Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“They believe the body is a gate. That a soul ripped from flesh willingly leaves a space behind. The first time I embalmed one of the girls, I saw her mouth still moving. No breath. No sound. Just a name. I didn’t know it then, but they all whisper the name of the one who they are supposed to join in the afterlife. ”
—Journal of E. A. Harrow
The dead girl was staring at him.
Or at least… she had been until he moved out of her sightline.
Isaac stood at the edge of the cemetery, boots in the frost-bitten grass, one hand shoved in the pocket of his coat, the other holding a thermos of bad coffee gone colder than the graves he tended to in the mornings.
The moon was gone, the sun barely lightening the corner of the world beyond the forest.
Christ, even the wind felt wrong.
They’d buried her just a few hours earlier, as soon as the darkness settled for the night. Just as they had all the others.
That’s how the ritual worked: the girl was anointed, veiled, and then buried alive to be reunited with her eternal soulmate.
The chosen from the town of Sallow Hills watched and played their roles accordingly while the sisters blessed the soil.
The elders brought their offerings and made the younger girls watch so they knew what their fate would be should they be among the chosen.
And then they waited for these poor girls to give their lives for a chance to reunite with some alleged mythical being who would claim them and bestow the town with its greatest desires.
Three days later, Isaac was meant to dig her up. Again, just like all the others.
Three. Days.
Not six fucking hours.
Not that he was looking forward to dealing with the young woman’s body in any measure, but this made it stranger than he was used to.
It was one thing to embalm a body. It was another thing entirely to embalm one that was still whispering even though there were no other signs of life. No pulse, no color in the skin, the eyes white and hazy like a glass of sour milk.
And now there was one looking at him as if he were the god she’d been promised to.
She started walking toward him, and a smile spread across her face as she practically glided along the ground.
Isaac’s thermos hit the grass.
His whole body locked up as he watched her, but she moved confidently until she stood before him in that thin white shift, streaked with soil, and looked at him like he was the answer to every prayer with her mouth full of dirt.
“You’re late,” she said, as if they had some prior engagement he was unaware of. “I waited.”
Her voice was soft, even as the traces of the earth trailed out of her mouth.
“Jesus Christ—”
“No,” she said. “I was not promised to him.”
He took a step back. Then another.
Isaac never asked questions about what the town did.
He had taken over this position from his late father, and he knew he needed to keep his head down if he was to find out more about them and what led to his mother running away when he was born.
His job was just to embalm and bury again what was left when the ritual inevitably failed.
Now, this thing stood in front of him looking more alive than he wanted to believe.
“Who are you?” he asked. He tried to take another step back, but his legs knocked into a gravestone behind him.
“You’re Isaac—” she said in response, ignoring his question. “I dreamed of you for years, you know. I have lived my whole life to be joined with you.”
The pale girl with the dirty blonde hair swayed toward him and adjusted the veil on her head. She was sure of herself in a way that both calmed and terrified him because her faith had been so cultivated, and it seemed the ritual only set her more on edge.
“Listen, miss. You need help.”
“I need you.”
He shook his head in disbelief because nothing had prepared him for a moment like this.
“Isaac,” she whispered. “Please.”
None of the other girls had ever said his name.
Until tonight.
Until her.
Isaac’s throat was dry, and his fingers had gone numb by the time his heart rate settled down. The wind had picked up and pushed her veil back just enough for him to see her face.
And, fucking hell, was she beautiful.
Shit.
He should call his mother. Call the sisters. Call anyone to help him figure out what the fuck to do with a living dead girl.
Instead, he shrugged off his tan Carhartt, leaving him in just a white button-down and jeans, before he draped it around her bare shoulders.
“Come with me,” he said, voice rough but gentle. “There’s no point in arguing out here. You’re freezing.”
When he led her through the cemetery to the back of the property where he worked, the embalming room was too bright.
He blinked a few times as he adjusted to his surroundings, but when he looked at the woman beside him, her eyes were wide and unblinking.
He knew the floor was cold beneath her bare feet, but she didn’t flinch.
Her gaze simply drifted over the metal instruments, the bottles of chemicals, and the long, gleaming needles laid out in tidy little rows.
The expression on her face was strange, as if she were fascinated.
“This is where you take them apart,” she said, causing Isaac to shut the door behind them a little too hard. Mainly because who says stuff like that?
Isaac cleared his throat before correcting her. “It’s where I preserve them.”
The woman moved to the steel table, her fingers grazing the edge like she was remembering it from one of her dreams.
“But you have to do things to their bodies, though, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do they scream?”
His hip bumped into the corner of one of the prep tables, and he let out a low hiss of pain. “What?”
She turned to him slowly and cocked an eyebrow at him. He could see her clearly in the fluorescent lighting, but he still couldn’t make out if there were freckles on her nose or just more dirt.
“Do they scream when you open them up?”
He swallowed nervously and looked around the room, trying not to watch as she brushed some of the soil off her dress, causing her nipples to tighten under the thin material. “No. They… they don’t scream. They’re dead, so they don’t feel anything.”
Gray eyes went back to admiring the items around her and nodded, as if what he said made sense. Her hand hovered over the bone saw. Isaac moved fast, closing the distance between them and catching her wrist before she touched it.
“Don’t,” he said, firmer than he meant to. “These aren’t toys.”
She looked up at him. “You’re angry.”
“I’m—no. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“I’m already dead.”
“Are you? Because I’m finding that pretty hard to believe right now. You’re looking pretty damn alive, sweetheart.”
She pulled away, drifting toward the chemical shelves. Picked up a bottle of cavity fluid and held it to the light. All curiosity and no self-preservation. And no explanations either.
Wonderful.
“They said you'd come. But, they always said it could take a few days. But the second I died, you were calling to me. It took me some time to claw my way back to the surface, but I knew it was you. I didn’t mind coming to you instead.”
Isaac reached for her again, gently taking the bottle from her hands and setting it back on the shelf.
“This room isn’t for you. Let’s go into the house. You aren’t meant to be in here.”
“I’m not?” Her head tilted slightly, blonde hair looking rather flat from her time buried in the earth. “All the girls end up here. After they call for someone.”
“Not like this.”
“Then how?”
“Dead.”
She blinked at him, slowly. Thoughtful, even. Then, she gently pulled the veil from her head and laid it on the edge of the prep table near her.
“And I already told you that I am dead, just like them. I belong here.”
That’s what she should be, if the town performed the ceremony correctly. But it was impossible. She looked completely fine. Her skin was clean, not a scratch on her besides the redness of the pale skin on her palms from pawing at the earth.
He stepped in front of her and gently but firmly guided her away from the table.
“Come on. You're staying in the house.”
The living room was dim and a bit chilly as he stacked the firewood by a large set of windows.
He found the thickest pair of sweatpants he owned and a long T-shirt from the laundry basket of clothes he’d washed earlier but hadn’t had time to fold yet.
She didn’t speak as he helped her pull them on, though her eyes never left his face.
Isaac was careful to turn his head when her body was bare before him, and she settled his jacket back over her shoulders once he stepped away from her.
“You can rest here tonight. I’d offer you my bed, but the fire doesn’t reach well to the back of the house, and you’ll be warmer out here on the couch.”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” she stated and took her place on the cozy evergreen-colored loveseat, folding her filthy white linen shift on her lap.
“No.”
She leaned her head on the armrest, and her red lips held his attention as he faced her from the doorway leading to the kitchen. “Will you stay until I sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
It was the most normal she’d spoken to him all night.
Isaac sat down on the tattered, woven rug and leaned against the couch. He made sure to be close, but not touching, and she watched him for a long time before her eyes finally drifted shut.
He waited until his breathing evened out and his heart rate calmed.
Then he stood, careful not to wake her, and crossed to the shelf where the old journals were stacked in a cracked leather box.
Grabbing one, he checked that it had the date listed he was looking for and opened it.
The pages smelled of mildew and embalming fluid.
The perfect combination of his father, whom he never had the chance to get to know.
But that’s why he coveted his journals; the ones that his father wrote, knowing they would help someone someday figure out what was truly going on in Sallows Hill.
They believe the body is a gate…
Isaac turned the page and kept reading.