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CHAPTER THREE

The Unresting

One Week Earlier

‘Agony. Shame. Guilt. Fear. Existential dread. Deepest horror at the unending ignominy and pain of an eternity you can never escape. Imagine what those things might feel like … then slap ’em on a nasty old ghost face and you’ll have a rough idea of what the Unresting look like.’

Seven days before Hallowmas, the retired clairvoyant, Conall O’Leary, had delivered to Unit 919 the first in a series of lectures called Spectre Specifics: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classification of the Incorporeal Dead . The semester-long course would teach them to identify the various spirits, ghosts and ghouls occupying Nevermoor and determine what must be done with them: which ones could be safely ignored, and which must be dealt with by the Society. This introductory session was meant to prepare them for their first time marching in the Black Parade.

Morrigan sighed, dropping her chin to her chest. She’d so been looking forward to her first Hallowmas march. Nice tradition. Pleasant little walk to honour the dead. But no, of course nothing at Wunsoc could possibly be that straightforward.

The Black Parade, it turned out, was a ghost trap.

‘Sounds quite chilling, I know. But you might find it settles your nerves to think of it more as … paranormal pest control,’ Conall told them. ‘Now, most folks’ll never see the Unresting, because they don’t want to be seen. But fortunately – or perhaps un fortunately – for us, the Unresting have been immortalised by many artists throughout the Ages. Some claimed to have seen the spirits themselves, others relied on the accounts of others. Here are a few depictions from history to give you an idea. Brace yourselves.’

Unit 919 shrank in their seats as Conall clicked through a dozen ghastly images projected into the air above their heads in the lecture theatre. Morrigan didn’t close her eyes, but she really wanted to.

The artists’ interpretations differed wildly in aesthetics, but their general vibe was as Conall had described: lost, guilty, miserable. One piece showed them with monstrously wide mouths twisted into a horrified ‘O’ as if screaming for help, their eyes no more than sunken, unseeing hollows in skull-like faces. Another depicted red flesh stretched taut across bone, with black veins creeping all over them like ivy, as if the blood had curdled inside, turning toxic and tar-like. Another showed them as pale, membranous, slug-like creatures, crawling along the ground.

The thing they all had in common was that none of them looked like a fun time.

‘Our nightbeacon bearers,’ Conall went on, fixing his bright, piercing gaze on each child in turn, ‘including yours truly, have the unenviable task of counting the Unresting as we gather them, and watching they don’t stray towards the public. We must manage this without looking directly at them or making eye contact or in any way acknowledging their presence, lest we agitate or frighten them.’

‘How do you get chosen for the job?’ asked Thaddea.

‘Someone in your unit has to die first, Thaddea,’ Mahir reminded her. ‘Which one of us are you hoping to kill off?’

She grinned. ‘Shall I write you a list?’

Conall waited for them to settle down before continuing. ‘If you’re lucky, you’ll never carry a nightbeacon, and the last time you see the wretches will be today, in these pictures.’ Leaning on his cane, he pointed the clicker at the horrible image above them. ‘The Unresting may look terrifying, but in truth they are pitiful creatures. Mopey, miserable and a touch skittish.

‘However, being pitiful doesn’t mean they deserve our pity. While they lived, they were people who did terrible, unforgivable things, and got away with them entirely. They died having never paid for their crimes. No justice, no punishment.

‘They’re undeserving of rest, and so they are Unresting. They cannot change their fate or make amends, so they wander ceaselessly, and their numbers grow a little more each year, because they’ll never move on from this plane. They’re not like the Unfinished Business crowd, who exist as a temporary paranormal presence until they Finish whatever Business they need to and then skip town; perhaps off to someplace nicer – perhaps not – who knows?

‘The Unresting are different. They’re stuck here, consumed by misery, and usually they want nothing to do with us. Like all spectral beings, though, on Hallowmas even they can’t help but be drawn back to the living. To peek through the curtain at the life they once knew, the life they crave to know again.’

Morrigan glanced around at Unit 919, most of whom were wide-eyed and uncharacteristically still. This was their first lesson with Conall O’Leary, whereas she knew him well by now. She’d spent most of this school year with him and the small, secret band of researchers who called themselves the Sub-Nine Academic Group, down in the basement of Proudfoot House in the equally secret School of Wundrous Arts, where Morrigan was the only pupil. She knew Conall was kind and curious, if occasionally gruff. He taught paranormal subject matter in the School of Arcane Arts and was also the head of the Wundrous Supernatural League.

‘Are the Unresting dangerous?’ asked Lam, looking up from the notes she was scribbling.

‘Not in the way you may be thinking, Miss Amara. These aren’t poltergeists, phantasms or bogeyfolk. The Unresting sit here , in the Harmless-Rare quadrant of Doctor Saperstein’s Spirit Spectrum.’

Conall clicked to a new image. The scholars exhaled in relief as the gruesome Unresting were replaced with a graph whose X axis and Y axis crossed in the middle to make four quadrants. The X axis was labelled HARMLESS on the left and HARMFUL on the right, while the Y axis ran from RARE at the bottom to UBIQUITOUS at the top. The Unresting sat a smidge below the horizontal line, in the lower left of the graph.

It was Thaddea who raised her hand to ask the obvious question. ‘If they’re so harmless, why are we wasting our Hallowmas night rounding them up when we could be doing something useful like … I don’t know, trapping something that’s actually dangerous?’

‘Or trick-or-treating,’ suggested Hawthorne.

‘Because, Miss Macleod, in the Wundrous Society’s slightly controversial opinion, Saperstein’s classification of the Unresting isn’t entirely correct. He classified them this way because they cannot touch the living, but of course physical harm isn’t the only kind of harm there is.’ Conall looked up, his expression thoughtful, and tapped his cane softly on the dais. ‘It’s hard to describe, but the Unresting exude a sort of … uneasiness. And they have an unhelpful tendency to gather, like the grit and grime that collects in the seams of the city. Leave them to build up in one place and they’ll quickly drag down the emotional health of a neighbourhood. People start having funny dreams. Find themselves getting angry for no reason. Crime rates go up. Folks feel anxious, unsafe … They move away, the neighbourhood empties. In the long run, it’s better for everyone if we intervene before that happens. Sweep out the grit before the machine breaks down.’

‘Sweep them to where?’ asked Morrigan.

He gave her a grim smile, tapping his cane again. ‘We’ll be relocating them to a non-residential area in the borough of Eldritch. Lots of dark, dangerous things in Eldritch. They’ll fit right in.’

Morrigan frowned. They did this every year ? Eldritch must be bursting at the seams with Unresting, she thought. She wanted to ask how many there were, and how the Society made them all stay in one place, but Conall turned away, moving to drag a stool from the side of the dais. Arch jumped up to lend a hand.

‘Good man,’ the teacher said, sitting down with a sigh of relief. He clapped a hand on his knee. ‘Now, you may recall our parade last year was cancelled. That means this year’s will attract more Unresting than usual, so it’s more important than ever to stick to the rules. Let’s go over them one more time …’