by Shane Lee
“Yeah,” Monty said, aware that they were both breathing in the wretched air. “So let’s do this. What am I supposed to look for?”
“She has to...” Terra coughed, hard, and Monty was worried she might vomit. But the coughing stopped. “She has to leave. I don’t think we’ll see anything unless she leaves.”
“What if she already did?”
Terra shook her head. “I dunno. But if she’s here, you can make her leave.”
“How can I—” Monty stopped. “Are you talking about the rites? I don’t know the rites, Terra.”
“Come on,” she said, looking up at him instead of at the body. “You went to a lot of these, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but...”
“You remembered dad’s whole story about Nal’Gee,” she said. “If you can remember that from so long ago, you can remember something you heard the Judge say a bunch of times.” Her voice slid into a teasing note. He wondered if she was aware of it.
“I don’t,” he said. “Even Judge Mullen reads it from his book when he does it.”
Although Mullen didn’t always look at the book when he read, and Monty suspected he brought it just for show.
“Just try,” Terra urged him. “I dunno what else to do. This is the only idea I got from all that reading.”
It wasn’t much, but Monty didn’t need to tell her that. “All right, I’ll try.”
He thought back to the readings he’d been present at; Ma Kettle’s and Audrey’s, of course, and others since.
“Did the book say the rites or a prayer?” he asked. “Priest Erick prayed over the body before the Judge would read. It was all quiet, and even what I heard was in old tongue. I don’t know anything about the prayer.”
“Um...” Terra stuck her fingers in the ends of her hair. “It didn’t say. It’s an old book, it didn’t even really talk about sendings. Not like we do them. But I don’t think it’s the prayer.” She nodded to herself, affirming, and took her fingers from her blonde strands. “Because the prayer...”
“The prayer blesses the dead.” Monty picked up where she left off. “And comforts the soul. The rites prepare the soul for sending.”
“Yeah!” Terra said. “So if anything is gonna make Nal’Gee leave—”
“It would be the rites.” Monty’s trepidation was forming into excitement now. If they could really see something, something that proved they were right, it would be...well, it would be terrible, but it would mean they knew what they were dealing with, and the ‘how’ of it all could come later.
“But,” Terra said, “you said that she gets into another body when the soul is sent. At the burning.”
“I said, I think that she does,” Monty responded, flexing his fingers. “But I could be wrong. We could be wrong about this whole thing.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? He wasn’t sure if he’d rather have an evil spirit among them, or an unknown sickness with no cure. Was there a difference?
“It’s worth a try,” he continued.
“Yeah,” Terra said. “Go on, do it.”
Dr. Tobias’s body waited beside them. Monty looked down at the small remains and summoned what memory he had of the rites.
Once he started talking, he realized how strange it felt to be saying the sacred words. Blasphemous, even, if only a little. Was it possible to be only a little blasphemous? He was doing it for a good reason, and he hoped that was enough.
“I...I speak to the soul of our friend, Tobias...” Monty paused, trying to draw up the doctor’s last name. “Tobias Pelkin. I brace thee in the comfort that the beyond awaits, and that...” He stopped again, reaching for the words.
Terra remained quiet at his side, glancing up to Monty only briefly. Mostly, she kept her eyes locked on Dr. Tobias’s body.
Monty remembered, and he pressed on. His heart pumped faster. “And that the souls of those before you await your passage. Your journey will be eased by the mortal efforts to set you onward.”
He was surprised by how much he remembered. He talked for a little over a minute, his confidence growing as more and more came back to him.
Monty might have made it halfway through the rites and beyond if Dr. Tobias’s head hadn’t turned toward the two them, cutting Monty’s words off as clean as a cleaver.
The corpse’s eyes opened. They gleamed.
And it began to speak.
35
It wasn’t Dr. Tobias’s voice that emerged from the rattling jaw of the wasted body. Because it wasn’t Dr. Tobias that was speaking to them.
It was Nal’Gee.
“I...hearrrrd...you...”
The sound was like wind, if wind could be dried up like dead skin and crumbled into pieces. It was guttural and deep and yet still airy and barely feminine. The lips of the body did not move; the jaw simply rocked up and down as it spoke, like it was a puppet.
It is a puppet, Monty thought. And then, she’s real, gods above, saints, she is real and she is here.
Terra was clutching him with one hand, her ragged fingernails drawing blood from Monty’s forearm. He didn’t feel a thing.
The corpse laughed, the jaw flapping so hard that Monty expected to it to break. It stopped abruptly.
He was afraid. He was more afraid than he’d been in his whole life, even when he was staring at his mother’s dead body-box atop the pyre, but there was anger, too. Anger at what this monster had done, and was still doing, and it broke him out of his paralysis.
Monty felt the pain of Terra’s nails now, but he didn’t care. “You’re—Nal’Gee. Of the Dromm.”
The jaw flapped again, and the body grew blacker before their eyes, like they were watching the life drain out of it. It spoke, and it was stronger this time. Monty understood that its first breathy words had been a semblance of teasing singsong.
“You know me. I know you, Bellamys. And I’ll have you all.”
The eyes closed; the jaw went slack. Dr. Tobias’s body rolled, his head drooping off the edge of the bed. The hair around him rustled in an invisible breeze.
Monty grabbed Terra, suddenly acutely aware of the danger they were in. They hadn’t thought about this at all.
“Don’t let her in you!” Monty said, holding Terra tightly by the shoulders. “Don’t let her in!”
He had no idea if they could hope to resist; it might already be too late. He didn’t feel any different, but would he? Did his mother; did Audrey? The disease of the spirit could be inside him already, attaching to his bones and leaching out the marrow.
No. He would know. Bella had said that Dr. Tobias was acting strange, right?
“Monty...”
“What is it? Do you feel all right?” He felt the crazed heat from his mother’s sending again. There was a powerful urge to jump through the window, or perhaps to run out into the street.
“I’m fine,” Terra said, and she sounded mostly calm but looked scared, about as scared and wild-eyed as he felt. “Let go of me!”
Monty did so, his fingers stiff and hooked into claws. He forced them to relax, and all was quiet. He could hear Bella crying, still, in the other room.
“I think we’re okay,” Terra said slowly, looking back at the body. “I think she’s gone.”
Monty followed her gaze. Dr. Tobias’s eyes were closed, and his hair—both what was still attached and what had fallen out, which was most of it—wasn’t moving. He let out a long, shaky breath.
“She talked to us,” Monty said to Terra.
“I didn’t think...” Terra’s brave face began to tremble, her eyes growing wet. A tear spilled out, rolling down her cheek. “I didn’t think this would happen. I knew—I knew she was real, but I—I didn’t think she’d talk, she’s really here, Monty, and she said she’s gonna—that she’s gonna have us!”
Terra was crying now, her breath hitching in her chest. Monty got hold of himself and pulled her out of the room, into the hall. He was careful to avoid the shattered bowl that still laid in pieces on the floor. He knelt
down.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “We’re safe, right? She said...she said ‘soon.’ She wants us, but she can’t get us. We’re stronger than her.”
Can you beat a squirrel in a fight? His father’s words came back to him. Then you can beat Nal’Gee.
The echo of Montille’s voice in his head hurt, but it made him feel warm at the same time. If he hadn’t shared that story with them, where would they be?
I think she’s stronger than a squirrel now, Monty thought gravely. Not strong enough to take us, somehow. But I think she’s a lot stronger.
Yet she was strong enough to take their mother, and Audrey, and a dozen others. Why not them?
“Nal’Gee has only gotten to adults so far,” Monty told Terra, toying with the idea as he said it aloud. She was settling down a bit, pushing her hair out of her face. “Older people, you know? I’ve heard about every death, and none of them have been, um...kids. Even all the Kettle kids are still fine. So maybe she can’t get into kids, for some reason.”
Terra sniffed. “But why? Grown-ups are stronger.”
What Monty was thinking—and didn’t want to say—was that maybe kids didn’t have enough life force for her, or whatever it was that she fed on. Maybe Nal’Gee would kill every adult in town before she’d start feasting on the kids, too.
“I don’t know,” he said, and hated how much he didn’t know, hated how powerless he felt, and hated that the best he could do was to stop his sister from crying for a little while until the next horrible thing happened.
“And she knows us, how can she know us?” Terra wailed, and the tears brimmed again.
Monty stood up and took hold of her hand, cutting off the flow. “She knows us because she knows we’re onto her, and she doesn’t know how to stop us,” he said. “Come on, we have to get out of here. I have to tell the Judge about Dr. Tobias. Watch the shards.”
“Then what?” Terra asked as he pulled her along.
“We’ve seen it with our own eyes,” Monty said. “It’s time to tell Judge Mullen what’s really going on.”
36
Monty stopped to let Bella know that Dr. Tobias was gone, leaving out the rest of what had happened and hoping she hadn’t heard over her own sobs, which were now finally coming to a close.
“I’m so tired,” she told him. “Poor Dr. Tobias, he didn’t deserve this, he was just trying to help everyone...”
“It’s terrible,” Monty agreed, both to placate her and because it was terrible. Dr. Tobias succumbing to Nal’Gee was a shock, one that would spread throughout the town—that their only doctor had been taken by the black. Whatever muttered unrest stirred through Irisa now might well turn to an actual panic. All the more reason to talk to Judge Mullen.
“Go home and rest,” Monty told Bella, putting a hand on her back and walking her out of the kitchen. Terra, meanwhile, slipped away to douse the cookfire that was currently boiling the soup over. “I’m going to let Judge Mullen know about Dr. Tobias, and he and the priest will be here soon to take care of everything.”
Bella took to that without much of a fight, most of her energy spent on tears and worry. Monty walked her out of the house and Terra closed the door behind them.
“It smells better out here,” Bella said, and her face started to quiver again. “Oh, the poor man...”
Monty said some reassuring words and made sure that she started walking toward wherever she lived. Once she was on her way, he and Terra hurried toward the Commons.
“Is the Judge gonna listen?” she asked Monty, jogging to keep up with his long strides. “No one listened at mom’s sending.”
Monty grimaced. “That was different. I’m going to be much...clearer, now. And we know for sure what’s going on, too. Before it was just a guess.”
It was more than a guess before, and Terra knew it.
“No one listened at mom’s sending,” Terra repeated, anger creeping into her words. “No one cares what kids think.”
“The adults around here are the ones who believe in the Dromm legends,” Monty said. The Commons was just around the corner. “I didn’t once I grew out of it, but the older people were raised on it. Mom and dad both believed it, you know that. Or...even if they didn’t believe it, they were scared of the forest. They stayed away and they tried to keep us away.” Monty stopped in front of the glass doors of the Commons. “We’re not the only ones. We can’t be.”
Through the doors, Monty could see straight down the main hall. The Judge’s office was closed, as usual, and the man himself would be inside, sitting at his desk, like he had been almost every hour of the past few days. Someone inside walked past the doors and cast a quick, curious glance at the two of them, but he didn’t slow down.
“Let’s go.” Monty pulled open the doors.
“You want me to come?” Terra asked.
“Yes,” Monty said, a little surprised at her hesitance. “Do you want to?”
“I...guess.” Terra stepped inside with him. “I never talked to the Judge before, not really.”
It was almost funny. Moments ago, Terra had practically led the way into a room with a dead body and an evil spirit.
“It’ll be all right. He’ll understand,” Monty said, with no idea how wrong he was.
They walked down the long hall to Judge Mullen’s door, their footsteps loud between the walls. Some of the office doors lining the halls were open, with people working inside. Monty barely noticed them. His eyes were set ahead.
With adrenaline still surging through him, he was sure he’d be able to make Judge Mullen understand. Terra at his side, he knocked on the Judge’s door.
The answer came shortly, the door pulled open and left ajar, the Judge looking mildly surprised to see Terra standing next to Monty.
“What is it?” he asked. The Judge was clearly annoyed and not in the best of moods, which wasn’t much of a change from how things had been.
“It’s urgent, sir. And...delicate.” Monty shifted, remembering all the open doors behind him. He lowered his voice. “Can we come inside?”
“We? Both of you have business with me, now?” Mullen inquired, almost sneering, planting a seed of doubt in Monty’s mind.
Terra nodded, but Mullen moved back before Monty could say more. “In, then. I have little time to waste, so let’s get on with it. I hope this is about the farm.”
They walked inside the office, Mullen closing the door behind them. It was dark and quiet. Monty suspected that the walls of this room were thicker than the others in the Commons. Mullen did not go back to his desk to sit, but simply stood there in front of the door, waiting for them to speak.
“Dr. Tobias is dead,” Monty said, starting with the normal, albeit troubling news. “I just heard from his housekeeper. It was the black.”
“The black,” Judge Mullen repeated. “So they’ve got you calling it that now, too, have they?”
Mullen didn’t seem at all perturbed by the doctor’s death, and Monty didn’t know who ‘they’ were supposed to be.
“I—we saw his body just a while ago,” he continued, moving past the Judge’s question. “It’s certain.”
“Mm.” Mullen swept across them, walking away from the door and back to his desk. The slats of light let in through his blinds painted bright stripes across him. “Is that all?”
“No,” Monty said. “There’s more, Judge. Something me and Terra both saw. We know where the black comes from, and why people are getting sick.”
Judge Mullen sat down in his chair, placing his hands flat on his desk. The papers there rustled. His mouth was a thin line, and even in the gloom of his office, Monty could see the muscles in his face twitching. It was a look he recognized—the one that came before the storm of the Judge’s temper.
But it didn’t matter. He had to know. Monty approached the desk, and Terra stuck with him. “This is going to sound crazy, sir, and I know that. I know how it looks. But I swear I am telling you the truth.”
Mullen said
nothing, but he gave a short nod. His face stayed the same.
Monty licked his lips. “It’s not a sickness that’s killing people. It’s something from the Dromm forest. Have you heard the legend of Nal’Gee, sir? The witch spirit of the Dromm?”
At that, Mullen’s features did shift. The muscle atop his eye still twitched, making his eyelid dance, but his narrow lips relaxed some. His eyes flicked down to Terra, then back to Monty, and he said, “I’ve heard it.”
“Then you know how she drained the forest and turned all the trees black,” Monty said, barreling ahead. “I saw the other day—you can see for yourself—the forest is growing again, there’s leaves. New green ones. I noticed it after Audrey Kettle died, and it’s been growing ever since, even faster.”
Mullen let out a small breath, like a sigh, but he didn’t stop Monty.
Monty got to the point. “It’s never grown, ever. I’ve lived here my whole life. I thought that it might be growing because Nal’Gee wasn’t there to drain it anymore. That she came out into the town, and now she’s draining people.
“Judge, Terra and I both just saw Dr. Tobias’s body. It was luck, pure luck, but Bella found us and brought us in just as he died. We went in looking for a sign, and—”
I’ll have you all.
“—he talked. She talked to us. Nal’Gee. She was in him, Judge, and she said she was going to kill us all.”
37
Monty didn’t know when he had grabbed the Judge’s desk, but his hands were there, fingers digging into the edge. He forced them to relax and pull away, having said his piece.
Mullen leaned back slightly in his chair, panning his gaze over them and landing on Terra. “And you saw this as well, Terra? Is that so?”
Terra nodded, but then she said, “Yes. I saw it, Judge Mullen.”
Mullen clasped his hands. “I’ll ask you this once, Monty. Will you be selling the farm to me?”
“I—what?” Monty was sure he hadn’t heard correctly. “The farm? Judge, there is a monster out there—”