To Break a Covenant

by Alison Ames

  “Can I go first?” Piper asked.

  “Sure, Pipes,” Lisey said, patting her knee. “Go ahead.”

  She took a second to compose herself, rubbed her eyes and smoothed her shirt where she’d been worrying at the hem. She kept her eyes on the floor as she spoke.

  “So we’re walking down the tunnel,” Piper said. “And I get out in front of Lisey, just a little bit, and suddenly I notice her light is out. There’s, like, a glow coming from somewhere, kind of like undersea phosphorescence, you know? Like the walls were glowing. It felt unfriendly, kind of … You know when the moon is full, the way the light feels like it’s watching you? It made me shiver when I saw it on me. And the air was freezing, like, so cold that I could see my breath. And I turned around to ask Lisey why she turned off the light and—”

  She blotted her eyes with her shirt.

  “She was gone. She wasn’t there. It was just me, alone, in that fucking glow. So I yelled for her and then I listened, and I heard scuffling sounds coming from somewhere. Like footsteps. I started walking toward it before I really realized what I was doing. And as I moved forward, I could hear something breathing. Panting. Like a dog. And it was weird, but I felt like … I knew where I was going. Like the mine was leading me.”

  I glanced at Nina. She was leaning forward, listening intently.

  “It kept getting colder the longer I walked. The panting sound never got closer, but I could smell an animal.”

  “An animal?” Lisey asked. Piper turned to her.

  “Something with wet fur. Wet fur and musk and something metallic, maybe blood.”

  Lisey wrinkled her nose but didn’t say anything else.

  “I realized I was … whispering, I guess?” Piper continued. “I know how that sounds. I kept zoning out and then coming back to myself and realizing my mouth was moving, and I had no idea what I was saying. Then I heard something behind me. I turned and it was just that horrible empty tunnel, stretching back into the dark, and that awful sickly light.”

  She shuddered, looking down at her hands. She had picked off most of her nail polish.

  “I said, ‘Hello? Is someone there?’ And I took a few steps back into the tunnel, and then the breathing got so much louder. So much louder. It started to sound like there was more than one of them. Whatever they were. All I could hear was that panting bouncing off the walls, echoing, and it started to sound like voices, and then I thought I heard it say my name—”

  Her breathing was shallow but steady.

  “I turned and I ran, just ran into the dark, and my brain just kept going Help me, help me, help me. I don’t know how long I was running. And then I felt—this strange urge, something in me that said turn now, and I threw myself sideways into this tiny side tunnel, and I was still running, and it was so cold—like something wrapped around my chest—I couldn’t breathe, but I kept running and turning and running and turning, deeper into the dark, and then I turned again and—”

  She put her hands over her face and muffled a vicious, wracking sob.

  “My dad was standing there,” she said. “With his back to me.”

  I shivered. My mouth filled with bitter, metallic saliva. It made me think of the way Lisey had stood at the end of the tunnel, turned away from us in the beam of the flashlight—shoulders slumped, hands hanging lifeless. She’d looked hollow, like something inside her was missing. I could barely handle seeing Lisey like that; I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if it was my mother.

  “He had his head down. I said—I said ‘Dad, it’s me, are you okay?,’ and he didn’t move. I could see his back moving, like he was breathing, and I could still hear that sound. And it got louder and louder, and then he turned around, my dad turned around, only he—”

  She shook her head, tears flying.

  “His face was—he was—he was a coyote,” she wept. “Standing there in my dad’s clothes. He had his head down, and those fucking yellow eyes were staring right at me, glowing. He took a step toward me and I stepped back. I was kind of babbling, I just kept saying ‘No, no,’ and every time I stepped back he stepped forward. And I knew—I knew even if I turned and ran, if I was even still capable of running, he would catch me. So I just stopped. I stood still and I waited for him to get me, but he didn’t. He stopped short. And his mouth was open, he was panting, with that horrible tongue just lolling out between his fucking fangs. And it was still so cold I could see my breath, but I couldn’t see his. So I looked at him and I said, ‘Are you real?’ I said, ‘Are you alive?’”

  A chill ran through me from the base of my spine to the backs of my eyes. I could see it: saliva-slicked teeth, patchy fur drawn too tight over bone. Those lambent yellow eyes.

  “He blinked, and—”

  She took another breath and looked at us one by one.

  “Then he had my dad’s eyes. My dad’s eyes in that fucking face, just for a second, but he recognized me. I know he did. And then he blinked again and they were gone, and then—”

  She covered her face again.

  “He smiled,” she said, her voice muffled. “His lips, it was like something was pulling them with strings, the way they just wrinkled back into this hideous, awful grin. And then he opened his mouth so wide, so much wider than I thought a coyote could, and he shrieked the way they do, and it was so loud—I backed away, and I tripped and almost fell but I got myself turned around and started running. And behind me I could hear the shriek turn into laughter, this insane, jagged laughter. It chased me. Not my dad, just that laugh, the sound … it chased me back into the darkness. I don’t know how long it was from then until Lisey found me.”

  “She was just standing there,” Lisey said quietly, looking at her hands. “Just staring into the dark. She wasn’t blinking.”

  I turned to Lisey. “Where were you before that? What happened to you?”

  She sighed, twisting a lock of her hair. “Did you know crows have funerals?”

  “What?” Nina asked.

  I put a hand on Nina’s knee. Lisey did better if you didn’t interrupt her.

  “They do,” she said. “They gather around their dead friend and they shriek in the trees and it sounds like people crying.”

  We waited. Piper looked ready to scream. She’d moved on from her nail polish to the arm of the chair, picking at it like her sanity depended on it.

  “I was walking behind Piper,” Lisey said. “We turned a corner and then she was gone. I doubled back because I thought somehow I missed her, or she got lost, and then I panicked and started running, and then I tripped over something. I fell and hit my head and I guess I blacked out.”

  “Jesus, Lisey,” Nina murmured. “We have to take you to a hospital.”

  “Shh,” she said, squeezing Nina’s hand. She smiled for a second, like it was silly that Nina would worry about her when all of this was going on. Then her face settled back into an almost serene blankness. “I woke up and the lantern was next to me and all of my crows were there. At first I was happy to see them, but then I realized I couldn’t move. My arms were so heavy, my legs …”

  She closed her eyes briefly, as though the effort of remembering was costing her.

  “It felt like I was falling asleep, but under such heavy weight. Like sand was filling my whole body. I was almost sinking into the ground.”

  She started checking her hair for split ends. It was meditative for her, one of the many ways she self-soothed.

  “The crows were all looking at me, but not like normal, like they knew me. They were looking at me the way they look at food. They kept hopping toward me and then back, toward me and back, and my eyes were so, so heavy. I kept trying to reach my hand out, to let them know it was me, but I couldn’t. One of them jumped onto my arm and I thought Good, now they’ll realize, and then it—”

  She dropped the lock of hair she’d been holding and shook her head.

  “It bit me.” Sorrow and outrage mingled in her voice. “It jabbed its beak down into my arm and bit me. I
screamed and it fluttered away and landed back on the floor, and they all looked at me, and then I just—I was so tired, my eyes finally closed, and then—” Her mouth trembled.

  “They started shrieking like I was dead,” she whispered. “It sounded like you guys. Like you were all crying. I felt them jump onto me, felt their wings brushing all over my skin, and they kept crying and crying and I couldn’t move, and then I opened my eyes and there you were.”

  She looked at Piper.

  “It felt like after your arm falls asleep, only all over my whole body. Like all my blood was rushing back at once.” The ghost of a smile crossed her face before she focused on me again. “I could tell she wasn’t there. You know? I put my hand on her shoulder and she just kept staring straight ahead. So I took her hand and I just started walking. I didn’t know if we’d gotten turned around, and I couldn’t see any light besides ours. I yelled for you a few times before you found us.”

  “We didn’t even hear you,” Nina said, a faint note of fear in her voice.

  “Nina, what happened to you?” I turned toward her. “You still haven’t told me.”

  She sighed. “There’s really not a lot to tell.”

  “Nina.” I tried to put some threat into it. “Tell us.”

  “Fine.” Her jaw clenched. I knew she didn’t want to admit that she’d experienced something down there, but she wouldn’t lie to me. “The light went out. I felt around for it or for you, Clem, and I couldn’t find either, but then my hand landed on something really hard and it dug into the heel part, the part that takes your weight when you crawl, and I sort of crumpled over. Like, I smashed my shoulder into the ground. So I got back onto my hands and felt around again, and I found the tiny thing. I picked it up and kept crawling until I found another one, and I followed the trail until something grabbed me by the hair and lifted me off the ground. Then there was enough light that I could see, and I saw all the little things I’d been picking up were teeth, and then I realized they were my teeth, and my mouth was just this empty, slick … it was just gums and blood. There was blood pouring down my chin and I kept swallowing it, too, choking on it, and I was trying not to scream. I turned around a few times, but whatever had picked me up was gone, and I was alone. And then it hit me that I picked up all my teeth so there wasn’t a trail back, and then I did scream, and then—”

  The corner of her mouth pulled up into a tiny smirk.

  “Then, because there’s no logic to hallucinations, I decided that if I threw my teeth back into the tunnel I’d have the trail back, and I’d be able to find you. So I threw them out in front of me one at a time as I walked in the dark, and I did that until I ran out of teeth, and then …”

  She shrugged. “Then you woke me up. I don’t know.”

  “I kind of had a dream like that,” I murmured. “Only it was a trail of string.”

  “Like we talked about bringing next time,” Lisey said.

  A chill ran through me as I remembered her hands at my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “Just like that.”

  “So what happened to you?” Piper asked me.

  I pulled my hair up off my neck so she could see the bruises. “Something grabbed me. The light went out and I started choking, and then I saw your flashlight in the dark and I tried to go toward it, but I blacked out.”

  “Holy fuck,” Piper said, inspecting my neck. “That—those are real. Something touched you.”

  “I guess,” I said. “And I must have whacked my knee on something while I was asleep or unconscious or whatever because it was so much more fucked up after that. It’s still pretty bad.”

  “So your thing was real,” Piper said. “It had to have been. So does that mean—”

  “No,” Nina said. “I hear where you’re going, and no.”

  Piper shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes, grinding them into the sockets for a moment, and then dropped them back onto the arms of the chair. “Why not?”

  Nina barked a laugh, a sound that stopped just short of being mean. “Because ghosts aren’t fucking real, Piper.”

  “Then how do you explain this?”

  “Well, I said it already but it seems like no one was listening, so let me resubmit my vote for heatstroke.”

  Piper sighed.

  “Fine, not heatstroke, then. Collective madness à la The Crucible? Toxic fumes making us hallucinate? Piper, there is no end to the number of possibilities—”

  “Nina!” Piper yelled. “My father is fucking missing down there. I don’t care what you come up with to explain it, okay? Something is wrong in that mine, and he’s lost in there, and I need to help him.” She dashed away an errant tear. “I don’t need you guys,” she said, her mouth twisting. “I’ll go back in alone.”

  “Piper.” My voice was too loud, too harsh. Her ‘I don’t need you’ had stung badly, and I wanted her not to mean it. “Don’t.”

  “Maybe you should,” Nina snapped. She saw I was about to speak and cut me off. “No, Clem, don’t. We haven’t even known her two months and we’re risking our lives for her. Risking our souls if you believe this haunting shit.”

  All of us were quiet for a moment. I was stunned, trying to understand where Nina’s anger was coming from. Piper was our friend; her problem was ours.

  “She doesn’t mean that.” Lisey patted Piper’s knee.

  “Don’t speak for me, Lisey,” Nina said.

  “Nina,” I said sharply. “Enough.”

  She turned to me, and I was shocked to see her eyes were filled with tears. “You do everything she wants. You’re still trying to impress her. You’ll go down into the fucking mine for her, but you won’t even think about going to college with me?” She looked at the ceiling and blinked fast, trying to keep the tears from falling. “I’ve been with you on this. I’ve been right beside you doing research, I’ve gone down into the dark, I’ve devoted all my time to dealing with this, and you’ve never asked if I’m okay with it. You’ve never even acknowledged it.”

  I was opening and closing my mouth like a fish, trying to process what she’d said. Nina was jealous of Piper. I’d dragged her into a situation that she didn’t want to be in. She coped for as long as she could, and now she was drawing a line.

  “I—” I sputtered. “I didn’t realize it was so—”

  “You believe the mine is haunted, right?” Nina’s voice was low and dangerous.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you let your best friends go inside it? Encouraged them to do it? All for a girl we barely know?”

  “That’s not fair,” I whispered.

  “I think it’s completely fair.” Piper pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t worry. You won’t need to help me anymore.”

  “Piper, wait—”

  The door slammed on my words. Lisey looked at me like a wounded puppy, eyes accusing. I felt caught, like I’d done something wrong, and I had no idea what to do. Nina was right—I hadn’t asked them—but it hadn’t been only my idea. We had all wanted to help Piper. I didn’t know what had changed. A lump formed in my throat.

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked Lisey. I needed to know I wasn’t wrong, that we were on the same team.

  She just shook her head and then went after Piper. Nina got up from the couch, the space next to me suddenly cold with her absence.

  “Nina,” I said, pleading. “I—”

  She held up a hand, not looking at me. “I’ll call you,” she said, then slammed the door behind her.

  I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling. How had that gone so wrong? We had all been united; we had a plan. We wanted to save Carlisle. I knew Nina well enough to tell when she didn’t want to do something, and I hadn’t gotten that from her at all. She didn’t believe the mine was haunted, but she knew it was affecting him, and she cared. I knew she did. What had changed?

  I sat there watching the sun move across the room until my mother came in, a box clutched against her side. She dropped it onto the couch next to me. �
�That was outside.”

  I turned it over and saw that the sender was Ghost Walk. My heart lurched and I ripped it open, using my nails and teeth, to reveal ten neatly stacked VHS tapes. They were labeled “MELLIE 1” through “MELLIE 10.”

  “Nadia!” I said to myself, pumping my fist.

  “What is it?” my mom asked.

  I debated how much to tell her, then decided maybe honesty was the best policy. “It’s tapes of Mellie Harington at her psych appointments. Between Sidney’s death and hers.”

  “Good God, Clémence.” She knelt and ripped open the Velcro on her shoes with a little more force than necessary.

  “I know, but—it’s research.”

  “For what?” She had the same look she’d given me when I’d tried to bleach my hair at fourteen: confused exasperation, with a little disappointment. What did you do, why did you do it, how am I supposed to fix it?

  That look made me feel fourteen again, and all I wanted in that moment was for my mom to sigh and smile and say Well, how can I fix it? It made me feel like crying. I dropped my gaze to the box in my lap. “Piper’s dad is somewhere in the mine and we can’t find him. I’m just making sure we don’t ignore something that might be a lead.”

  “Well, doesn’t he work down there? How long has he been gone?”

  I thought back. “Today will be the third day if he doesn’t come home.”

  She nodded and then pulled the phone off the wall and started dialing.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Calling the sheriff,” she said. “Where’s Piper’s mother?”

  “Boston.”

  “Well, we might need to—yes, hello,” she said, her back straightening. “What’s the process for filing a missing-persons report?” She listened, nodding slightly, tapping her foot. “What if it involves the mine?” She looked at me. “Now I’m on hold.”

  I watched her nervously. I didn’t know what I’d wanted her to do, but this wasn’t it. I had a pretty good idea of how this conversation was going to go. I could practically hear Sheriff Nelson saying, Well, he shouldn’t have gone down there if he didn’t want to get lost. He’d closed the mine for a reason, and even with the town council’s approval, he probably saw Carlisle as defying him.