October Darlings

by Wendolyn Baird

  Distorted voices sound from somewhere near my right side, and I roll towards them. That must be up!

  “Hurry!” The voices are louder now, and distinctly feminine, although both low and rough.

  I surface gasping and coughing against the smell of stagnant water, and as I kick my feet below the surface, my legs move more freely. Just like before, the blood has vanished as though it had never existed at all. Something hits the water in front of me, and I push back, mistaking it for a snake, but it’s only a rope. Salvation!

  “Are you alright down there?” One of the women yells down. Her silhouette casts a shadow on me, and I squint up at her in confusion. Wasn’t the sky much darker before?

  “Yeah! But my friends,” I stop. Hanging onto the rope as they pull me up, I come to eye level with the ledge I’d just jumped from, but the niche in the wall is empty. No Ellis, Sabrina, or George. There’s not even enough room for more than one person to sit in the nook, and despite being above the water, I can no longer breathe.

  Two faces I know astonishingly well greet me as I clamber over the wall and seeing them up close is almost enough to send me tumbling down again.

  “Careful now!” The one dressed in rose catches my wrist before I can fall, and even though they are identical down to their hairstyles, I know instinctively that I’m being helped by Eleanor Jane.

  Her sister steadies me from the other side, and the twins step forward with matching frowns deploring my appearance. My limbs and clothes are still streaked in a layer of blood, and I hate to imagine what the rest of me must look like, but they don’t so much as flinch. I’ve never seen their spirits before... and the way they were able to lift me up, well that’s far more than I thought any ghost could do.

  “You’re dead!” I splutter. “Both of you!” I try to scramble away from them, but there’s nowhere to go, and their grips are insistent.

  “Yes,” Anna Mae smiles mischievously. “But fortunately for you, Adeline, you are not.”

  I wrench myself out of their grasps and stumble forward onto gleaming tiles that I know didn’t exist in the courtyard when I last entered it. The chapel is no longer a ruin, the entryways are free of planks, and the shadowy figures drifting through the breezeways are clothed in attires from a myriad of decades, centuries even.

  Swallowing, I come to a stop beside an immaculate statue, her mournful gaze judging me as intently as my deceased relatives. At least one thing looks the way it should. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course, we are. It’s not as though we haven’t been watching you this entire time!” Eleanor chides. “You’ve just managed to climb into the in-between, otherwise known as the shadow world.”

  “Successfully too,” Anna adds. “I’m impressed, most mortals get stuck halfway and perish. Then again, you are a Nix. It’s only natural that after so many generations the fullness of our promised talents should come into use.”

  “Wait, hold on, what are you talking about?” I must have asked the same question a billion times since I moved in with Delia, but this is the most I’ve ever needed an answer. “I was in a well. A shadow and a little boy ghost have been stalking me, one even took on the form of my friend! They’ve been trying to kill me! I wasn’t trying to get anywhere but out of the well, I thought maybe I could find something in the water...”

  “But you weren’t expecting to find an answer in the water,” they chime in together. It’s eerie how their low voices blend together, harmonizing with the quick autumn breezes that howls over the courtyard. “You just refused to accept your situation.”

  Anna cocks her head to the side, crossing her arms as she moves. “Not to say you haven’t been fighting fate the whole time, but this is the first time you truly accepted yourself. Even if it was only because you thought your friends would die because of you.”

  “There are far worse destinies than that, child,” Eleanor warns. They appear no older than twenty-seven; the same age I know they died.

  “What does this mean though? How do I get back? Are my friends okay? What’s hunting me and why? What did y’all do?”

  “Us?” They move and speak as one, terrifying as they are familiar. “We saved our bloodline and avenged our family. That sort of sacrifice leaves a mark.”

  “Like a blessing, or a stain?” I stagger around the side of the well, doing my best to avoid their pointed faces and cold eyes. I shouldn’t be able to hear or touch them, let alone sense the hundreds of spirits milling around beyond us. But I do.

  They turn their devilish smirks towards one another, dark secrets passing between them as their foreheads meet and their shoulders touch. The same rage that kept me afloat in the well surges through me now, and I clench my teeth to stop the shaking of my jaw. These are my ancestors. I will not fear them.

  Even so, my muscles are tight and my heart is moving so fast it feels like it's vibrating instead of beating.

  “That depends on how you look at it,” they whisper. And as they turn their gazes on me, I can see how they look at it.

  Visions of blood splatters coating the sitting room at Nix House flash in front of my eyes. Slit throats and anguished screams echo through the downstairs hallway, and the cruel laughter of men dragging bodies out the front door scorches my mind. It’s a story of retribution, and a vengeance with a purpose far beyond destruction.

  “The plantation owners learned what we’d done; how we hid people until they could move on. How we allowed their so-called property to reclaim themselves as humans, and these beasts were furious. They came for our father first, then our uncles. We never could recover their bodies.”

  An edge of heartbreak mingles with their words, and I can feel it stabbing me through the chest as painfully as a blade.

  “We tried to heal, and we laid low. We taught others how to build up their homes, and left the railroad to them, but still, our pain wasn’t enough. Those monsters came back again, waiting until there was a chill in the air and the world was alight with spirits.”

  October.

  A chill seizes me, holding me in place as this impossible world spins in front of me. The twins blur, moving in and out of focus. Further away, and then all too close.

  “We dropped like flies to poisonings and torture, but the most devastating blow was our younger cousin. He was only five, and the town tried to explain his death as an accidental drowning, but we knew better. No sooner than he was buried did the monsters come back, destroying his grave and desecrating his body.” The twins pause, their blackened teeth bared behind twisting lips and agonizing cries. “We did the only thing we could think of to stop it there. We bolted the doors to the house to protect our remaining kin and waited in the woods for them to come again.”

  Their tale is growing darker and darker, and I’m positive that I don’t want to know the rest.

  “They didn’t know that we were stronger than their guns or muscles or hatred. They didn’t know the secrets of the earth. How it feels to dig your own grave so your sister wouldn’t have to after you’d perished. Or to lay in wait night after night, listening to the whispers of the dead. And they didn’t realize just how lethal a single creature could be, let alone a swarm.”

  They hold their palms out to me, each cradling a scorpion, and my own hand flits to my wrist, where Frank remains a stationary trinket. Grinning at me, they slip the arachnids into their pockets and neatly cover their rotting teeth behind perfectly polite smiles. “We only acted to protect the innocent, but after all that time, we didn’t think those men,” they spit the word, “deserved a proper burial. After all, they wouldn’t let Beau rest in peace.”

  Their translucent eyes gleam with unspoken words, and though their mouths don’t move, I can still hear them. How they first lured the men to the scorpion’s nest and waited for the poison to set in, debilitating their prey before they attacked. How they preferred blades to bullets, and how the men were unrecognizable by the time the sun rose. The two women step apart, and again look as put together an
d harmless as they do in their portrait back home. What a lie that portrait is!

  “Beware of the blue eyes. The torn spirits of the men converged into your living shadow and they’ll stop at nothing to continue their hunt unless you take them down first.”

  “And the boy?” I have to gasp the words, as the air is thinning the longer I stand in their realm.

  Identical smiles flash across their pallid faces, and I know their expressions will forever haunt my dreams. “Why, Adeline, darling, I thought you knew?” Eleanor says. “He just wants a friend.”

  My knees buckle beneath me, and as my eyes roll in my head, I’m left with a glimpse of sky, and then nothing but darkness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  STRONG ARMS WRAP AROUND me, wrenching me from the choking darkness, demanding me to come to. As my face breaks the surface of the water, Ellis desperately drags me to my feet, gasping and spluttering as stagnant water and leeches cling to us.

  “What were you thinking?” he demands in a rough voice, shaking my shoulders slightly as he pulls me against him.

  “Is she okay?” Sabrina sounds like she’s sobbing, and it dawns on me that they very well may have thought I’d drowned with how much longer I must have been ‘under.’

  I can’t speak, I can only cling to him, staring into his wide, worried eyes and wishing we weren’t surrounded by flitting shadows. What little light trickles down from the ledge is just enough to make out the warm amber of his irises, and my sigh of relief is the only thing that kick starts my breathing. My jaw trembles so harshly, I bite my lip by accident, and Ellis, realizing the extent of my shock, immediately calls up to George for help.

  By the time they manage to settle me back on the ledge and pick the leeches from our skin, I’m able to sort out the last few minutes, and although the idea of a violent, attention seeking ghost child is troubling enough, it’s my new task at hand that frightens me most. Shivering in the curve of Ellis’ arm with Sabrina hanging onto my hand from the other side and George watching on fearfully, I reiterate my experience with the twins.

  “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head down there?” George whispers. Sabrina swats at his wrist and pulls herself even closer to me in the cramped space.

  “There have been stories about gateways and underworlds for centuries,” she chides. “With Addie’s abilities, I’m prepared to bet all the old myths are real.”

  I shudder and close my eyes against her worried expression. “Oh god, I hope not,” I mumble. “Look, y’all don’t even need to worry about that stuff. It’s me they want. Right now, we just need to worry about getting out of this stupid well!” I hit the back of my hand on the stones, and the small thud muffles instead of echoes.

  Above my head, Sabrina, and Ellis exchange glances, and even George looks unconvinced.

  “No offense,” Sabrina begins. “But Eden and Ellis were with you in that maze. It took on Nick’s form. We’re all down here with you because whatever creepy-crawly is on your tail used us as bait. Girl, we’re all in danger here.”

  Summoning the best glare I can under the circumstances, I jut my chin out and lower my voice. “I did try to keep you out of it. None of y’all would listen, remember?”

  “Addie, she doesn’t mean that to blame you.” Ellis tightens his hold on me, and my skipping heart picks up its pace. “It’s just we’ve been telling you for weeks that we’re in this with you. And if you don’t want to look at it from a supportive point of view, realize we’ve got to see this through for our own safety as well.”

  “That’s exactly my point!” I yell and push his arms away. “I have been trying this entire time to keep you safe! This power, it’s like nothing I’ve ever known but if I could trade it I would, because I don’t get to see fun things. I get to see people who have murdered, or been murdered, or died way younger than they should, and even when I close my eyes at night? They’re there! Holding me down to my mattress, whispering into my ears the many ways I might die!”

  Three frightened faces hold tight to my gaze, frozen as I laugh with hysteria slipping into the air.

  “It’s enough to drive somebody mad. And my living shadow? You know, the collection of twisted souls that want to hunt me down? I’ll have to destroy them even more than my ancestors did. So, you tell me, how do I kill a ghost?”

  “You don’t.”

  My blood freezes in my veins as the bodiless voice spirals up from the depths of the water below, and with it, the overpowering smell of rust rises to my nostrils. My exposed flesh is rife with goosebumps and the sick twisting of clammy nausea grips me so tightly, I can’t even turn my head.

  “Such a young little evil one,” the voice hisses. “Are you as deceptive as your family? As those lying little wrenches that left us here to rot?”

  A shiver climbs up the base of my skull, and my hands shake as I take in its words. The blood, the hushed-up existence of the chapel, all the accidents that occurred, and even the horror of the courtyard above us.

  “I’m not evil.” I can’t defend the twins. Right or wrong; they did what they thought necessary to protect the ones they loved. They just did so with a bloodlust that should have never been borne. “I didn’t kill you! I have nothing to do with this!”

  Sabrina whimpers, pulling her face away from a shifting absence of light that can only be in the shape of a hand. I snap my teeth shut, summoning the courage to swat it away from her. But I still can’t move.

  “Of course, you do,” it sneers. “You’re stronger than the others. Deadlier.” The quiet whispers are so faint, they may well be meant only for me. I’m not even sure if the others can hear them. “Even if the boy warded us off when you were younger and more easily disposed of, your witch of a mother sealed your fate!”

  It’s angry now, and the walls of the well vibrate around us. Small fragments of stone splash into the dark liquid sink with a hiss as the smell of something putrid and rotting bob to the surface. Looking around frantically, I wish someone could save us. Anyone.

  Sabrina locks eyes with me as the shadow begins to taunt me again. I’m the only one we’ve got.

  “Stop it!” I scream. “You’re dead! You need to stay dead!”

  Unbothered by my temper tantrum, a blast of icy air hits me full in the face, making it difficult to breathe, let alone argue. The scathing, terrible hands of death skim across the surface of my cheek, and I’m filled with a terror I never thought possible.

  “We’ll never die,” it promises. “Not as long as pretty little clairvoyants like you continue to taunt us. You get a glorified tomb of a mansion, and our dismembered limbs get a boarded-up puddle? Think again, little girl. Little darling.”

  I’m going to be sick, oh god I’m going to be sick! My stomach cramps as my throat seizes up, but while the atmosphere drops to freezing temperatures, my wrist is alight with a fire so strong, it’s a wonder it hasn’t scalded my hand off. Frank!

  “No,” I say out loud. “I’m not a little girl, and I’m not something for you to toy with.” Every syllable I speak comes out stronger, until the shaking is contained to my torso. “You never knew the meaning of life,” I spit out. “But I promise, you will know death!”

  A faceless head pushes into my vision, drowning me in the cold gaze of crystalline eyes. They’re all I can see, the only detail visible in the dark, and just like I was in my first nightmare, I’m trapped.

  “Frank?” Ellis yells, pushing against the tiny scorpion when he feels my back stiffen against him.

  At the same time, Sabrina lets out an ear-splitting shriek, drawing attention away from me just long enough for me to pull the devil’s shoelace from my back pocket and echo Ellis’ plea.

  The walls come alive with swarms of arachnids, and as the bright blue eyes flit around, there’s an edge of fear behind its glaze. Gotcha!

  “You’re not so fond of scorpions, are you?” I scowl. Rage replaces my fear, and if there was room to stand, I would. The blood rushing through my temples is scorching with
purpose, and without thinking, I pull the remaining bobby pins from my matted hair. They cling to Frank as though magnetized, and I tuck the bit of root in between their clasps, hoping Eden’s research rings true. If my mom could work magic, there’s got to be enough of her in me to do what the Nix side could not.

  Thousands of scorpions fall from the top of the well like rain. Their wriggling legs and whipping tails are sharp and nobody is more unnerved by them than the sentient shadow they cover.

  A resounding crash shakes the ground, splashes blood up the sides of the stone, and sends us reeling, falling into one another. Sabrina rolls off the edge, but George catches her by her forearm, and Ellis helps him heave her up while I keep my attention trained on the cloud of writhing darkness and arachnids hovering in front of us.

  “It’s too bad,” I whisper. “Because these little monsters?” The screams of a half dozen men strangle the sound of my voice, and even Ellis, pressed so closely to me, can’t hear my words. “They’re my favorite. And you’re going to hell.”

  Delia said all souls move on eventually, but where they end up depends solely on our mortal behaviors. I really hope whatever judge this monster faces takes all the undead actions into account as well.

  The same mercurial force I’d felt awaken in my veins before is howling inside me now, and the vile thing before me doesn’t stand a chance.

  Without a word, I hold out my palms, and Frank launches himself through the air, aiming straight between the demon’s eyes. He hits his mark as strangled cries of pain ricochet off the stones and distort into a hoarse howling much deeper than the cry of the wind above us. The undulating mass comes apart with an unleashing of thick liquid that splatters us all and leaves scorpions clinging to our hair and clothing.

  Frank scuttles out of the black water, now free of blood and body parts as his remaining acquaintances feast on the leeches below, and the ones on the ledge drop off us harmlessly. Whether from shock, or relief, not a single one of my friends breathes a word. At least we’re all still alive.