Chapter 11 Haunts and Havens #2
She had never been done with living. For all her stillness, all her willingness to dream and drift her way through her days, she was alive, and she had always wanted to stay that way.
Dreams were for the living, after all, and she enjoyed her dreams too much to give them up so easily.
The whispers of the dead drew closer, drowning out Sumi’s shouts, obscuring the sound of wings.
Then she was surrounded. The air around her grew cold, and it was only her years of learning to control her body’s every reaction that allowed her to stop the autonomic reactions to the chill.
Through extreme focus, she tamped down the gooseflesh that wanted to erupt along her arms, forced the hair on the back of her neck to remain flat and motionless.
The wind brushed against her exposed shoulders, feeling like the fingers of a cold, cold hand.
In her ear, Jill’s voice whispered, “You can stand still. Oh, I’m so very impressed.
This isn’t a game of freeze tag, little statue: you don’t win if you just wait us out.
You lose as soon as you need to take a breath.
I know you statues still breathe. You have an hour at most before your body betrays you and you move again. ”
The wind swirled around Nancy, drowning out every other sound in the world, and she was going to die. It was as simple and straightforward as that. She was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She couldn’t even close her eyes.
All she could do was wait.
FOR SUMI, WATCHING THE DEAD surround Nancy was something out of a horror movie, heartbreaking and impossible.
They were less figures than they were the impressions of figures, white chalk sketches of faces and reaching hands somehow drawn in open air, like thin fog that clutched and caught.
They ruffled Nancy’s hair and clothing, setting them swaying, and that looked enough like motion that Sumi’s own breath caught in her throat, choking her.
“Christopher,” she said, in a completely reasonable tone, not raising her voice at all, “I need you to start playing your flute now.”
Christopher, who had been standing frozen since Talia shouted, lifted his flute to his lips and blew, beginning to move his fingers across the depressions. None of them could hear the music he played, not even the Lord of the Dead, but they could feel it, like an impending storm hanging in the air.
He walked slowly forward as he played, moving toward the stationary Nancy and her entourage of the unfriendly dead, playing all the while. Sumi nodded, looking relieved.
“They’re lining up,” she said. “Move them away from Nancy if you can. Try and get her clear. She’s not going to move, so the dead will need to. Play faster.”
Christopher nodded, fingers moving faster as he picked up the tempo.
Talia whistled silently, and the moths flocked to flutter enticingly between her and Nancy.
A few of them came apart as the grasping hands of the dead reached out and snatched at them, reducing them to dust and dreams. Talia winced, but didn’t call her moths away.
As the silver motes of light appeared and swirled, some of them floated closer, stopping just shy of Talia and coming together to form the pale outline of the fair-haired girl in the long, lacy gown. She smirked at the group.
“Decided to come crawling back and throw yourselves upon my mercy?” she asked.
“Thanks for bringing us the snacks. They help to take the edge off.” She reached out with one translucent hand, plucking a moth out of the air.
She popped it into her mouth and bit down, and the moth came apart like all the others, dissolving into the substance of her.
Another silvery mote joined her outline, which already looked more solid than it had been the first time they saw her.
Jill swallowed, and smirked again, watching the others. “My demands are simple. Take me back to the Moors, bring me back to life, and I’ll call off my army. Leave me dead, and all your pretty knickknacks can join me on this side of the grave. It’s your choice.”
“We don’t have a way of getting to the Moors from here,” said Kade. “Jill, please. Be sensible. You’re smarter than this. You know the Doors don’t open on demand.”
“That sounds like a you problem,” said Jill. “It and I have that in common. Right now I’m also a you problem. And I’ve offered you a solution. Take it or don’t—it’s your call either way.”
“I am the Lord of these Halls,” said the Lord of the Dead, pushing his way through the group to glare at Jill. “You will stop this misbehavior at once, and return to your confinement.”
“Oh, the big, strong man wants me to go and be a good little girl and sit in my room while he does fucking nothing to make things better for us,” said Jill.
“You pamper your little living statues and you ignore the dead who supposedly own this place. You don’t help us find our passage on to the next life we’re meant for, or offer us ways to return to the lives we had, that were cut short too soon.
You’re useless, lord-man. I’ve seen a true lord.
I’ve served under him. He’s tasted the sweetness of my blood, which is more than you can say you’ve ever done. ”
“I do not drink the blood of shades,” said the Lord, sounding disgusted. “It’s no better than sour wine, tainting the tongue and curdling the belly. The lord you claim to serve would not have you if you came before him now.”
For a moment, Jill’s face distorted into rage, transparent skin drawing so tight across her bones that she became nothing more than a grinning skull, sharp and terrible. Her eyes sank into her head, blackened pits through which could be seen nothing of any value.
Then she shook her rage away, returning to the appearance of a pretty, dainty young girl.
“He wouldn’t, no,” she said. “My lord doesn’t traffic in the true dead.
He prefers the undead, who still walk in flesh and fear the sun.
But restore my body and he’ll love me again.
Reset the lines between the living and the dead, and let me go home. ”
The longing in her last word was painful. Sumi winced.
“I didn’t like being dead either, Jill,” she said.
“It was boring and it was lonely and it was cold. And it’s not fair that I got to come back when so many others don’t.
But I got to come back because people cared about me enough to try.
No one cares that much about you. Your own sister is the one who killed you—because you tried to kill her first. You deserve everything that’s happening to you right now, and I’m not going to get in the way of you getting what you deserve. ”
“Sumi,” hissed Kade. “Why are you antagonizing the nasty dead girl?”
“I don’t like it when she’s all calm and awful,” said Sumi. “She doesn’t deserve to be calm and awful. She’s been killing people, and she needs to stop killing people, so I’m going to be nasty to her if I want to be.”
Jill glared at her, clearly seething. “You take that back,” she snapped.
“Nope,” said Sumi.
“Take it back or I’ll make you sorry,” she said.
“How are you going to make me sorry?” asked Sumi. “You’re dead.”
“‘Dead’ only means as much as you let it mean,” said Jill hotly.
She surged forward—or tried to, anyway. Christopher blew harder into his silent flute, fingers moving faster and faster.
Jill seemed to hit an invisible barrier between her and Sumi, and shrieked, thrashing against it like a bug slamming up against a windscreen.
She pulled back again, shooting Christopher a look filled with pure, burning loathing.
“I’ll remember this, bone-boy,” she snapped, and vanished, bursting into silver motes.
They swirled through the air, moving away from the group to rejoin the dead clustered around Nancy. The motes drew tight, covering her in a net of glimmering brightness, then raced off down the hall, dragging the motionless Nancy with them.
Kade shouted and threw out his hand like he was going to grab hold of her. Christopher stopped playing to grab him, holding him back. The silver lights winked out, and Nancy was gone.