Milo... Extreme Unction

            By Pattie Lawler

 

Milo flipped the first book cover open with the tip of his shoe. The old manuscript was unknown to him, but it didn’t matter. In his mind, he burned the image of the letter K onto the exposed page. He turned to the next volume, flicked it open and placed a mental A on the flyleaf. Each book he treated in a similar fashion until he had spelled out the name Karya.

Ending his circuit at the first book, he was surprised to see Somnia striding toward him from across the room. She appeared as Albany and wore the Eboly costume, complete with eye patch. Her hands were lost in the folds of the forest-colored skirt which, owing to her pace, she was forced to carry. 

He smiled as she halted before him. “Somnia! I didn’t expect to see you.”

“You are summoning a dryad. Why?”

His gaze dropped to survey the open books then rose to meet her eye. He winked. “A professional consultation.”

Somnia’s face told him she was not impressed. “You mean to allow this creature to inhabit your mind.”

He nodded. “It’s fastest that way.”

She was shaking her head before he finished. “I will not allow it.”

“Oh?”

“This dryad is inferior.”

His smile grew at her possessiveness. “This dryad is a friend.”

The sour expression didn’t fade. “I will question the dryad. You need not concern yourself.”

“You’re kind to offered, but it’s not a problem. She and I have worked together before.”

Somnia’s withering look ended the conversation. “She will speak through me.”

Milo bowed and said nothing.

Spreading her hands to the open books, Somnia began chanting. The books glowed gold in response. In the light, a mist rose, flowed toward the singing spirit and poured to the floor, forming the figure of a woman as it gathered mass.

Milo watched in wonder. Normally, this spell took a solid ten minutes for him to begin to see results. Somnia’s fluency put his to shame.

Karya’s body lost its transparency as she joined those in the room. Milo smiled, his hand reaching for her.

At his feet, the open volumes shivered, drawing his attention as the leather and wood covers clattered against the stone floor. Frowning, he withdrew his hand, placing himself back within the protective circle of silver coins as the books began to quake, bouncing off the floor. He looked at Somnia, who appeared as surprised as he felt.

The pages rose, as if in a wind, and fanned themselves into half circles, like mushroom gills. Milo turned toward Albany, his mouth open to tell her to flee when black lines, thousands of them, shot from the books. Somnia screamed, stepping back as she protected her face, and Karya disappeared. Milo also recoiled as the ink bullets converged on a point over his head. He followed their path upward and saw a roiling cloud gathering.

“Simon! Get Albany out of here!” He knew they were both protected by the silver he insisted they carry, but purity only went so far.

The light from the windows vanished as if day had become the depth of night, and the temperature plummeted. Milo’s next exhalation was a pale plume in the wane light from the distant ceiling lights.   

A blob of ink lanced down, stopped at his eye level and split in half horizontally, moving like lips with the room visible beyond.

“Heretic!”

“Who are you?”

The ball of ink rolled end over end until it was behind him. Milo followed and was in time for the next shout of, “Heathen!”

“I don’t deal with unknowns!” His gaze scoured the books at his feet. Clearly, one of them was haunted. “What odds,” he growled, mentally inventorying the contents of his pockets. Drafting an exorcism was going to take time, which wasn’t an option at this temperature.

He was recalled from these thoughts by Albany’s voice.

“It’s two speakers!” she repeated, leaning toward him.

“I told you—” The order died on his lips. Two? He replayed the shouts in his mind and concluded that she knew better than him. With a curt nod, he acknowledged her information and continued presence and then returned to the task at hand.

He reached under his jacket and drew Osiris’ Thigh from its sheath at the small of his back. The ornate pommel was riddled with hiding places, each capped by a precious stone that hinted at the contents below.

“To use in a pinch,” he had joked when Simon commented on the minuscule amounts of dried herbs each stone hid. He hadn’t tried to explain that they were practically useless in such small amounts but were there as reminders of what he could do; a visual crib sheet.

He turned the handle until a flash of purple caught his eye. “Lavender for seeing ghosts,” he thought as one of the accompanying amethyst spells filled his mind and then flowed from his lips.

The black cloud of ink split, poured down, and reformed itself.

The first gaunt ghost was an arm’s length away, arrayed as a monk, and while his head was at Milo’s shoulder height, the man’s feet were directed upward, as if he were walking on the ceiling. The next ghost monk was likewise upside down, and just as underfed as the first man. Both were a disturbance in the air without mass, as if Milo were looking through Vaseline.

They squared off with Milo between and appeared oblivious of their audience. It was equally plain that they were shouting at each other, though after their initial shout, their voices receded into what sounded like a distant well.

“Can you read their lips?” Milo asked with a glance at Simon.

“I could if it was English.”

“I think it’s German,” Albany offered.

Milo reflected on the shouts again. While they had yelled in Latin, she was right. There was a strong Germanic accent in the single word.

“Battling German monks,” he mused, spinning Osiris’ Thigh on the flat of his open hand. He caught the pommel again and squatted, examining the nearest book.

The books had stopped shivering with the appearance of the ghosts, and Milo read the elaborate flyleaf aloud. It added nothing to his understanding. He swiveled on his heels to the next title, and the ghosts moved with him. Surprised, he turned further, and the still arguing ghosts moved with him.

“Now that’s interesting,” he said, rising and slowly turning to face his companions. Neither had their heads tilted in an attempt to see the ghosts upright. He frowned at them. “Tell me what you see.”

Albany, her arms wrapped tight across her chest, freed one hand long enough to point. “A sort of mist in the air, like two vaguely humanoid shapes.”

“Can you see their heads?”

She shook her head. “It’s really misty.”

He looked at Simon, who nodded.

Milo’s gaze returned to the books. “They’re oriented on me,” he whispered and used his foot to close the book before him.

Nothing changed, even when they were all closed.

Milo knelt again and turned a book around, his eyes on the ghosts. On the third book, the ghosts folded in half at the waist and straightened, their heads upright. Behind him, both Albany and Simon made sounds of surprise.

“Definitely me,” Milo said, sheathing his knife and picking up the volume.

He did a quick examination of the binding, hoping for something ridiculously simple and wasn’t surprised when the hunt proved fruitless. Dropping the cover open against his arm, he inspected the aged and grubby paper that hid the folded-over edges of the leather cover. This ‘paste down’ was remarkably fixed for such an old book. None of the edges had lifted on the insides of both the front and back covers.

“Hard to believe,” he murmured and bit down on the middle finger of his glove, drawing his hand free. He pocketed the warm glove, shifted the weight of the volume over so that he was looking at the inside of the back cover and picked at a corner of the paste down.

“What is that?” Albany asked.

“Many many binders, back in the day, salvaged older books for their parts. It’s not uncommon to find leaves from incunabula pasted into newer books.”

“Incunabula?”

He continued to pick, nodding as he replied. “Books printed after 1501. Back when Guttenberg was all the rage.”

“Thank you, but that’s not what I meant. What’s that darker area?” Again she pointed.

Milo drew back slightly, looking where she directed. “This?” His finger smoothed over an irregularly shaped expanse of rust-colored vellum. “It’s probably a stain on the obverse. Maybe spilt glue. This binder wasn’t shy when it came to glue.”

For a minute, the only sound was the distant murmur of the arguing ghosts and the rhythmic picking of Milo’s nail on vellum.

“What will it matter if you get that page up?” Albany finally asked, her eyes on the ghosts, her voice tremulous with cold. “Will it prove anything?”

Milo nodded without pausing. “The book I’m holding is not contemporary with the habits of our guests. It’s newer. I’m betting that whatever they’re arguing over is either on this paste down or hidden by it.”

“And then what?”

“I persuade them to set their differences aside and move on to their eternal reward.”

“And if they don’t want to go?”

Milo stopped then, smiling as he looked up. “I won’t be offering them an option.”

He worked the corner up and flipped the back of his jacket up to withdraw Osiris’ Thigh. Turning the book, and thereby the ghosts, he slipped the tip of the knife into the opening and wiggled it, working more of the page free.

“This side of the page has had the text scraped off,” he said, peeling the edge up.

“Do you hear that?” Simon rumbled.

“They’ve stopped,” Albany replied.

Milo also looked up in time to see the ghosts rushing him.

Dropping the book, he reached in his pocket and flung a handful of cayenne at the specters. It was more to startle them than for effect, but it worked, and they paused, midflight. Milo could see in that instance that the anger of at least one of them was directed at him and he made a wild guess as to the cause.

“Albany, sing! Vesper, compline, anything!”

She hesitated for a second, but then began to sing, her voice filling the room.

The result was immediate. The ghosts halted and knelt where they stood, most of the tops of their heads facing Milo. He also knelt, lifting the book and slipping his knife under the gapping edge. From his crouched position, he noticed that one of the ghosts was less solid than the other.

“I’m beginning to do the math,” he said, loud enough for Albany to hear. “I’m thinking that the stain isn’t glue but blood and that there was murder done in the sixteenth century.”

“Why?” Simon asked with a glance at the still singing Albany.

“The shouts when we arrived, Heretic and Heathen, we assumed were directed at Somnia and Karya, but now I think they were shouting at each other over this.” He peeled the page back enough to expose text.

It was true that he wasn’t one-hundred percent sure of what he would find, but to his well-trained eyes, the font betrayed all.

“It’s a page from a Matthew’s Bible. The first Bible translated from Latin to English.” He stopped pulling on the page. “Two of the three translators were executed for what was considered a sacrilege.” Setting the book down, he rose. “Albany, you can stop, if you would please.”

She fell silent.

Milo nodded once in thanks and watched the monks for a reaction. He felt along the knife’s pommel and paused on a small opal. The still kneeling monks shifted restlessly. Cupping his free hand, he held the pommel so that the stone faced his hand and he began his incantation.

A drip and then two became a slender stream of oil, seemingly flowing from the opal into his gloved hand. When he had gathered what he hoped was enough, he ended the spell, and thereby the flow of oil, sheathed the knife, and raised his voice, offering the monks extreme unction.

“Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed.”

He spoke in Latin, knowing they would expect as much. Dipping his fingers in the collected oil, he stretched past the circle of silver and reached for the nearest monk.

The ghost lunged. His hand stabbed out to clamp on Milo’s wrist.

Numbing cold from the spectral hand lanced through him, and Milo cried out. Behind him came Albany’s echoing scream, and Simon’s deep bellow, but the burning pain shoved everything aside. He could feel that he was still screaming, his throat raw and his lungs aflame as his knees gave way.

 

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