Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“There’s a pulse beneath it all. Not the girl or the body that she’s given up.
It’s the space inside her. It’s like the moment these girls end up on my table, that space inside them is listening.
I think it knows I’m watching and trying to find a way to end it all…
just like I have to end their suffering every time they die looking for a love that doesn’t exist.”
—Journal of E. A. Harrow
Lenoria lay there, pale and quiet, like she could have been asleep.
The sheet draped over her only barely clung to her chest, and Isaac knew he should look away, but he couldn’t stop the pull she had on him.
The blood in his veins was pounding a deep thrum inside his head and making him dizzy with the need to be near her.
His feet stepped closer.
In a strange way, she looked like she belonged there.
It was as if the table had always been her altar and he, the one meant to lay her out—clean her, open her, preserve her, worship her.
He’d had others from the town on his table from this very ritual, but none had ever gotten under his skin so completely.
He could lie to himself all he wanted, but he knew it was because they were connected somehow.
She wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t sane. The middle ground was somewhere in between.
And then, with a slow and deliberate move of her hand, the sheet was pulled off her body and onto the floor, leaving her entirely exposed to him. His throat went dry.
“You shouldn’t be in here like this,” he said quietly.
“I wanted you to see me,” she whispered as she finally opened her eyes to stare up at him as he stood at the head of the table. “And now you’re looking.”
He was looking. Christ, he couldn’t stop looking.
Her lips were no longer painted red, and he wondered if she’d somehow rubbed the makeup off on the way to the room in her haste, but the tone of them was pink and pale.
Her limbs, motionless. Her breath came only when she remembered to fake it, which he’d noticed last night when she actually drifted to sleep because her chest had stopped moving.
But, her eyes were so clear. The iris looked silver, like the metal she’d set herself upon.
When his hand gently cupped one of her breasts, her thighs pressed together, subtle but unmistakable.
“I’m meant to be yours,” she said. “We were meant to be together.”
His hand found her face, fingers brushing the curve of her jaw.
She leaned into it and kissed his palm. “I’d do anything for you, Isaac.”
His chest ached. His lungs struggled. The feelings that were overtaking him were so strong, there was no way to escape them. This pull between them. It had to be true. They had to be together.
He leaned down.
Close.
Closer.
Her lips touched his cheek.
Then—
Rrrrrrring.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, loud and unavoidable in the sterile quiet of the room.
Isaac jerked back, stepping away from her as he fumbled for his phone. Mom lit up the screen.
“Stay here,” he said.
She nodded once, and simply folded her hands over her chest as she smiled at him.
He stepped into the hallway, shutting the door behind him before answering.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
His mother’s voice cracked immediately.
“I had a nightmare,” she said. “I saw you. Gasping for breath and buried in the ground. I couldn’t breathe—It was like I was you in that moment—Isaac, what’s happening?”
He swallowed hard, and his eyes looked at the closed door to the room where Lenoria lay.
“There’s a girl. One from the cult in town. But she’s not like the others. She came back, and it’s like she’s dead but still alive. She’s walking and talking and…and she said my name.”
Silence.
Then his mother spoke, voice low and shaky.
“You need to finish it.”
“What?”
“Embalm her. Let her pass on and have them bury her again.”
“But, I don’t even know if that would work if she’s already dead, Mom! She’s not like them. She’s not whispering. She's lucid. She’s alive in a way they never were.”
“That’s worse,” she snapped. “Isaac, listen to me—if she’s functioning, if she’s speaking clearly, she’s not alone in there. You understand?”
He didn’t answer. Was this why it was so easy for her to get under his skin? Was she controlling him? Was there something inside her that was?
“You think it's a mercy to let her live, but it isn’t. It’s an invitation that they’ve been working toward for decades—a gate. Listen, they’ll know she’s missing, and they’ll come for her. And when they do, you’ll be the one who gets hurt when they try to use her for their plans.”
“But it doesn’t feel like killing. It feels—”
“You’re not thinking clearly. That’s how it starts.”
“She knew my name, Mom.”
“So did the cult. You’ve been helping them with their bodies, haven’t you? I’m sure they talked about the young man who took over for his father at the funeral home. Of course she knew your goddamn name, Isaac.”
“I don’t want to kill her.”
“Then don’t think of it as killing. Think of it as keeping that fucking gate closed, Isaac.”
Isaac stared at the toes of his boots, focusing on the cracks in the worn leather. She was right. Whatever had happened with this girl was far too different to be a coincidence, and it was best not to play with the darkness that came attached to her.
“Come home, Isaac,” his mother whispered.
“Please. Your father and I—we tried so hard to keep this from you. They wanted me to do the ritual when I was young, but I had already fallen pregnant with your father behind their backs. They would have used you for innocent blood for their rituals if your father hadn’t offered himself up to do their bidding. ”
“What do you mean? He just embalmed them.”
“That, and…” his mother trailed off, trying to find the right words. “He’d offered himself in other ways to the cult. He promised he’d be the vessel if it ever came to them gaining contact with the other side.”
“Why would he do that? Is that why you never told me about him until I got older?”
“He thought it would protect you!”
“Did it?”
More silence.
“No,” she said. “Because, you still went back. And I think it’s passed itself down to you now that he’s gone.”
Isaac hung up without another word and stared at the maintenance schedule on the hallway wall until his vision blurred. Then he took a deep breath and went back to the embalming room.
He would do it.
He shut the door behind him and locked it, causing the body on the metal slab to stir.
Lenoria looked up from the prep table, her face relaxed, as if she already knew what he’d decided. She moved to sit up when he raised his hand in the air to signal for her to stop.
“Don’t,” he said. His voice was hard, like he was trying to dissociate. “Lay back down.”
She obeyed.
No hesitation. Just a girl who listened to the one she was promised to.
He moved methodically now, the way he knew his father had a hundred times before.
He opened the drawer and pulled out the tray he needed.
Scalpels. Artery forceps. Cannula. Embalming needle.
Tubing. Bottles of Formaldehyde. Everything gleamed in the overhead light like it was waiting for him to get on with it.
His hands shook as he reached for the instruments he’d gotten so used to, and he tried desperately to steady them.
“You’re going to do it?” she asked gently, her tone calm.
“Don’t talk.”
He uncapped the needle and laid the tubing along the edge of the table.
“Will it hurt? Since I’m different from the others? Will I still feel pain?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“Stop talking.”
“I don’t mind if it does. You’re allowed to hurt me. If it helps.”
He turned away from her and went back to the tray. Focusing on arranging his tools, he tried to think clinically, like this wasn’t abnormal. Like she was just another failed connection to the underworld. Another girl who hadn’t made it all the way through.
But her voice kept sliding against the part of his brain that was trying so hard to stay detached from the situation.
“I’ve never been touched by someone before. Not like that. Not by someone who looked at me like you do.”
He inhaled sharply and dropped his hands to his sides as they balled up into fists.
“Please,” he whispered, not to her—to himself. “Please just stop talking.”
She moved to sit up again.
He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her gently but firmly back down. “Stay down.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and the sheet slid from her hips.
He didn’t pull it back up. Instead, he grabbed the scalpel and lunged forward where he made a deep incision into her skin where he’d drain the fluids from her body.
Dark blood began to pulse out of the wound in small waves, down her chest and onto the table.
She didn’t make a sound.
Hands trembling, he positioned the trocar against her chest, right below the collarbone, where he’d begin the process. Looked at the spot where he’d send the chemicals into her veins.
Where he’d end whatever this was.
She looked up at him, and he was taken again by how beautiful she was as she bled freely in front of him—
“Do it,” she said, voice calm and breathy. “If that’s what you really want.”
The metal slid against the incision as he lined it up, his eyes darting between her face and the instrument he was using.
“If you don’t want me,” she whispered, “then finish what they started.”
The words hit him like she’d torn into his chest with the discarded scalpel, and he stopped breathing. His mouth opened, but no words came.
Isaac lowered his hand, and the needle clattered to the tile floor.
“Isaac,” she whispered and tilted her chin toward him to catch his gaze.
He pressed both hands to the table on either side of her, leaning down, breath ragged.
“You don’t get to talk like that,” he said, voice cracking. “Like I don’t want you.”
Her lips parted to speak again, but he was already on her.