Secret Histories 10: Dr. DOA by Simon R. Green

Chapel.”
    “The family doesn’t allow ghosts to hang around,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t be able to move in the corridors for ectoplasm and poltergeist phenomena. The family gets through a lot of soldiers in its never-ending war.”
    “Didn’t stop Jacob from occupying the Chapel,” said Molly.
    “He had a special dispensation,” I said. “And what would I do, anyway, as a ghost? Stick around to watch you grow old? Watch you start a new life with someone else? Move on, and forget me?”
    “I would never do that!” said Molly.
    “Of course you would. That’s what the living do. You had a life before me, and you’ll have a life after I’m gone.” I stopped and looked at her. “Molly, that’s what I want.”
    She looked into my face, searchingly. “Really?”
    “Well,” I said. “If truth be told, what I really want is for my passing to break hearts and ruin lives. I want mass weeping and a month of national mourning. But then, after that, everyone should just get on with their lives.” I looked around. “It wasn’t that long ago I was here for Jack’s funeral. And soon they’ll be holding mine. I hope the weather’s nice.”
    I looked back at the Hall, far behind me now. Just a great brooding presence on the horizon. Weighed down by history, and all the generations of Droods who’d lived and served in that hulking edifice to duty and responsibilities. So many stories, come and gone. And that’s all I would be now. Just another story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
    Which made me think of the Winter Hall, that cold empty place where I passed the time in Limbo, caught between Life and Death. A frost-covered shadow of my home, where I walked through empty corridors haunted by memories. Until Molly came and got me and brought me home. She wouldn’t be able to do that this time. She liked to boast she’d been to Heaven and Hell and everywhere in between, but she’d never brought anyone back from the dead. There are some limits even the wild witch of the woods has to respect.
    The Winter Hall reminded me of the Other Hall, which briefly took the place of my Hall, thanks to the dimensional engine Alpha Red Alpha. The Other Hall had been home to a whole different family of Droods, on a different earth. Someone killed them all and blew up their home, leaving only burned-out ruins and dead bodies. Some still wrapped in half-melted golden armour. I never did find out who wasresponsible for that. Another thing I’d always meant to get around to, but life kept getting in the way.
    For a while there, I thought I was the last Drood. So many people have died on my watch. Friends and family, allies and enemies. Some I’d seen die; some I killed myself. For what seemed like good reasons at the time. More faces, more stories. So much death in my life.
    I wandered on through the grounds, just going where my feet led me. Visiting various places Molly and I had been before. On the edge of the grounds, I found a place of dead earth and dark trees. I stopped.
    “This was where we broke into the grounds, the first time I came here with you,” I said. “After my family had declared me rogue and wanted me dead.”
    “Yes,” said Molly. “I remember.”
    “This is where we met the scarecrows . . .”
    “I know. I still have nightmares about them sometimes.”
    “That’s my family for you.”
    The scarecrows are part of my family’s outer defences. Stuffed and preserved human figures that look like they’ve just come down off their crosses with bad intentions on their minds. Unstoppable, unfeeling things driven to fight all intruders. My family makes them out of the bodies of our most hated enemies, to guard the family they tried to harm. Eternal punishment, or for as long as they last. I remembered how they looked, lurching out of the shadows to face us. Their clothes rotting and falling apart, their faces stretched taut, brown as parchment and as brittle. Tufts of straw protruded from their