“No.” Gregory mustered the strength to lift up his head and fix her with a glare. “You won’t take him.”
“But I will,” Marion said as she set down the cloth. “I have had them all. Patricia, William, Ruby. Stuart. Janette. I would have added the dashing Doctor Turner, had he not slipped away like a coward. That precious child you carry with you will have a proper mother at last. And so shall you.”
A burst of strength surged through him, a final rally he knew boded no good for his continued survival.The body may rally before death, experiencing a final burst of energy.Words from his grandfather’s end-of-life care team that had stuck with Gregory in the years after.He rallied to put me in charge of the company. To fix what he had done. Now this bitch wants to take my brother away from me.
With a growl, he tensed his muscles, pulling hard against the ropes. They held. The ancient wooden chair did not. Slats groaned in protest, then cracked where the years and time in the basement had weakened them. He yanked his right arm free, bits of chair dangling from the rope, but overestimated the force necessary to pull the wooden slats away. Momentum and clumsiness sent him crashing to the floor.
He tried to lever himself up with one hand. Pain screamed up his forearm as his muscles worked against the bleeding gash in the flesh. A cry escaped him as his arm refused to bear weight.Get up. Get up, Gregory. Gran needs you. Martin. Joseph. Get up.
But his energy was gone. Weakness dragged him down with the inexorable force of a riptide. He curled in on himself, protecting the baby against his chest with his body.
“Give him to me!” Darlene screamed. He could smell whatever she’d dosed herself with, see her bloodshot eyes and the way she weaved on her feet. If he gave her the baby, Joseph would cry, and she might drop him again. Gregory held on tighter. Joseph already felt too chilly, and Gregory never wanted him to feel cold. Behind Darlene, Robert spoke in tones Gregory thought were meant to calm him, but Robert’s voice was too high, too fast, as he first asked, then commanded, that Gregory hand over the baby.
“No.” The denial came both from Gregory the stubborn child, and Gregory the adult who knew with certainty he would not give his brother up without a fight. “You can’t have him.”
Marion laughed. Gregory could see her now, a second shape within his mother’s body, a cruel soul whose malice had warped her very spirit into an abhorrent, monstrous shade. Her laughter rang discordant off the tiny room’s walls as she took deliberate steps towards him, seeming to enjoy the dread she saw mounting in him each time she closed the distance.
“Gregory, my dear son. Who is going to stop me?”
“Me,” came a new voice from the door to the room.
Marion’s head snapped to look at the door. Gregory’s did, too. A complicated cocktail of worry and relief flooded him. For there at the door stood Hanna Sparrow, the red kitchen fire extinguisher in her hands. A soft corona of light surrounded her, even in the dimness of the basement, and Gregory wondered for a moment if he had already died to see her so wrapped in a luminous halo.
“I am your sparrow, Marion Pritchard, and you’re late to the hereafter. There’s a fire with your name on it. Let me help you put it out.”
As the Widow lunged, Hanna leveled the nozzle of the fire extinguisher on the possessed woman’s body and squeezed the trigger.
* * *
White foam eruptedfrom the extinguisher to cover the Widow’s flailing mortal form. She screamed, howling with rage and physical pain as the chemicals stung her nose, mouth, and eyes, but she didn’t stop her charge. Hands clenched into claws and swiped towards Hanna, closer with every angry step.
Then Hanna bashed the extinguisher into her head. Darlene dropped, stunned, to the floor. Marion Pritchard tried to rise again, attempted to discard the human flesh she had stolen. Shadowy tendrils shaped like arms reached out, like a swimmer exiting a pool, to pull herself out of her borrowed skin.
Flesh would not so easily be shed. The Widow shrieked with frustrated fury as she clawed at the body to no avail. “Help me!” she snarled.
Hanna set the fire extinguisher down next to her. “I don’t think so.”
“You are a sparrow. You send souls to what waits beyond.” Half out of the body, lower half trapped in Darlene’s form as her torso clung to what traction she had gained in pulling herself away, Marion Pritchard stared at Hanna with a dire accusation. “Do your job, girl. Send me on. Save your lover’s mother from me. I stole her body. Surely you must help her.”
From where he curled fetal on the ground, Gregory said, “My mother killed my baby brother. She killed him, then she let them blame me for it so she wouldn’t go to jail. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you help her, because she has never been my mother. Just a criminal who will be going to prison as soon as I can have her charged.”
Hanna watched as Gregory relaxed, uncurled his back to lay on his side. Only then did she see the tiny ghost who cuddled to him. Her heart broke as understanding dawned.The basement. The fear of ghosts. It was because one refused to leave him, and a piece of his heart knew that. But if the rest of him remembered, it would mean too much pain. Oh, Gregory.
Behind Darlene’s inert form, Stuart faded into view. He crossed his arms over his chest, a stern, judgemental expression on his young face. In it, she fancied she saw shades of his father, the policeman who had earned commendations for his dedication to peacekeeping, even in wartime.
Suddenly, Hanna knew what she had to do.
“That’s what I came down here for,” she said, and mirrored Stuart’s stance. “I came down here to force you to pass on. To pull you out of Darlene, who I thought had earned plenty of things, but not being stuck with you. Now? I think you two deserve each other.”
The Widow’s spectral lips peeled back to show blackened, pointed teeth. “Do it! Or when this body wakes, I will come for you. I will take you to the brink of death, over and over again, until you beg to join the others in the bottles.”
“You’re going to find that a little more difficult than you think. Back in your day, you escaped what you deserved. That’s not going to happen this time.” Hanna edged around the room, eyes on the ghost and the body that anchored her, until she reached Gregory.
He mustered a smile for her, weak and pale but there. “Isn’t the prince supposed to save the princess in fairytales?”
Hanna examined the cut on his arm. Bleeding, but not quite critical. The one on his leg oozed, too, but he would hold on long enough.She missed the major artery there and didn’t cut deeply enough on his arms. He would have bled out if I hadn’t showed up, but he’ll live until we can get him help.She clapped hands over both wounds to slow the flow of blood.
“Prince Hanna to the rescue of her beloved Princess Gregory,” she said. “Hold on for me.”