Children of Van Helsing

Chapter Twenty - Spirit Dust

Jessica

Greg and Helen arrived. They were still as calm and self-confident as always when they walked into the drawing room.

“Well, where’s the patient?” Greg asked jokingly. I wanted to punch him until that stupid smug had disappeared.

Regina was still lying in aunt Jennifer’s arms. She could be dead – she looked so pale she could be a body, and you could hardly see her breath. My legs didn’t cooperate anymore and I stopped walking. Helen nearly bumped into me and I heard her mumbling something very insulting when she passed me along with her brother. Lily suddenly stood next to me and took my hand.

“I’m sure it’s going to be fine.” She said.

I tried to smile but failed miserably. “Yeah.”

Greg and Helen helped her up and made her sit down on a couch which hadn’t fallen over because of the explosion. Veronica and Gregory were taking their triplets to the living room, giving us all evil looks and mumbling aggressively. Aunt Jennifer stood next to Susanna. She didn’t say anything. Her silence scared me.

“Why didn’t the bracelet help?” I asked, while walking a bit closer. It was weird that I was scared of my own sister, but her big eyes and white skin made her look like she had just walked out of a Tim Burton movie.

“The bracelet protects her from spirits from outside.” Helen said. “It can’t protect her against herself.”

“What is that black stuff?” Susanna asked, while still drinking her whiskey. I wanted one too.

“We call it spirit dust.” Greg said, while checking Regina’s eyes and pulse. “It’s everywhere. It’s part of the very air around us, but can’t be traced, because regular humans can’t see or sense it. Necromancers can. They absorb it, carry it with them at all times. It gives them energy – it gives them power.”

My head was spinning. Spirit dust?

“What is it exactly?” I asked. My voiced sounded shaky and Lily squeezed my hand a bit.

“Well, spirits – Helen, darling, can you get our suitcase upstairs, please – spirits do go to the afterlife after they have died. There is no heaven or hell, since nobody is fully good or evil. They just become vague silhouettes of who they once were. They fade. It takes a few decennia, but after that, they have faded so much they become dust and fall down on earth. That is what you saw. The dust of the dead. It can’t be destroyed because it is already dead.”

“But it looked liquid.” I said.

“Well, it’s not dust exactly. I can’t really explain what it is like, because it is unique, and doesn’t exist scientifically, but it is sort of like a mixture between water, dust and smoke, like a sandstorm, but moving like a liquid, taking all kind of shapes and sizes. Once, you will die too, and eventually become nothing but dust.”

The room was silent for a while. Greg checked Regina for any injuries and actually seemed to care about what happened to my little sister. Helen came running down in the meantime, carrying a small, black suitcase, decorated with stickers from metal bands and silver skulls.

“But if that… Spirit dust is visible to necromancers, don’t you see it all the time?” Lily asked softly. She was still a bit shy around them and I couldn’t blame her, really, because they didn’t have very comforting personalities.

Greg shook his head. “No, of course not. We can choose whether we want to see it or not, like a switch in our minds. Your sister doesn’t know how to do that yet, so to her, it is permanently turned off.”