Was (Was #1)

2x11: A murder of thoughts in a maze of shadows

Episode 2x11: A murder of thoughts in a maze of shadows

London, December 14th, 2009

Really, it was a wonder the Mundanes hadn’t started paying attention to the storm yet.

More and more disturbing details marred London’s regular tapestry, details a mind and eyes as trained as Marek’s couldn’t help noticing. The ghost at the corner of Mansford Street and Old Bethnal Green Road, not far from where the cab driver had left him, had only been the most blatant, the most recent one. Others would follow soon.

The wind, picking up momentum.

Tiny ashy snowflakes drifting in the air.

Dark clouds brimming with the kind of electricity only felt in the heart of summer.

Dull fog swirling around passers-by’s ankles.

Faint echoes of whispers, of chilly laughs, of dried leaves brushing against each other.

A bell tolling far away, once, twice, before the din of the city silenced it again.

And the storm carried Marek towards his yet unknown target. Closer, closer. Always closer.

The ghost quite literally haunted his thoughts. A teenager, scared and ecstatic at the same time, dipping her fingers into a world full of lights and life, progressing step by step. A girl who hadn’t been there when he had paid his fare. The Keeper had stopped in a place teeming with living beings; when he had looked up again, death had made an entrance.

He may not have Ring’s ability to sense Spirits and the place where they dwelt, but even he was bound to feel the disturbance in Reality, where two incompatible worlds had met. Ghosts weren’t supposed to wander around. According to most textbooks, the living side was sweet poison to them, a drug filling them with elation, while at the same time eroding their memories faster than the Deadlands would. If the Anima Mundi so desperately tried to keep Necromancers in check, it was also because it needed them, and their skills to welcome the departed into their own bodies to question them without harm—before the drawback took their sanity away.

Marek had followed the girl for a few minutes, as she drifted towards Oaklands Secondary School, mingling with the pupils in navy blue uniforms who exited the squat building. Her face first scrunched in confusion, then lit with glee. Such an interesting expression. Such a strong desire to live again, doomed to end in painful realisation.

When he initiated contact, though, if only to see whether he’d be able to hear her or not, things took a turn for the strangest.

Scrutinising eyes searched the crowd, landed on him, acknowledging his presence. A few seconds elapsed, before her dead irises filled with sheer terror. Her mouth opened on a silent wail; she turned her back on him, diving through a group of pupils, who looked about them with confused stares. A girl with a white scarf rubbed her arms; another one put a hand to her head, swaying; one of the boys stepped back with a less than virile shriek. Being run through by a spectre on this side of the Wall was an unsettling experience, to say the least.

Ignoring the children’s cries of protest, Marek elbowed his way past them—they’d survive that brief encounter with a ghost—and launched himself on the trail of his newfound quarry. She couldn’t have appeared out of thin air: somewhere, the Wall might be breached, once again.

He didn’t have to go far. He could still hear the faint but angry exclamations of the pupils when the hole appeared in front of the spectre, and long, thorny branches grabbed her, sliding along her ethereal limbs to snatch her away from life and lights. Her scream was the first and last thing he heard coming out of her mouth. The darkness beyond swallowed her whole; in the blink of an eye, everything was over.