Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 2

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They take the stairs up to the fourth floor, and by the time they get up there, Harry is breathing hard, although in a rare fit of unselfconsciousness, there's no comment in the narration about Harry being out of shape.

The corridor into which they emerge has gone spooky. The lights are flickering, and it's totally silent - no people, no hum or whine of electronics. Harry notes the absence of sound from televisions or air conditions, although of course this is not actually the result of ghost activity - even in 2001, the old Cook County Hospital Building had neither. Harry moves his blasting rod to the same hand as his staff (coulda done that in the first place, my dude, you didn't need to be stressing your teeth like that, especially when I know you can't afford proper dental care), and lights a candle. This is a solid call, because the next hallway the turn into, the lights are out. A few steps later, the candle flame goes small and blue, showing that they are in the presence of a ghost. 

Michael draws his sword, but Harry tells him to stay back. Amoracchius (although it hasn't been named at this point) will immediately tip her off that something is up, and she's powerful enough to make that very dangerous. Michael is to wait until Harry can hit her with the dust in the sack. So Harry enters the nursery alone. There are two nurses here, slumped over asleep, and Harry can hear a beautiful voice singing "hush little baby". The song carries the sleep spell, and it almost gets Harry before he realizes what she's doing. Interestingly, we see almost this exact same situation play out with the "dinner bell" spell in Ghost Story, the other ghost-heavy book in that series, although in that case the song is not named.   

We get a redescription of Harry's pentacle, with the addition of how battered it is now, after he want and launched it into a werewolf's sternum, like that was a reasonable things to do. Then he pulls it out and empowers it, giving him better light than the candle, and some protection against the song. 

And then we see Agatha Hagglethorn herself, walking among the bassinets (Dresden calls them 'tiny glass cribs') of the nursery, singing her lullaby. She's pretty, one-handed, semi-transparent, and put-together, in a 19th century sort of way. As Harry watches, she leans in close over a bassinet, and the baby in it stops breathing. Needless to say, this moves up the timeline considerably, and pretty well precludes the slow, cautious approach Harry had in mind. 

The ghost facts are pretty well interspersed with the action here (personally, I love a good exposition dump, but I recognize that this is generally regarded as better technique), and now we get our first one: it's very hard to interact with ghosts unless you can get their attention first, and that isn't easy to do. The most reliable approach is to say their full name, and to infuse it with magic. Harry does this, and Agatha asks what he's doing in her nursery. 

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Harry starts readying the ghost dust, and distracts her by explaining that she's dead. Agatha, naturally, looks sad and confused, and that's when Harry gets stupid. Ghost fact 2: they're not real people, not the lingering souls of the departed. They're an imprint, like a fossil, left behind by the emotions of the dead. But powerful ghosts, like Agatha, can seem very, very persony, and Harry...has issues about women. So he lowers the arm he was getting ready to throw the dust, and starts trying to reason with her, sharing her backstory with us in the process. (Ghost fact 3: if you can get them to accept their condition, they'll dissipate). I'm gonna give the briefest possible summary, because it's awful. Her shitty husband was responsible for the death of their infant daughter, so she killed him with an axe, and then cut off her own hand. Since she's dead too, presumably she bled out shortly thereafter. 

Agatha does not take this news, or the traumatic memories it revives, at all well, and I can't say I blame her, but it's a problem. She gets bigger, fills the room with the scent of blood and metal, and kicks up a violent wind, making it impossible to use the dust. The baby's still not breathing. Harry rushes her, and makes a grab for the baby while Agatha wails about her fate. He succeeds, and slaps the baby's but to get her breathing again. Unfortunately, as babies are wont to do, she immediately starts crying, and it freaks Agatha right the hell out. She hits Harry with her left arm, the one that's missing a hand, throwing him into a wall, and then shoves it into the baby's mouth, smothering her. Harry's gearing up to just force the whole bag of dust into her ectoplasmic body, when she manifets a fucking axe and goes for his head with it. Michael intercepts the blow with his sword, buying Harry the necessary time to apply ghost dust to her arm. Agatha just, pulls the rest of herself away from the immobilized arm, leaving it, and the axe, behind, and vanishes. 

For a little bit there, it looks like they might have won. Harry strokes the baby's cheek, and she sucks on his finger, which is adorable, although Michael tells him not to let her do that because his hands are dirty. But then they hear Agatha's lullaby, apparently sourceless now, and all the babies go silent again. She's gone, but she's continuing her attack from the other side. If they want to stop her, and they'll need to stop her to save the kids, they have to follow her through. Harry...does not want to do that. She'll be stronger in the spirit world, on account of she's a spirit, and we're informer that Harry's godmother (about whom we know almost nothing at this stage), is in there too and will make problems if she finds them. 

Michael says that he's not leaving the babies to die, and neither is Harry, that there's too much good in him for that. Like I said when we talked about Chapter 1, Michael insisted the soulgaze as soon as they met, so he knows what he's talking about. Michael's soul, unsurprisingly, was beautiful. And indeed, Harry gathers up his staff and rod, and says "apparturum", opening a Way into the Nevernever for the first time in the series. 

I apologize for the lengthy delay here. Due to an error in my spreadsheet, I spent much of last week reading the core rulebook for Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition, which I wish weren't so good on a mechanical level, because it's pretty much Orientalism: The TTRPG. I've also been hard at work on my Wheel of Time fanfiction, trying to get on track to catch up to the end of Season 1 by the time Season 2 comes out in November. It shouldn't take so long for the next one. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!