CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Evan
Thursday
9:30 pm
25 hours, 19 minutes until the falling
Henri stared at the floor.
Her lamp speckled the room with faded orange glow. Burnt furniture, destroyed collections, ashes and soot blanketed the room. She didn't seem to notice the pictures carved on walls and furniture—like ancient cave drawings—the same images, repeated over and over, of how three Roslings met their grizzly ends. A girl hung by her neck out the window. A body in the furnace. A lump of legs and arms curled on the floor.
I limped to her side, tucking the book in my belt behind me. I thought about my bloody fingers, the sand and grime I found under my nails this morning, after a six hour blackout. I knew who wrote this list of names, this list of twelve. This list with the first three names crossed out.
—Little Saye—
—Anabelle—
—Lucy—
Pearl
Henrietta
Gertrude
Parkrose
Haller
Roxhill
Othella
Vashion
Ravenna
Three dead. Nine to go.
And Henri's name was next after Pearl.
A voice in my ear.
This looks like the list of a murderer.
I tried to lift her chin. "Hey."
"Where did this come from?"
I caught a glimpse of an engraving behind her, Lucy staring up at the ceiling, her arms spread open as flames consumed her.
You're quite the artist.
A migraine burrowed into the bones above my eyes. "I don't know..." I watched her. "Henri, we don't have time to sort this out now."
"What's there to sort? My name's right there." She pointed. "I'm next."
If you fall asleep.
"Not now—" I started to say to the monster. Henri glared at me. "I mean... the list could be anything."
Why don't you give her a rubric to keep her safe? That helped so well with the Lucy and Anabelle and Pearl...
Soft laughter echoed from the stairwell as I pulled the clanker rubric from my pocket. "I want to show you something." I held the rubric out to her. "Pearl needs us."
Shoulders hanging, she looked. Above the word rubric it read:
The Blood Pumpery
She held the flicking candle closer as I turned the rubric over. Her back straightened. "What is it?"
"Give me your hand."
She jumped at my touch. I placed the rubric in her palm.
"What?"
"Do you feel it?"
She shook her head.
"It's supposed to beat. Like a heart." I squeezed the rubric, rubbing it harder and harder. She put her hand on my arm.
I pulled away. "It just needs to warm up." I breathed on it, rubbing more.
"Maybe Mazol wasn't lying about Pearl."
I rubbed until my hands were raw. Spiders crawled inside me—I didn't want the clanker to beat. The nightmare had worked me over good, convinced me Pearl was alive; so if he was right about her, he was right about me being the murderer too.
"Did you hear that?" Henri pressed the clanker to her ear.
I grabbed at it. She twisted away.
"Give it back—"
"Shhhh." Thump, thump. The spiders inside me turned into hornets.
I told you.
My migraine spread.
When are you going to start believing me?
A tiny light grew inside the rubric until it saturated Henri's fingers. The beams burst through her skin, revealing the life that pumped through her veins. Sparks escaped from the rubric; burning sawdust floating around us.
"What is that sound?" Henri said.
"Pearl." My voice was as weak as Pearl's heart.
"How did you know it would beat?"
"I was worried she's be next—"
"Because she's next on the list," Henri said, her voice quiet.
The list you wrote.
I nodded. "I gave her a rubric that's connected to the clanker."
Tell her about me.
"Because of a dream. I just had a feeling—"
Coward.
"Everyone dies," Henri said. "Maybe it's just my time."
She's right.
I took her shaking hand in mine. "Don't say that."
You can't save her.
"Does it matter?" Henri said.
But you can save yourself.
"No—" I said to the monster.
Henri's eyes went wet.
"Of course it matters." I wiped clammy fingers on my pants then pulled her closer. "Do you remember the closet? You said you believe."
She gazed up.
"You were right."
"Of course I was right." She stared at me a long moment. "Let's run away. We'll get the Roslings, leave tonight—"
Put her out of her misery.
I rubbed my forehead, trying to stem the pain in my skull. "It's not safe."
If you can't do it, I will.
"It's not safe here either," she said.
"We need to find Pearl. The rubric I gave her will tell us what's causing the affliktion. After tomorrow, you'll all be safe here."
"What happens tomorrow?"
"I just have a feeling it will all be over soon."
"But this room. This list..." Henri's eyes fixed on my hands, the crusted blood and the ground fingernails. She covered her mouth and whispered, "It's you. You did this."
"I don't know. I don't remember—"
Henri edged away. "But how could you know who will die next? How could you make this list unless—"
"I'm the murderer? Yeah, thanks, I thought of that."
"But—"
"You're right. I've been blacking out, waking up places I don't remember going. So it could be me..."
"I don't understand."
"I'm not safe—that's why we can't run away. Not until I prove it's Mazol."
We fell silent. My head throbbed. A vision of Henri's face struck me, right after Yesler jabbed me with the needle. 'You're not who you think you are,' Henri said. Or was it, 'you're not as awake as you think you are'? The memory was so faded; I couldn't even be sure it happened.
I clutched her hand. "I'm scared Henri."
"I am too." She paused. "What do we do now?"
"We use this clanker to find Pearl. It'll grow stronger the closer we get."
"What about Mazol? I've been gone too long. They'll know we're up to something."
I thought again of her quiet conversation with Mazol in the Caldroen.
She'll sell your life for a loaf of bread.
"This is our only chance," I said. "We have to go now."
She nodded. We padded noiselessly down long hallways and stairs. Henri limped through a beam of moonlight. She massaged her back, rubbed her eyes. Some intuition deep inside me screamed, telling me what was wrong, but I was too deaf to hear. I found myself fumbling through the bag of rubrics in my pocket. A fragment of the nightmare with Pearl's gravebox came back to me.
Dravus drove his old rickety cart through the castle gates into the jungles. In the cart's bed lay a splintered wooden crate with clumps of mud and dirt clinging to its side.
I stopped. "Did anyone come to the castle today?"
Henri turned away from me. "I don't know..."
"What about Dravus?"
She didn't answer. She wouldn't look me in the eyes.
"Henri?"
"I said no one came."
She walked on. I hurried to catch up. In the flickering candlelight, I kept an eye on Henri, her sunken face, her pale skin crossed with veins. I stumbled on a stair. The book fell out of my belt. Henri swooped it up.
"Give that here, Henri."
"Is this really it? The letter?"
"It belongs to me." I tried to grab it.
She held it out slowly; its pages flapping open. "Why don't you trust me?"
I snapped it from her. As I
moved to shove it back in my belt, I caught a glimpse of large letters scrawled across a blank page as it flipped by.
Is someone there?
I found the page, read the words again. "Where's the nearest writing cabinet?"
"I think there's one in that big, blue room." She pointed down the hall.
I limped to it, threw open the door, and tore through the hutch until I found a quill and ink.
Henri appeared at the door. "What's going on?"
"Someone is sending a message."
Evan Burl and the Falling, Vol. 1-2 Page 31