Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty- Five
Letters to Ghosts
Staring down at the half-written note, Felipe drummed his pencil against the notepad resting on his lap and sighed. He didn’t know why he was bothering with this when he could have been reading, napping for a third time, or literally anything else. Even the dog had given him concerned looks before he fled to his owner. As Felipe set the pencil down, he wondered if he was doing it again. Oliver had pleaded with him to stop throwing himself onto swords, and while a letter from his parents was far less dangerous than a bullet or a knife, it cut just as deep. He had spent his whole life running headlong into danger because at least then he could control the pain and hurt to some extent. Waiting for it to come to him was its own agony, and he would rather get it over with. At the sound of panting, Felipe looked up in time to see Argos trot in with a potato in his mouth. The dog shoved his hippopotamus head in his lap as he offered Felipe the stolen vegetable with large, wet eyes.
“Um, thank you?” he said as the dog dropped the drool-covered potato directly onto the letter.
At the sound of his name being yelled from the kitchen, Argos wagged his tail at him and bustled out of the room. Felipe was about to set the soggy potato aside when Mr. Allen walked past, his eyes sweeping the hall floor.
“Looking for this?” Felipe called, holding up the offending vegetable.
“Yes, thank you.” Mr. Allen shook his head as he pocketed the potato and perched on the arm of the loveseat. “I was hoping Argos didn’t tuck it away somewhere to rot. Did he bring it to you?” When Felipe nodded, he laughed. “Argos has it in his head that if you’re upset, he needs to give you something. Sometimes, it’s an uncooked potato. Other times, it’s a dead bird or a stick. Be happy you got a potato.” His eyes raked over Felipe’s body. “How are you holding up? You took quite a hit last night.”
“Not too bad all things considered, but I’m a self-healer. Give me a few days, and I’ll be good as new.” Felipe adjusted the sling to take some of the pressure off his elbow. He hated the sling and all it stood for, but he needed it if the pain in his shoulder and the dull throb in his arm were any indication. Ignoring the lingering discomfort, Felipe gave the other man his best approximation of a winning smile. “I had no idea you were such a good shot.”
“I did a bit of sharpshooting during the war, and once you shoot on horseback, doing it standing still is easy. I would have gotten to you sooner, but I couldn’t remember where I hid the damn bullets. You aren’t too shabby with a knife yourself. Too bad the dead didn’t seem to notice,” Mr. Allen replied with a huffed laugh. “Whiskey?”
“I’d love some.”
Rising from the chair with a wince, Felipe followed Mr. Allen into the kitchen. As the innkeeper poured the whiskey into two glasses, he watched Felipe from the corner of his eye. Felipe wasn’t sure what the other man could or couldn’t see written across his features. He might have needed a reading glass, but he saw through him all too well. Taking his drink, Felipe turned to the table and grimaced at the bloodstains that hadn’t come out. In daylight, it looked even worse than it had the night before.
“I’m sorry I ruined your table. We will replace it for you after we leave. The holes in the stable too.”
“It’s seen worse, though Oliver already promised as much.” Sinking into the nearest chair with a relieved groan, Mr. Allen motioned for Felipe to join him. “What were you working on so diligently in the parlor? Every time I went past, you were staring at the paper so fiercely I thought it might catch fire.”
Felipe let out a mirthless laugh and took a long, burning swig. “I was replying to a letter from my parents. Or trying to. I haven’t gotten very far.”
Above his glass, Mr. Allen searched his features. “Estranged?”
“How could you tell?”
“It explains the potato. If you get yourself a second helping of whiskey, inspector, top me off as well.”
Glancing down, Felipe found his glass empty. With heated cheeks, he added a splash of whiskey to his cup and refilled Mr. Allen’s. The innkeeper murmured his thanks and gave Felipe a sympathetic shake of his head.
“Estrangement’s hard. My father and I were estranged for years, but it was for the best. What aren’t you saying in your letter?”
“Me? Everything,” Felipe replied, staring at the amber liquor in his glass. “I don’t think I’ve told them the whole truth in almost twenty years, not that they want to hear it.”
“Feeling guilty about it?”
“Not exactly. It’s just getting harder. It’s been hanging over my head for over a week, but every time I start, I freeze.”
“Have you thought about writing a letter to them that says everything you haven’t said?” As Felipe opened his mouth, Mr. Allen held up a hand. “I didn’t say you had to send it. It’s something we have the veterans at the Grand Army of the Republic do when what they can’t or couldn’t say weighs on them. You wouldn’t believe how many people need to write letters to ghosts or to people they haven’t spoken to in twenty years.”
“If they never see it, then what’s the point?” Felipe asked, hating the defensive edge in his voice.
“It’s less about the person you’re writing to and more about you. Remember when I mentioned how men let their feelings fester until it poisons them? This is something that helps combat that. You write a letter to someone who wronged you or someone you wronged or a man you couldn’t save during a battle, and somehow, even if that person never sees those words, they’re out of you. And that’s all that matters.”
At Felipe’s dubious look, Mr. Allen hauled himself to his feet with a grunt. He plunked the bottle of whiskey in front of Felipe before grabbing a pen and paper from the drawer near the back door.
“Give it half an hour. If it doesn’t help or you can’t think of anything to say by the time I start preparing dinner, I won’t bother you about it again. How’s that sound?”
Felipe swallowed hard and stared at the blank page. He wanted to shove it away and laugh it off as something he didn’t need, but the words he longed to say had been lodged in his heart like bullet fragments for over a week with no signs of going away. His hand tightened on the cool glass, but he didn’t meet Mr. Allen’s eyes. There were so many things he wanted to tell his parents that they would never understand even if he was brave enough to say them.
“What do you do with it after?”
“Keep it, burn it, send it. It’s up to you. You want to give it a try?”
When Felipe hesitantly nodded, Mr. Allen’s face broke into a gentle smile. Patting his shoulder, he left him to his note.
***
Felipe slipped out of the inn feeling drained and a little tipsy yet lighter than he had been since the letter from his parents arrived. After Mr. Allen left, Felipe had managed to write a letter to his parents telling them all the things they had missed because their view of what was right was so narrow that it didn’t leave room for anyone, including him. He came clean about who he really was and told them how wonderful his life with Oliver, Teresa, Louisa, and Agatha was in a way that would make anyone but them envious. He wrote about how angry it made him that they were missing out on all the people he cherished most because they chose to be judgmental and cruel time and time again. The people Felipe kept in his life were loving, kind, and accepting. They were everything his parents weren’t, and they loved him for who he truly was, not the man they expected him to be.
Standing in the sunlight, Felipe shut his eyes and drank in the cool, clean air. The further he got into the letter, the more Felipe realized how different his life had become in the nine months since he died. There had been stretches in his life where he felt truly present in his skin, but they were few and far between. Most of it had been spent running or doing things for other people, anything to keep moving. If he was constantly in motion, then he didn’t have time to think about all the things that hurt. When he and Louisa first came to New York, he threw himself into becoming the best investigator he could be, and after Teresa was born, he did everything he could to be a good father. There were times he ran from Teresa for fear he would hurt her the way his parents had hurt him, but Agatha and Louisa had coaxed him back home like a stray cat until that fear finally quieted. Over the years, the knife that had once turned pain into clarity had been replaced by being the best father and investigator he could possibly be. As long as he was going above and beyond, no one thought to look for the glaring cracks.
Felipe’s lips curled into a sad smile as he crossed the yard and eyed the orange and red leaves on the non-Dysterwood trees. Somehow, dying had irrevocably broken that part of him. If he tried to run from Oliver, he would snap the tether, so now, it was talk or die. In the past, he might have jokingly chosen death, but not anymore, not after experiencing it. It helped that Oliver could feel his emotions on the other end of the tether. There was no point in hiding his feelings when he trusted Oliver would understand and take care of him. Mr. Allen was right; Oliver had made him soft. For the first time in his life, he had to put his life in someone else’s hands, and every day, Oliver proved he could trust him with his heart and body. Oliver didn’t see his growing needs as an inconvenience or a burden. Hell, he went out of his way to make things better for him and forced him to listen to his body. There was always time for a nap or food or to check-in on each other when Oliver was around. For the first time in his life, Felipe felt like he lived fully in his own skin more often than not, and it had taken dying to do it. He still wasn’t sure if he was grateful or mad at himself for letting it go on for so long.
Outside the stable door, Felipe reached for Oliver’s end of the tether. A jumble of emotions hummed across it, but if Felipe focused, he could parse out an underlying sadness overlaid with longing and spangles of interest. It didn’t feel like shopping anxiety or anything dangerous, so Felipe let it go. Whatever it was, was occupying Oliver enough that Felipe could risk taking a look at the dead investigators. It might have been the whiskey talking, but he distinctly remembered Oliver saying to stay inside, and the corpses were technically indoors. Pushing open the stable door, Felipe nearly retched at the smell coming from the two dead investigators. Even though they had been long dead the day before, the smell had gotten exponentially worse.
He gave the stable a minute to air out before holding his breath and throwing the tarp off the taller man’s corpse. Insects scurried across the dead man’s skin and ate into his wounds, but what caught Felipe’s attention were the clumps of moss clinging to the dead man’s beard. He would bet good money the investigators had been submerged in the bog Oliver had seen in the Dysterwood. Gwen had explained that bogs could be acidic enough to preserve bodies, and his theory was that the Lady had lured them into the Dysterwood and put them underwater until she needed them. It would explain why they stank so badly and why decomposition was rapidly setting in even though the stable wasn’t particularly warm. Even if Oliver autopsied them, there was probably no way to tell whether they had drowned or died by some supernatural cause, not that it particularly mattered at this point. Felipe thought about searching their pockets, but he only had one working arm and wasn’t willing to risk it getting ripped off should they wake again.
As he inspected the shorter man’s corpse, Felipe grimaced at the damage he and Gwen had done to him. He was not looking forward to explaining how that happened in their report to the head inspector and the New Jersey Branch. It was easy to forget the body belonged to someone people loved, but Felipe hoped Oliver or some unlucky undertaker could tidy them up before their families saw them. Felipe was about to throw the tarp over the dead men when his attention snagged on the hole where the shorter man’s eye had once been.
The woods or the creature within it was getting better at necromancy with each attempt, and that didn’t bode well for them. The skeletons and the bodies at the edge of the cemetery had been necromancy of opportunity or even an accident as the Dysterwood overtook the graves. The first hadn’t gotten far, but the Lady obviously learned fresh corpses worked better than the very dead. The newer dead had had their own vendettas that the creature might not have been able to control, but Ridder had been different. While they hadn’t noticed it at first, Felipe was certain Ridder’s reanimation had been a learning experience. Oliver had sensed that parasitic magic in Ridder’s corpse first, and it matched the two dead investigators. All three had gotten waterlogged and were infested with insects. Felipe frowned thoughtfully. The dead investigators had been seen going into the Dysterwood, so it stood to reason Sheriff Ridder had done the same. Will mentioned Ridder had become suspicious of the Jarngrens after his wife’s funeral. Had he suspected he buried an empty coffin and had gone to investigate in the Dysterwood or had the Stills realized they were in trouble and shoved him in before he could bring up charges? Either way, the Lady must have realized it was far easier to manipulate those who died in the Dysterwood than those outside of it. Raising his gaze to the towering pines on the far side of the yard, Felipe remembered the voice calling to him with a shudder. Had the Lady lured the other investigators too?
Footsteps crunching through the fallen leaves broke Felipe from his thoughts. He quickly replaced the tarps over the bodies and poked his head outside to find Lucien Stills walking toward the house. He clamped the bowler to his hair as he eyed the tree-covered road warily. Felipe debated ducking into the stables and shutting himself in with the corpses until the other man left, but as if sensing his thoughts, Lucien spotted him.
“Ah! Inspector Galvan, just the person I was hoping to see.”
Felipe pulled the stable door shut behind him and met the auburn-haired man near the porch. If he noticed Felipe stunk like corpse, he was polite enough to not let it show. “How may I help you, Mr. Stills?”
“Several people have reported that they thought they heard gunshots last night, quite a few of them. We didn’t hear anything on our end of town, but I was wondering if you heard them or knew anything about them.”
For a moment, Felipe debated lying to him, but he feared Mr. Allen might get in trouble if someone noticed the corpses. Best to keep it brief and simple. “There was another rising last night.”
“Good lord.” Lucien blanched. “I’ll have to alert their families. Who was it this time? Do you know? I hope it wasn’t another Ekland. They’re already making so much trouble for Father as it is.”
“It was the investigators from the New Jersey Paranormal Society.”
Lucien let out a sigh of relief. “Thank heavens. My apologies, that was cruel of me. I promise I’m not happy that they rose or died in the first place, but I’m grateful it isn’t more of our people. Father won’t care about the investigators rising as long as they didn’t hurt anyone. They didn’t, did they?” Lucien’s pale green eyes widened as if he suddenly noticed the sling cradling Felipe’s left arm and his lack of jacket. “Oh.”
“I took the brunt of it. No one else was hurt.”
“Good, good, and they’ve been dealt with? You’re sure they aren’t going to,” he said, making a vague rising gesture.
“No, we think they’re thoroughly dead. Their bodies are in the stable if you’d like to see for yourself.”
“No, thank you, I’ll take your word for it. I would prefer to remember those investigators as they were when they were alive,” Lucien replied tightly. “If possible, let’s keep this incident quiet, Inspector Galvan. The last thing the town needs right now is more reasons to panic.”
Felipe narrowed his eyes in annoyance.
“I don’t mean you shouldn’t tell your superiors, just not people here. You know how people spread gossip and start making baseless accusations.”
He wasn’t sure any accusations of negligence or incompetence against the mayor were baseless, but he said nothing. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr. Stills?”
“There is one more thing.” Dropping his voice, he stepped closer and asked, “By any chance, do you know what Will wrote in that note to Dr. Barlow?”
“As far as I know, he told Oliver what he saw when your mother was attacked,” Felipe lied, watching the other man’s expression to see if he noticed. “Why?”
“Because Mother and Will got into a huge fight this morning, and I thought the note might have been the cause. From what I overheard, she was yelling something about the Paranormal Society and telling family secrets. Truthfully, I was trying to shut my ears and eat my breakfast, but at least it makes sense now. If I don’t have indigestion, it will be a miracle, especially after how Will behaved when he realized Mother went through his things. He was so upset that she made me sedate him. She always gets him riled up and then makes me play the villain.”
Anger rose hot and fast in Felipe’s chest, but he forced his expression neutral. Will had said his aunt and uncle painted him as irrational to discredit him, and Felipe wondered how many people were convinced Will was unwell because of what his family said or how he behaved after they provoked him. “Sedating him seems extreme.”
“I don’t like doing it, but Dr. Miller says it’s for his own good, to keep him from hurting himself and others. It’s happened before. I only bring it up because as I was injecting him and trying to get him to calm down, Will made me promise to pass on a message to the three of you. I want to preface this by saying the medicine was already working, so I don’t know if it truly means anything. But he made me promise to pass it on. He was very agitated, you see, and it seemed the only way to calm him down. Hence why I played along.” When Felipe motioned for him to go on, he said, “He wanted me to tell you, the seal is broken . Does this mean anything to you?”
Felipe’s blood ran cold, but he shrugged and shook his head.
“Ah well, I figured it was another of his ramblings, but at least I kept my promise and my conscience is clear. Well, inspector, I had better let you get back to your business. Give my regards to the others.”
Tipping his hat, Lucien ambled back down the road toward town. As Felipe watched him leave, he reached for the tether to confirm Oliver was still safe. Fear tightened around Felipe’s heart at the realization that Daphne Stills would soon know Oliver was Stephen’s son, and there was no telling what she might do with that information.
***
When Gwen and Oliver came through the front door not even an hour later, Felipe nearly launched himself into his partner’s arms. The only thing stopping him was that Oliver’s arms were occupied by a heavy wicker basket and a flat box. Not ten minutes earlier, he had debated grabbing the steamer key to go look for them, but the plan had fallen apart when he realized he probably couldn’t steer the steamer down Aldorhaven’s narrow streets with only one arm. He needed to tell Oliver about Will’s message, but before he could get the words out, Oliver noticed him sitting behind the front desk and his face lit up. Oliver dropped the basket beside the door, and in three strides, he crossed the room and wrapped his arms tightly around Felipe. Slumping against Oliver’s chest, Felipe let himself be held. His anxiety had been ratcheting up in time with the pain in his shoulder and the itch of his stitches, but with Oliver near, things felt right again. As Oliver pulled back to look into Felipe’s eyes, a wave of nervousness rolled off him like a miasma. His hand tightened around Felipe’s shoulder a second before the words tumbled out of him in a rush.
“Felipe, I am so, so sorry we were gone for so long. Please don’t be mad at me. Time got away from me, but it was for a good reason. I swear I had Gwen with me the whole time.”
“I’m not mad?” Felipe replied with a raised brow.
“But I thought I felt—?”
“It wasn’t about you.” Felipe opened his mouth to tell him what happened, but Oliver looked a moment away from bursting with whatever news he had. “Go on. What were you two up to?”
“Standing in line forever,” Gwen replied over Oliver’s shoulder as she took something out of the basket before levitating the rest up the stairs ahead of her. “I’m going to put our things away.”
Oliver nodded, and another wave of anticipation flickered across the tether as he turned back to Felipe. “We did wait a long time to get into the general store. They didn’t have any nightshirts or pajamas that would have been to our liking, so robes and underthings it is. You should have seen the line for the butcher. People are already panicking about the lack of food deliveries. I can’t blame them, but I worry the town will be out of meat very soon.”
Felipe let out a silent sigh at the thought of feeling like shit until they got back to the society.
“But when we went to the pharmacy, I saw this and thought it might help,” Oliver said, handing him a jar of brown paste with a tight smile. “It’s peanut butter. It’s a meat substitute that’s supposed to be very nutritious. It might be a halfway decent supplement until we get home.”
Felipe stared at it in confusion and wondered if the peanut butter had inspired Oliver’s excited anxiety or if it was something else. “I’ll give it a try.”
“I also bought more supplies, so I can clean your wounds and change your bandages after dinner. How are you feeling? Were you able to get some more sleep?”
“I’m okay. I slept for a while after you left. Oliver, are you all right? It feels like you’re practically vibrating.”
“I am… for many reasons.” Oliver bit his lip sheepishly and the sensation on the other end of the tether dulled a fraction. Laying his hand over Felipe’s, Oliver said, “Something wonderful happened. When we went to the pharmacy, Mr. Hughes Sr. heard me talking to his son, and he came out to see who was there. Apparently, I sound like Stephen. I confessed I was his son, and oh, Felipe, he told me so many stories about him. That’s what took us so long. Once he started, I couldn’t bear to tell him to stop. I wish you had been with us.”
“I wrote everything down, so you can read it all later,” Gwen called as she came back down the stairs.
“I’m sure he didn’t tell me the worst stories, but,” Oliver gently squeezed Felipe’s hand as his eyes glistened with moisture, “it sounded like my father tried very hard to be a better person. After all this, that’s all I could ask for.”
“Did you tell him about the box?”
“Not yet. Mr. Hughes saved all the belongings my father left behind at the pharmacy after he died. He’s been holding onto them for almost forty years.” Oliver sniffed. “I haven’t looked at them yet. I thought we could do that together.”
Felipe opened his mouth to tell him about Will, but the words died on his tongue when the tether pulled taut in his chest. It could wait. Huddling close to Felipe, Oliver placed the box on the counter and motioned for Gwen to open it. She batted away a plume of dust with a cough before leaning closer. Inside the box was a jumble of yellowed papers and bits of newsprint. On top of everything sat a pair of reading glasses in a battered case and a wooden carving of what looked like a dog or a cow. Oliver inspected them and passed them to Felipe and Gwen before reaching for the papers.
“Mr. Hughes said there should be a photograph in here,” he said as he shuffled the papers into a sloppy pile and handed them to Gwen. At the very bottom of the box was a framed diploma for Stephen Jarngren from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and a daguerreotype of Oliver’s parents on their wedding day. A soft rush of breath escaped Oliver’s lips as he held the photograph between them, so Felipe could see it better. Joanna looked nearly the same as she had in the picture Oliver had shown him back home, but Stephen was a surprise. After seeing Oliver’s cousins, he hadn’t expected to find so many echoes of Oliver’s features in Stephen Jarngren. They shared the same nose and the same hairline. Though Stephen’s hair looked lighter, their hairstyles were nearly identical, but it was their sturdy, strong-shouldered build that made Stephen look like a shadow of his son if Felipe let his eyes fuzz.
As Felipe passed the photograph to Gwen, he realized he didn’t have a photograph of Oliver, and he suddenly wished he had one of him and Oliver together to set on the mantle or their bedside table. Evidence of a life together could always be used against them, but he wanted to leave evidence behind. One day they would be gone, and that photograph of them would be all that remained of their life together. Maybe in the future, the right people would stumble across it, and they would see the rings on their fingers or the tilt of their bodies and know . They would know they were more than roommates or friends. They would know they had lived their lives together and how much they meant to each other. If— when they got back to the society, Felipe would bring up the idea to Oliver.
Clearing the thickness in his throat, Felipe watched Oliver and Gwen pick through the papers and sort them into levitating piles. There were newspaper clippings, notes scrawled on old mail or delivery receipts, lists of things Stephen had to order or orders he had to fill, and shorthand recipes of what Felipe assumed were medications. On the other end of the tether, Oliver was rapidly slipping into the deep concentration he had during an autopsy. He had to tell him now .
“While you two were gone, Lucien stopped by.” At the gravity in his voice, Oliver looked up at him with wide eyes. “It sounds like Will has been compromised. There’s a good chance Daphne Stills knows who you are or that you have the ring.”
“Are you sure?”
Felipe nodded and repeated everything Lucien had said to him. As he spoke, Oliver’s expression went from concerned to furious.
“We need to do something. We can’t leave him with these people.”
“I know, but I don’t think we should be staging a rescue mission right now. They’ll know we took him, and there’s nowhere to run.” Felipe sighed and ran a tired hand over his jaw. “As much as I hate to say it, I think our best bet would be to figure out how we can break the Lady’s hold on the town or change the covenant without Will’s help first.”
Oliver deflated and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re right. I hate it, but you’re right. The sooner we figure things out and get the road into town open, the better. Should I get our notes?”
“You might want to see this first,” Gwen said as she levitated a ratty envelope in front of them.
Compared to the other notes hanging in the air around Gwen, the handwriting on this one had gone thin and slightly scratchy. Almost the entire surface of the envelope had been written over, but most of it had been crossed out. As Felipe’s eyes grew accustomed to Stephen’s handwriting, he realized what he was looking at. They were notes about how to change the covenant with the Lady. Thirty-seven years ago, Stephen Jarngren had been going through the same process. When he wrote it, Stephen had a pregnant wife, a child on the way, and a clock ticking down to the end of his life. If anyone had thought through and exhausted all the possibilities, it was him.
“This should be very helpful. Before we look at that, let’s start by writing down everything we know about the Lady and the Dysterwood,” Felipe replied, flipping to a clean page in his notepad. “Once we figure out the rules, the pieces in play, and the pitfalls everything will become clearer. Hopefully, your father has some useful insights as well.”
“There is one more thing,” Oliver said slowly as tension crept across the tether. “We need to figure this out by Sunday.”
Felipe’s throat tightened at Oliver’s bleak expression. “You’re serious?”
“If we don’t make it out of the Dysterwood, someone will need to go back to the Paranormal Society to tell them what happened. The barge coming in on Monday morning might be their only chance to leave if the Dysterwood keeps advancing. We can’t assume there will be a way out next week.” Turning to Gwen, Oliver swallowed hard. “It has to be you, Gwen. I don’t want you to stay behind, but you’re the only one I trust to get help if things go wrong.”
The papers hovering around Gwen wavered as she held Oliver’s gaze. Even if Felipe couldn’t feel her emotions like he did Oliver’s, he could see the hesitance and fear writ large across her features. With a tight nod, Gwen looked away and cleared her throat.
“It won’t come to that. I won’t let it. Before either of you sets foot in the Dysterwood, we are going over every inch of this plan for holes, and we’re making at least four contingency plans just in case. Then, and only then will I stay behind.”
“That’s fair,” Oliver replied with a ghost of a smile.
“All right, we have approximately thirty-six hours to get this plan in shape. Oliver, get your notes. Felipe, get a pot of tea or coffee going. I’m going to grab more paper. We will reconvene in the dining room in five minutes!”
With a clap, she and Oliver took off up the stairs. Releasing a tired sigh, Felipe turned to the envelope hovering beside him. He traced Stephen’s logic and dead ends with his eyes until he reached a line that had been crossed out, circled, and crossed out again. Can you kill a god? Felipe hoped they wouldn’t have to find out.