Eight Rivers of Shadow

by Leo Hunt

We approach her, Elza first, holding out the witch blade.

  Alice groans. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s Elza and Luke,” Elza says. “Can you move?”

  “I cut my hands,” she says.

  “Elza,” I say, “is that her? Where is it?”

  Elza reaches down and rolls Alice onto her back. There’s no frantic grin on Alice’s face anymore. Her eyes look up at us, sad and empty. Her face and hands were cut by the glass, and there’s blood on the tiles.

  “What the . . . what did you do to me?” she asks.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Elza says.

  “It’s somewhere else,” I say. “It isn’t in her. It’s somewhere else in the building.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alice whimpers.

  “The thing that hurt you,” Elza says. “We have to take care of it. Stay here.”

  “Holiday’s fashion show,” I say to Alice, “the charity show. Is it still happening?”

  “Yes . . .” Alice says, confused.

  I look at Elza. She nods, and we leave Alice behind, hurrying off into the darkened corridors of the school. We make our way to the main hall, heading for the sound of applause.

  We open the double doors as quietly as possible, slipping into the back of the room. The school auditorium has been transformed for the big event. There’s a catwalk protruding out into the middle of the room, surrounded by circular tables draped with white cloths. The tables are ringed with parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. I don’t think anyone is here who isn’t related to the girls who organized the show. Holiday is raising money for a charity that supplies clean water to African villages. There have been several announcements about this in assembly.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Elza whispers, “but I feel bad leaving Alice like that.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “Can’t we tell a teacher she’s there?”

  “And then what? They’ll ask us how we knew, and what we’re doing here anyway. She won’t die.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Elza says. “I’m so angry with her. I could’ve strangled her after what she did up at the Footsteps.”

  A few people at the nearest tables are looking over at us. I realize how we look: scared, breathless, covered in mud. Elza has twigs stuck in her hair. I wave uneasily at someone’s mum, and she looks away in a hurry. I scan the faces in the crowd, looking for someone holding their smile a little too long, someone with something other than joy in their grin. This is a nightmare, with so many potential hosts for the demon to hide inside.

  Holiday is up onstage, holding a microphone. “Next we have Evelyn,” she says, her voice echoing through the PA system, “modeling an exciting spring look.”

  Evelyn Elkhart, one of Holiday’s courtiers, saunters down the catwalk. Her exciting spring look seems to be some kind of military jumpsuit, paired with neon-pink boots. She strikes a pose, to muted applause.

  “This thing could’ve gone anywhere,” Elza hisses.

  “I know. Let’s just keep moving.”

  I press on, smiling apologetically as we block people’s view. Holiday frowns when she sees us crossing the space in front of the catwalk, but her cheerful commentary doesn’t miss a beat. Evelyn has been replaced by Maddy, who’s wearing a polka-dot dress and some kind of vest made of fur. We’ve made it across the school auditorium, and I duck behind a long blue curtain that hangs at the side of the stage. Nobody’s around; we’re backstage, out of sight. Applause ripples through the hall behind us. This is eerie. If it was going to attack us anywhere, it would be here. There’s a doorway that leads into some rooms I’ve never been in before, which seem to be the school kitchens. We turn in the opposite direction, heading for an unmarked fire door.

  “Where are we going?” Elza asks.

  “Who knows?” I reply, swinging the door open.

  I’m faced with a bedlam of half-dressed girls, racks of clothes, mounds of shoes. This seems to be where the “models” are changing in between their walks. Before I can so much as open my mouth to apologize, one of them spots me, and chaos breaks out: screaming, swearing, several girls throwing shoes in the direction of the door, which seems a bit much. I narrowly avoid having my eye taken out by a six-inch silver stiletto.

  “Yeah, not that way,” I tell Elza, slamming the door. “What do we do now?”

  “I have no idea, Luke!” Elza pinches the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know! The Fury could be anywhere! It might not even be in the school anymore! I just . . . How are we supposed to find it?”

  “When Ash —”

  “Oh, Ash doesn’t know what she’s doing! None of us do! This was so stupid!”

  “Look, let’s just keep calm.” I rub Elza’s shoulder. “We can deal with this. We dealt with the Fury before.”

  “Luke Manchett?” comes a voice behind us. “Elza Moss?”

  I turn around. Mr. Hallow is standing behind us. It seems like he’s just come out of the kitchens. I nearly jump out of my skin, but my math teacher makes no move to attack us. He stares at us with an odd expression.

  “I’ve been looking for the pair of you. I found a girl in bad shape in the southern hallway — very upset. Alice Waltham. She says you are responsible.”

  Shit.

  “We, er . . .” I start to say, gesturing in the air.

  “The thing is —” Elza begins, smiling innocently.

  The fire door behind us slams open, and a girl stands there, hair tangled, wearing a tie-dye jacket. “Mr. Hallow,” she begins, “Luke just came in and looked at us all changing —”

  “I’m dealing with it, Stephanie,” he says. “Thank you.”

  “— and he was taking pictures on his phone,” she continues.

  “I was not!” I protest.

  Stephanie doesn’t even argue with me. She just gives me and Elza a chilly android expression of contempt.

  “Stephanie, I’ll speak to you later,” Mr. Hallow says.

  Stephanie nods and closes the fire door again.

  “This is very serious,” the teacher continues once she’s gone. “The police have been called.” His mouth twitches. For a moment there he almost looked amused. Some teachers like nothing better than to exercise their authority, I guess.

  Elza bites her lip.

  Where did the demon get to? How are we supposed to find it if we get locked up for assault?

  “I need you to come to the receptionist’s office,” Hallow tells me, leaving no question that we’re supposed to follow him. Elza’s still got the witch blade in her jacket; that’s going to look bad if they search us. Mr. Hallow leads us back out through the main hall, into the darkened corridors of the school.

  How are we going to get out of this? What did Alice tell him? Is she safe? What’s happened to the demon? I feel like we’re going to the gallows. We could not have screwed this up worse than we did. Ash is probably still unconscious in the forest, under the dubious care of Kirk. We’re both going to get expelled. Elza should ditch the knife somewhere . . . but how? Hallow’s watching us. What did Alice tell him? Did she say she found us trying to sacrifice Ash?

  We pass halls of locked classrooms and round a corner, and we’re in the main entrance hall of the school, receptionist’s office on the left. There’s nobody else here.

  I turn to look at Mr. Hallow for the first time since we started walking, hoping maybe I can find some excuse for Elza to go to the bathroom or give him the slip or something. He’s standing in the dark doorway, staring at the two of us. His face, normally slightly irritated-looking, like there’s a bad smell somewhere in the room, has twisted into an expression of ferocious joy.

  Elza’s first reaction is to scream, which I think is pretty sensible. My first reaction is to aim my sigil hand at Mr. Hallow, with the vague hope that something might happen. The ring refuses to oblige me. Elza’s second reaction is to grab at my sleeve, pulling me backward and off-balance. I stumble and fall hard on the linoleum
tiling of the school hall.

  The demon was inside him the whole time! Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should’ve noticed, should’ve thought . . . but the demon had never spoken to us before. It must have learned more about how to control people’s bodies. I should’ve been more alert, and now we’re right where the demon wants us — alone.

  He advances toward us, his shoes clacking on the tiles. The hall is lit by the glow of street lamps out in the parking lot. The demon-possessed Mr. Hallow is between us and any plausible exit. Behind us is the empty entrance hall and the large front doors of Dunbarrow High, which, since it’s after hours, are locked. Elza screams again, but we’re about as far from the fashion show in the auditorium as you can get; I doubt anyone is going to hear her.

  Mr. Hallow shrieks like a bird of prey, a mockery of Elza’s own cries, and lunges for her. Elza’s boots leave scuff marks on the floor as she twists, waving the witch blade at him, unwilling to actually strike. I can’t imagine it’ll help us much if she does stab Mr. Hallow, since the demon can leave his body anytime it wants to. Knifing a teacher to death after hours seems like it would have a pretty severe effect on your college choices.

  The demon knows this, too. Mr. Hallow lunges at Elza again, heedless of her blade, and knocks her down onto the floor. Elza’s struggling, trying to get free, but he’s got her trapped tight by the hair, fist crunched into a death grip right at the crown of her head. She’s shrieking like a banshee. Hallow’s smile is unchanged. He gets Elza’s throat in his other hand and starts to squeeze. I try to pull him off her, but his body is like a statue, immovable.

  I punch Mr. Hallow as hard as I can in the face. He doesn’t even look at me.

  He’s got Elza’s knife hand trapped now.

  She can’t breathe.

  What do I —

  I need to knock him out. The demon can’t use Hallow’s body if he’s unconscious.

  The fire extinguisher. There’s a fire extinguisher in the corner of the hallway. I’ll hit Hallow with it and —

  There’s an explosion of cold, like an icy wave breaking over us, and Mr. Hallow goes limp, his body collapsing forward. Elza wrenches his hand from her throat, gasping. Mr. Hallow falls onto her like a man-size rag doll. I pull him off her.

  The whole thing happened in moments.

  “You’re OK,” I say. “You’re OK.”

  Elza is gasping. At least she can breathe.

  I look up to see what’s happened to the demon.

  The Widow, her bare feet tensed against the floor, is holding her broken spear with both hands. The spear is stuck into a writhing mass of black shadows that I realize is the Fury — she hit the demon so hard, it was knocked clean out of Mr. Hallow’s body. The Widow seems to be trying to force the demon flatter into the ground, both arms tensed against the spear, but the demon’s body flows out and around the spear point, and the black mass forms back into the humanoid shape I’m all too familiar with, jackal-headed and furnace-mouthed. The Fury roars and unfurls its whip of flame. The whip is a thin lash of brilliant orange fire, which the demon uses to take unfortunate spirits apart. The Widow takes a step back, keeping perfect poise, never once taking her eyes off the whip.

  The Fury sends the lash curling toward the Widow, who jumps nimbly aside and strikes out with her spear, catching the Fury in the shoulder. The blow doesn’t seem to do any lasting damage, but the demon doesn’t like it. The Fury bellows and answers with a flurry of blows from the whip, sending the flames coiling in impossible contortions toward the Widow, who somehow avoids every blow. The demon is clearly becoming frustrated. The Widow bends backward, almost double, to avoid a horizontal swipe — she moves with the frightening grace of a leopard — and yells to us, “Ashana is coming!”

  “Where?” Elza screams, her voice back, and she’s answered by a sudden flash of white light all around us. I turn and see light flowing in through the main doors of Dunbarrow High, accompanied by a tremendous noise. I barely have time to register the light as coming from a car’s headlights when Ash rams the double doors, breaking them open.

  The doors don’t explode like they might in a movie; they just collapse inward. Ash reverses her car, which is still running fine, even though the front is now crumpled like a half-finished origami, the car apparently being one of those invincible ancient models that could probably survive a nuclear blast. Me and Elza rush out through the broken doors into the staff parking lot. Ash has brought her car to a halt and is already out of it, running around to the back.

  “It’s in there!” I shout. “With the Widow!”

  “I know!” Ash says.

  “The alarms!” Elza’s saying. “The alarms!”

  “The what?” I ask her.

  “Burglar alarms!” Elza screams at me. “You don’t think anyone will notice we just ram-raided Dunbarrow High? And Hallow already said he called the police! We need to go! Now!”

  “Not yet,” Ash says. She opens the trunk of her car and is struggling with the mirror. I rush to help her. We heft it down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Ash tears the wrapping off it, inspects the mirror for damage.

  “Ash!” Elza yells.

  I turn to look. The Widow is falling back, dancing through the broken double doors, jabbing this way and that with her spear. Her long black hair flows as she dodges and pirouettes. I have the greatest respect for her grace and skill, and I’ve never seen any other spirit go up against this thing and stand even the slightest chance, but she’s clearly in trouble. As it comes after her, into the parking lot, the Fury seems bigger than ever, longer and lither and thinner, like a sketch of someone’s nightmare that they scribbled down as they were waking. The demon is clearly a match for Ash’s servant, and the flaming whip is coming closer and closer to its target. As I watch, the Widow ducks a fraction of a second too slow, and the demon’s whip shears into her trailing hair, causing the ghost to cry out.

  “Help her!” I say to Ash.

  “It’s OK,” Ash says to us, smiling. “We’ve got it.”

  She taps the mirror with her left hand and says a word I don’t understand. The mirror flares with white light, brighter than the headlights of her car, so bright I have to cover my eyes with my hands. There’s a high ringing tone, like a bell. The Fury roars in response, seeming to realize too late what’s going on.

  A wind starts to blow, air being sucked into the surface of the mirror. Through my fingers I can see the demon frantically trying to escape, Widow forgotten, flying as fast as it can away from the parking lot, trying to get back into the school. The demon manages to make it a few paces toward the broken front doors, but the force emanating from Ash’s mirror becomes stronger still. The scene is beyond surreal, the whole parking lot and front of the school floodlit by the incredible radiance coming out of the mirror. Despite the Fury’s efforts, it can’t move any farther away from us. The Fury expends more and more energy just to keep itself in the same place, and then, as the ringing of the bell becomes louder and higher, the demon is drawn back toward the surface of the mirror. It shrieks and struggles, becoming longer and thinner, scrabbling at the asphalt with frantic fingers, but the ground might as well be made of ice for all the purchase the Fury can gain on it. With a final squeal of rage, the demon is drawn out as flat and long as a black ribbon, stretching an impossible distance, and then, like smoke being pulled into an extractor fan, the demon’s body is sucked into the surface of the mirror.

  The shrilling bell fades. The light cuts out, and I take my hands away from my face, my vision streaked with those purple-and-green afterimages you get if you look at the sun. Elza looks equally dazed. My ears are still ringing.

  “Well,” Ash says, “that could totally have gone worse.”

  We make as clean a getaway as we can under the circumstances. I help Ash load the mirror, demon freshly trapped within it, into the back of her car. Ash looks awful. There are blue traceries of veins in her neck and face that weren’t visible before, like her skin’s made of paper. I ca
n see wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. It’s like looking at an old woman’s face surfacing from under a teenage girl’s skin. She’s covered in mud and soaked with water, her overcoat clearly unsalvageable. Her white boots are now black.

  “What about Mr. Hallow?” Elza’s asking us. There are red marks on her neck where he was crushing it.

  “The Widow can deal with him,” Ash says, covering the mirror with cloth again.

  I go back into the entrance hall of the school. The Widow is kneeling beside Mr. Hallow, holding the chalice of Lethe water. She’s got one hand supporting his head, and the other is tilting the cup, making him drink. He doesn’t seem to be awake.

  The Widow sees me watching her.

  “Were there others?” she asks me.

  “What?”

  “Others the demon used as a vessel?”

  “Alice Waltham,” I say. “Blond girl, red jacket. She was lying in the hallway by the main yard. I don’t know where she is now. Nurse’s office? She’s got cuts and stuff.” I make a gesture in the direction of the back part of the school. The Widow nods.

  “She will forget,” the ghost says. She lays Mr. Hallow’s head back down on the tiles gently. “I will attend to her now.”

  “Luke!” Elza shouts behind me.

  “What?”

  “Get in! The police are coming, remember? We have to leave!”

  Ash’s car is parked right outside the ruined doors, engine idling. We’re lucky it still works at all. Turning away from the Widow, I rush out into the parking lot and get in by the passenger-side door.

  As soon as I close the door, Ash guns the engine and we speed away, narrowly missing a street lamp. It’s only now, sitting down, that I realize how fast my heart is going. My throat is dry, my spine bubbling like fresh-popped champagne. Ash heads toward the Pilgrim Grove development.

  “What happened to you?” I’m asking Ash.

  “Ilana had a moment, I guess,” she says flatly. “It was bad timing. Sorry.”

  “We can talk about that later,” I say.

  “I woke up under a tree, and there was that gross boy with the shaved head. Kurt? He spent about five minutes telling me you’d gone chasing after Alice down to the school, and she was ‘smiling all crazy’ and that you were both magic. I knew more or less where to go. He won’t remember any of what happened, so don’t worry.”