,” she moaned, “and I would need nothing to weigh me down because my heart is so heavy already.”

Amelia vibrated. Her ectoplasm became jagged around the edges and it glowed and dimmed in uneven patches.

“Drown?” she whispered.

Melanie sat back up and turned to face her. Yes, the question was quiet, but it was quiet like the whistle of a firecracker right before the end.

“I…I didn’t mean to…” she said.

Amelia floated right up to her sister’s face as she scrambled to cram herself against the backboard.

“Amelia…why do you look like that?”

Amelia’s scream scratched the air and blasted back the curls on Melanie’s head, as if the sound were not coming from a young woman’s throat but an abused and rusted horn.

“DON’T YOU DARE! Have I guarded you all these years for nothing? Have you not seen the fresh tears on Mama and Papa’s faces every year? Will you make them bury another bloated, blue daughter?”

Melanie pulled her blanket up to her chin and shook her head.

“You ungrateful child,” Amelia hissed, before her eyes registered what she was seeing.

Indeed, Melanie did look like a child again. A frightened child, with that same look of confusion and despair she had so many years ago when a fraudulent doctor tore her away from her family. Amelia turned to look in her sister’s mirror, and saw a face contorted into the most wretched shape. Dark, sunken eyes, a mouth hanging far too low, and a great, shifting wrongness that was impossible to place yet impossible to miss.

Amelia backed away. Melanie was quivering, and her crying was no longer a matter of show. It was quiet, and choked, and almost measured in its desperate effort not to be seen.

“I’m sorry,” said Melanie. “He’s just a silly boy. I’ll get over it.”

Now the twin stormfronts of heartbreak and shame came together across her face. Amelia caught only a glimpse of that red, puffy-eyed, snot-drenched hurricane before Melanie covered her face with her hands. She wanted to peel those hands away, kiss away every last tear, brush away the sticking black curls and tell her sister that everything would be all right, and that she was sorry too, and that she should’ve been gentler. But she could not. Even to attempt it would give Melanie a chill, and that was the last thing the poor girl needed.

“I’m sorry too,” Amelia whispered. “I…I’ll be gone, for a bit. Give you a little space.”

Melanie didn’t respond. At this point, she might not have even heard. Amelia floated up through the roof and into the night sky.

“Some guardian angel I am,” she thought aloud.

Now that she wasn’t going to be home, she had to think of something to do. She looked out over park, dark and silent, where at odd moments she could still find something like the life she had seventeen years ago. Beyond the park, though, was the city, where the buildings kept crawling higher, and grayer, and farther. Ever more lights lined the streets, and the reassuring clop of horse-drawn buggies was disappearing under the rumble and cough of motor vehicles. As Amelia floated higher, the sprawling, glittering face of the city, which had powdered its cheeks with a dubious foundation of smog, seemed to turn up its nose at her. “If this was ever your world,” it seemed to say, “it certainly isn’t now.”

Amelia sighed. She could call out to Oriel for another lesson, but this night was distressing enough already. For a few years, she had gotten quite adept at “embodying” as he called it. For a while, she could stay solid and glowing for up to five minutes, even. Yet, for the last few years she seemed to be sliding backwards, finding it ever more difficult to focus on love when there was a small army of fears and doubts ready to fill up her mind at any moment. She gave the city a hearty, ectoplasmic spit. Death required no decorum, and surely the city deserved some portion of the blame.

Still, it housed one dear friend of hers, and she decided she was more than due for a visit.

###

In Eugene Henderson’s workshop, there was a button that was perhaps the most sensitive button yet built on earth. A fly could trigger it with the brush of its wing, which did lead to the occasional false signal. The button activated a bright, green light in the top corner of the workshop. It was not built for detecting flies, of course, and it was not even built by Eugene Henderson. It was built by his son, Byron, now a man and fellow engineer quickly fulfilling the promise of his youth. He had built it for Amelia, so she could alert him the second she entered the workshop even if he wasn’t wearing his ecto-detection goggles.

But before she pushed the button, Amelia poked her head up through his desk to get a look at him before the goggles obscured his face. Yes, he had gotten his father’s walnut wood skin and easy smile, and of course he had gotten his dark, clear eyes, but he had somehow — impossibly — added the most picturesque dimples on his left cheek and his chin. Those had to have been there when he was just a boy, but Amelia couldn’t for the life of her remember noticing them until just a few years ago. Either way, she shook off her schoolgirl daze and went to push the world’s most sensitive button. After seeing the green light, Byron smiled and slipped on his goggles.

“Hello Amelia!”

“Good evening, Byron.”

“How are you my friend?”

“I’ve been better.”

Byron set down his pen and got up from the desk. He stood facing Amelia with his hands on his hips.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Absolutely,” she said, “you can go get that uniform on. Tonight’s the night.”

Byron shook his head and blinked.

“Tonight? You sure? Just like that?”

“Yes,” she said, “why not? We’ve got everything. We could’ve pulled it off a month ago but you got nervous.”

Byron laughed a single puff of a laugh and cocked his eyebrow.

“I got nervous? Is that the truth? Well, now, I won’t be called a coward by anybody, and certainly not by a pretty young lady like yourself.”

Amelia found herself turning her head and fluttering her eyelashes. Byron’s flirtations had started at a young age, and the years of practice showed.

“You sit tight and keep it holy down here while I change.”

Amelia laughed so hard she pitched forward and had to swing herself through the air to get upright again.

“Byron, behave!”

“I am behaving. I’m just telling you to behave too. My goodness.”

Byron shook his head and clucked his tongue as he marched away. A few minutes later, he returned wearing a slate gray set of slacks with a matching shirt, topped off with an eight point cap. He pointed to the silver badge over his left breast pocket and puffed out his chest.

“The finest security that Dietrichson Pharmaceuticals can hire! Just don’t ask us to arrest the real thieves ’cause they sign our checks.”

Amelia nodded with approval.

“You look perfect,” she said, “just like a real guard.”

“That’s one thing I’ll give the foreign investors: when it comes to hired muscle, they don’t discriminate. If it was this was the police we had to infiltrate I’d need to borrow some of your powder.”

Amelia chuckled and shook her head.

“Come on, let’s go!”

###

Let it not be said that Amelia had spent the last decade sitting idly by. In between watching over Melanie and taking her lessons with Oriel, she had also tracked down the location of Ralph Khomiakov’s ecto-lock laboratory, generously provided by Dietrichson Pharmaceuticals. It was tucked neatly underground, right below a well-endowed liberal arts college. Beneath the august columns and prim gardens of academia was a dimly lit, white-tiled compound crawling with security guards. Each of them were armed with ecto-detection goggles and ecto-lock containment devices, updated only slightly from the highly effective original model which had sucked up Amelia on the night of her death. Problematically, every inch of the place was coated in the same solution as was applied to ecto-lock glass.

Thus, the scheme came in two parts. Byron’s disguise was the first part, as was his cool, collected gait as they walked down the hallway leading to the lab. For the second part, Amelia used her nerves to suffuse her role with appropriate trepidation. One of the two guards posted at the door broke off and came forward.

“You — what’s happening with the loose ghost girl?”

“She’s from one of the families on the board. Asked for a tour of the place. If you want to go ahead and suck her up anyway, I’ll make sure somebody looks after the wife and kids.”

The guard sniffed.

“Another one, eh? What’s your name?”

“Grace Achison,” said Amelia with a curtsey, borrowing the name from a deceased heiress.

The guard nodded with a flat smile.

“Our privilege, Miss Achison. Let me get the door for you.”

As the guard went and unlocked the door, Amelia could hear him whispering with his partner.

“What’s a rich girl like her doing in one of her mom’s old dresses?”

“Who knows? It’s always the heiresses that go mad, you know.”

The door swung open, and Byron strolled right in, beckoning Amelia was he went. Once the door shut behind them, Amelia gave him a wink.

“Great work!”

Before them, stretched a long, wide hallway full of ecto-lock chambers, all of them full. Amelia had to force herself not to scream as she saw the warped, terrified faces swirling within. As they made their way down the hall, researchers in white coats scuttled every which way, muttering measurements to each other and handing off charts and schematics. They each had their own pair of goggles, but mostly kept them up on their foreheads or hanging loose around their necks. Towards the end of the hall was a sign that read “Project S — Top Clearance Only.” Amelia gave Byron a chill to get his attention then pointed that way.

“I’m going in there,” she whispered. “If I’m lucky, nobody in there will be wearing their goggles. If not, I’ll just have to play dumb.”

“All right,” he whispered, “I’ll stay close. Be safe.”

Amelia floated down the hall, which lead to a locked door. A researcher emerged, and Amelia managed to duck in behind him before he turned and locked the door. Inside, she found a much smaller room with only six ecto-lock chambers. All but one was empty, and its contents shook Amelia to their core.

She had seen many times before how ghosts could lose their form during moments of intense, negative emotion. Indeed, she had just terrified her poor sister earlier that very evening by doing so herself. Yet, she could never have imagined that kind of distortion producing the thing she saw now. It was as green as any ghost, but it lacked their gaseous quality. Instead, it resembled electricity, sparking and arcing and forking. With every violent change of shape, it hinted at the pieces of a man: a screaming skull here, a clenched fist there, a kicking leg up above. “Distortion” was not even the word for such a thing. It was broken. Shattered.

For a moment, a glaring half of a face appeared stuck to the glass. Then, a string of pointing fingers and a crackling howl. When Amelia made out the words, she froze.

“I SAW YOU! I SAW YOU IN CALCORREM! YOU WERE THERE!”

This was impossible. Calcorrem was far, far in the future, and even then it was only a warning. That’s what Cedarwood had told her…but then, Cedarwood was a liar.

“WHERE IS YOUR SHAME?” cried the thing. “BREAK YOURSELF! BREAK YOURSELF BEFORE THE HIGHEST SEES YOU! THE ANGELS SAY HE’S HERE!”

The door opened again. It was the same researcher as before. Amelia slipped out behind him then flew straight to Byron.

“Byron, I think I have what I need. Let’s go home.”

“Sure, but…”

He pointed to the two dim angels at the other end of the hall speaking with a researcher.

“Are they going to be a problem?”

Amelia pictured those two angels checking up on “Project S” and finding that thing screaming about an unbroken ghost he saw in Calcorrem.

“Not if we leave right this second,” she said

Byron walked briskly down the hall with Amelia in tow. As the two dim angels finished up their conversation, they acknowledged Amelia with a smile and a nod. Then, they flew down the hall with that same easy rapidity that angels applied to most things.

“Come on,” hissed Amelia.

Just as Byron raised his fist to knock on the front door of the lab, the two dim angels emerged from the hallway leading to Project S. One of them cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke in a voice much louder than any human could achieve with that same trick.

“Excuse us — did anyone see the spirit of a young woman enter the room for Project S?”

Byron knocked. Amelia reminded herself that she was, for once, not the guardian angel Amelia. She was Grace Achison, a deceased, visiting heiress. She only needed to play it cool a few seconds longer.

“Anyone?” added the second angel.

The door opened, and Byron and Amelia pushed through, giving their respective bows and curtseys on the way out. As soon as they made it to the stairway, they bolted.

###

Amelia had meant to stay and explain her theory about Project S and Calcorrem, but no sooner had they made it back to the Henderson workshop than she realized that word of their break in was bound to reach Cedarwood. She thanked Byron for his help then flew home as fast as she could.

When she made it home, she was relieved to see the light on in her father’s office. He had been working late nights recently, and as she flew up to his window she found him twiddling his pen with one hand and slapping himself awake with the other. Though she wished, for his sake, he would just go to bed, she grateful for any evidence of another normal night in the Patenaude household.

From there, she floated up to the master bedroom, where her mother lay sound asleep. She flitted from there to the hallway, where she could see that Melanie’s room was dark. She imagined how much better her sister would feel in the morning, after a chance to sleep off the whole, dreadful night, and she smiled.

Then, just to make sure, she floated down the hall and poked her head through Melanie’s door. Though it was dark, Amelia as just as accustomed to the nighttime shape of her sister’s room as its daytime counterpart. Nothing was out of place, except for the fact that Melanie was sitting up — and not against the backboard, like she was sleeping with congestion. No, she was facing Amelia, with her feet on the ground and her back to the shut curtains, which normally she kept open. And, most troubling of all, she wasn’t Melanie.

Cedarwood stood up from the bed and unfurled his wings. He let out a long, satisfied sigh before he spoke.

“Amelia, it’s been far too long.”