Gloom Town

by Ronald L. Smith

He scrambled back. “He’s . . . he’s dead!”

  Izzy didn’t speak, but knelt next to the body. She lowered her ear to the artist’s chest. Rory saw her blink calmly, as if in concentration. After a moment, she lifted her head. “Yup, he’s dead, all right.”

  Rory closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

  “I don’t see any marks on him,” Izzy observed, as if she saw dead bodies every day.

  Magic, is what Rory was thinking, but kept it to himself.

  “Uh-oh,” Izzy said.

  “What?”

  She lifted Swoop’s limp arm. Weak sunlight filtered in through the curtains. She moved the arm back and forth, as if he were a puppet, looking at the floor as she did so. “There’s no shadow.”

  Rory stood up. He felt faint. His head spun. “They killed him and took his shadow.”

  “Or,” Izzy countered, “they took his shadow and then killed him.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Rory said nervously, peering around. Fear was slowly rising in his chest. Sweat beaded on his brow.

  “Wait,” Izzy said, rising from the floor. “Let’s look around first. There might be something here we can use. Something that can help us get our shadows back.”

  Rory looked at his friend like she had truly lost her mind. “Are you mad? He’s dead, Izzy. Dead. We can’t . . . be here!”

  Izzy didn’t respond, only walked over to the wall and examined some of the paintings.

  Rory sighed in frustration. He didn’t want to look at Swoop’s lifeless body again, but he did.

  The man was dead.

  “Check the books,” Izzy called without looking at him. “There might be something there.”

  “Can’t believe it,” he muttered. “This is crazy.” But still, he did as his friend said.

  The rows of books on the shelves were broken up by a few small decorative objects between them. Rory picked up the clay bird that Swoop had handled just a few days ago. He placed it back down and angled his head to read some of the spines: Lysander Swoop, Royal Portraitist; Goldenrod, Tales from the Sea; Ancient Rome: Myth or Reality? Most of the other books were about painting and sculpture.

  “Hey, look,” Izzy said. “This is weird.”

  Rory walked over and stood beside her. His fear and frustration had lessened somewhat, but still, there was a dead body just over his shoulder.

  He shivered.

  Izzy had peeled away a sizable piece of loose rose-colored wallpaper between two of Swoop’s paintings.

  “It was flaking away,” she said. “Look.”

  Rory leaned in. The distinct image of an eye stared back at him.

  “What could it be?” he asked.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Izzy and Rory peeled away more of the wallpaper. It curled and fell to the floor in great ribbons. Rory glimpsed smudges of red, yellow, and green underneath. There was definitely a painting there.

  At last, Rory peeled away the final strip.

  “By the sea gods,” Izzy whispered.

  Rory didn’t speak, but another tremor ran through him.

  Staring back at them was the image of a woman. It looked as if Swoop had painted her in some sort of fever dream. The mouth was open, revealing red tongues of flame. The eyes were only smudges of color—more like the impression of human eyes. Twisted green and brown vines made up her hair.

  Rory’s dream flickered in his vision—a human form and red flames. He swallowed.

  “Look,” Izzy said, leaning in closer.

  Rory took a tentative step forward. Along the bottom of the painting, a snaky line of red paint revealed a name.

  “Mara,” Rory whispered. He immediately felt as if he shouldn’t have said the name aloud. “I’ve seen her before,” he said quietly.

  “Where?”

  “My dream. I’m sure this is who I dreamed about. And it was also carved on Foxglove’s cellar doors.” He swallowed again. His mouth was dry. “This is her, Izzy. She.”

  Izzy peered around the room warily, as if more hidden portraits were waiting to be discovered. “Why did Swoop paint this?” she asked.

  “Why did he cover it up?” Rory shot back.

  Izzy, while seemingly not distressed by the man’s dead body, paled at the question.

  Rory glanced away from the painting and then back again. It was hard to look at for more than a few seconds at a time. It was as if there was something in it that was pulling the viewer in, beckoning. Calling. “C’mon,” he said abruptly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Izzy turned away from the wall. “What about him?” she said, cocking her head in the direction of Lysander Swoop’s crumpled form.

  “I don’t know,” Rory replied. “We can’t tell anyone. They’ll want to know what we were doing here.” He set his jaw. “And we broke in.”

  “Just have to leave him then,” Izzy said matter-of-factly.

  Rory was taken aback by his friend’s callousness, but he didn’t know what to say. He was numb. He reluctantly walked to the door without glancing back, and imagined the eyes of Mara staring at his retreating form. Who was she?

  “Wait,” Izzy said, turning around.

  “What?” Rory snapped. “We have to get out of here, Izzy. Now!”

  She didn’t answer, but walked to a table full of paints and brushes.

  Rory joined her. “What are you doing?”

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  Rory breathed in deeply. We’re never going to get out of here. We’ll be caught, and then what will Mum do?

  Izzy picked up a small knife and walked back toward the image painted on the wall. To Rory’s surprise, she began to scrape away some of the paint, cupping her free hand to collect the colored specks.

  “What are you—” Rory started.

  “Shh,” Izzy scolded.

  She continued to scrape until a small mound of paint was in her hand. Then she stepped away from the wall and looked at her open palm. She breathed in through her nostrils and then exhaled. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “What were you doing?” Rory asked. “What are you going to do with that?”

  Izzy grinned. “I’m going to see if I really have the sight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A Flame in the Dark

  Night had fallen by the time they arrived at Black Maddie’s. That’s where Izzy wanted to do whatever it was she had planned. To see if she really had the sight. Could it work? Rory wondered.

  The strangeness of the past few days plagued his thoughts. Was the shape in his dream Mara? The possibility filled him with dread. It was a woman’s voice, after all, that had called out the ominous words: I thirst. I hunger. Why had he dreamt it? He pushed the possibility that he, like Izzy, might have magic to the back of his mind.

  As they walked in silence, Rory saw that Izzy kept her hand cupped, as if she were carrying an egg. A dog barked on the other side of the street and Rory jumped. His nerves were rattled.

  They’d seen a dead body.

  They’d even touched it.

  If anyone had seen them go inside Swoop’s house, they’d be in big trouble.

  Rory opened the door to the inn and they stepped inside. People turned their heads and then went back to their drinks and conversation. They don’t know their shadows are gone, Rory thought. A dim, smoky inn was the last place you’d expect to notice one.

  Inside Izzy’s little chamber, at her instruction, Rory lit the candles placed on the table. Soft yellow light pooled around them as they sat opposite each other. The noise and music from the front of the inn drifted back into the room. Rory still couldn’t get the image of Mara out of his mind.

  With a relieved breath, Izzy turned her hand over the table, letting the specks of paint fall onto the surface. She then reached into the drawer, pulled out a blank page of parchment, and laid it alongside the little mound of colored flakes.

  “Izzy?” Rory asked. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”

  She swept
a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ve seen my mum do some things,” she began. “People come to the house now and then looking for answers: names of people they want to take revenge on, stuff like that. I’ve watched her, and she always tells people to bring something that belongs to them, so she can kind of . . . I don’t know. Read it?”

  Rory nodded. “Makes sense,” he offered. “I guess?”

  “Here goes,” she said, and spit in her hand.

  Rory raised an eyebrow. “What—?”

  “Shh.”

  With her free hand, Izzy swept the paint flecks onto her wet palm and then rubbed both palms together.

  “Lovely,” Rory said.

  Izzy ignored him. She drew her hands apart, smudged with color. “See?” she said, holding them up.

  Rory nodded, intrigued.

  Izzy placed one of her palms down on the paper.

  She closed her eyes and whispered:

  “Daughters of air,

  daughters of smoke,

  goddess of time and goddess of hope,

  sky and fern and wood and water,

  show me the sight I need, Mother-Daughter.”

  Rory had never heard her sound so serious.

  She opened her eyes and lifted her hand.

  Rory looked at Izzy’s multicolored handprint on the parchment. They stared at it for what seemed like a very long time.

  “What’s supposed to happen?” he asked.

  Izzy laid her other hand back over her own handprint. “Mara,” she said. “Show us who she is.”

  As she spoke the name, Rory’s heart bounced around in his chest. Like before, he sensed that saying it aloud was breaking some kind of rule. Or asking for trouble. He couldn’t explain it, but it felt . . . wrong.

  Izzy lifted her hand again.

  And the paper burst into flame.

  “Look out!” Rory cried, and pushed back from the table. But as suddenly as the flame appeared, it whooshed out, leaving only a wispy trail of smoke. Izzy and Rory watched in terrified fascination. The smoke hovered unnaturally over the table and around the pile of burned paper. Then it began to swoop and curl, as if guided by an invisible hand.

  “It’s writing,” Izzy said calmly. “The goddess heard my call.”

  Rory shook his head. “It can’t be,” he whispered.

  The smoke curled and turned as fluidly as a quill on paper. Lines of script hovered an inch above the table. “Can you read it?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” said Izzy without looking away.

  Rory felt as if he were in a dream. His head was heavy on his neck. A last wispy trail of smoke rose and then vanished. Rory heard his heartbeat in his ears.

  Izzy and Rory looked at each other. They both tentatively leaned toward the table until they were almost touching heads.

  “Mara of the Shadows,” Izzy read the smoky words. “Beware, daughter. She is the Destroyer. Queen of Sorrow.”

  Rory licked his lips. His tongue was dry in his throat again. He read on, his voice unsteady. “She comes with the night. Mara of the Shadows . . .”

  He drew back.

  He didn’t want to say the next words aloud.

  So Izzy read them for him: “She thirsts. She hungers.”

  The smoke spun into black ribbons and then vanished.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  An Almost Normal Day

  Rory and Izzy stared across the table at each other.

  “Those are the words, Rory,” Izzy declared. “The words you heard in your dream.”

  “I know,” he said, strangely calm. “Why did I dream it? Why did I hear it?”

  Izzy ran a finger along the table. All signs of the smoke were gone, leaving just the remnants of the burned paper. “I don’t know. Maybe you do have magic.”

  “You have the sight,” Rory pointed out, ignoring what she had just said. He didn’t want to think about it. It was too much.

  They sat in silence. Rory didn’t know what to say. A goddess had just given them a message. His world was turning upside down. “I need something to drink,” he finally said.

  Izzy rose from the table and passed through the red curtain. Rory felt cold. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

  Izzy had the sight, and she’d discovered who it was he’d seen in his dreams​—​the person Lysander Swoop had painted on his wall. Mara of the Shadows.

  What did she want with him? Why had he dreamed of her?

  Izzy returned with a cinnamon-root elixir. She studied him a moment before offering it. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Rory said absently, although he felt nothing of the sort.

  “Here,” she said, handing him the drink.

  He took it eagerly. “Thanks.”

  Izzy walked around him and sat back down at the table. Candlelight flickered on her face. “The goddess said to beware.”

  “Goddess,” Rory echoed. He shook his head. “What is happening, Izzy? How did we—how did all of this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Izzy replied. “But we can’t stop now. We know that Foxglove killed that boy, Timothy, and we have to get our shadows back.”

  “Not just ours,” Rory said, thinking of his mum. “Everyone’s in Gloom.”

  “Sea Bell.” Izzy corrected him.

  Somehow, he found himself half smiling. “Right. Sea Bell.”

  “We’ve gotta get in there,” Izzy declared. “Into the manor.”

  Rory studied his feet for a moment and then looked back up. “I know.”

  * * *

  Rory barely slept, and when he did, his dreams were filled with the image of a face made from nightmares.

  Mara of the Shadows.

  I thirst. I hunger.

  She is coming. I can feel her upon the wind.

  Was she coming to Gloom? What did she want?

  We will need more. Much more.

  More shadows? Rory wondered. Lysander Swoop also troubled Rory’s dreams, the painter’s cold, dead eyes staring up at him.

  He was dead.

  Dead.

  Surely killed by Foxglove and Arcanus Creatura.

  Were they going to come for Rory too?

  He rose from bed. The night had passed quickly. He and Izzy had to stop Foxglove. No matter what.

  But can we do it? Even if Izzy did have some kind of special witch powers, how could she possibly stand up against them?

  Rory recalled the words he’d heard behind the red door.

  A great harvest is coming.

  Was this shadow-stealing the harvest? It had to be. What else could it have meant?

  Rory sighed and put on his clothes. If they were really going into Foxglove Manor, he’d have to protect himself. He retrieved a dagger from the drawer of his bedside table. He’d used it to whittle wood when he was younger, carving little animals and flowers. Ox Bells had shown him how. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but he felt safer with it.

  He slipped it into his boot.

  Rory looked in the small piece of mirror glass nailed to the wall. His reflection peered back at him. He realized he hadn’t really seen himself in a long time. His eyes were bleary, and he thought they didn’t have the same sparkle to them as they’d had before—before he’d met Antius Foxglove and Malvonius Root, that is.

  Downstairs, his mum, Ox Bells, and Miss Cora were in the sitting room drinking tea.

  “There he is,” Ox Bells called out. “Your mum says you’ve been in and out like a shadow these past few days. Whatcher been doing, Rory?”

  Rory froze at the mention of shadows. Seeing the three of them sitting and enjoying their tea with weak sunlight coming through the window, he distinctly noticed the absence of theirs. No one knows it’s missing until they look, Izzy had said.

  How could they not know?

  If Rory told them now, would they think he was crazy?

  He didn’t want to chance it.

  “Eel got your tongue?” Miss Cora ventured.

  “Oh,” Rory said, coming back to himself.
“We’ve just been exploring and stuff. Me and Izzy.”

  Hilda shook her head. “You two are connected at the hip.” She smiled. “I made you some fishcakes. In the kitchen.”

  Rory went into the kitchen and found two golden brown fishcakes on a small plate. He picked it up and went back to sit on the couch next to his mum.

  “Did you hear?” Ox Bells said, waggling his eyebrows at Rory.

  “Hear what?” he asked, mouth full.

  “The circus has come to Gloom,” the former strongman replied. “It’s my old troupe. First performance’s tonight.”

  Rory had been so caught up in his own worries he hadn’t thought more about the players they had seen. “Oh,” he said. “Me and Izzy saw them the other day.”

  “Where?” Ox Bells asked.

  Rory swallowed his fish with a gulp. He didn’t have anything to hide, but for some reason, he was hesitant. He didn’t want his mum and her friends asking about what he’d been doing or where he’d been going. “Um,” he started. “Over by Captain’s Quay.”

  “Captain’s Quay?” Miss Cora said sourly. “That’s a rough area.”

  “What were you doing over there?” his mum asked. Her eyes narrowed a bit. Rory knew that look.

  “Oh,” he said a little too cheerily, “Izzy, you know. She’s, um . . . We wanted to . . . There’s a shop over there that sells cards and stones and stuff. You know. Fortune-telling.”

  His mum gave him a skeptical look.

  “Fortunes,” Ox Bells snorted. “Bunch of rubbish if you ask me. Spirits and such. Humph.” He picked up his teacup with huge fingers.

  If only you knew, Rory thought. Not spirits. Shadow stealers. And messages from a goddess. And a boy’s heart buried in a back garden.

  “Right.” He grinned and feigned laughter. “All a bunch of nonsense.”

  * * *

  Rory stuck close to home while Izzy finished her work at Black Maddie’s.

  There was no real plan, only to arrive at Foxglove Manor under the cover of night and see what they could find out.

  His day had been full of errands: filling water bottles from the pump and bringing them inside the house, sweeping out the front room, running to the market to get his mum’s order of clams and fish. She was at the tannery and, after morning tea with Ox Bells and Miss Cora, had left Rory with a long list of things to do.