by Amy Cross
“May God grant you peace,” I whisper, “and may you rest for -”
Suddenly the boy's face twitches slightly, his empty sockets turning a little toward me as the smile returns to his lips.
I open my mouth. “I -”
Before I can get another word out, Joseph leaps up from the bed and clamps his bony arms around me, forcing me back until I slam down onto the floor with him on top of me. He lets out another scream, harsher and shriller than before, as he digs the shards of his torn fingernails into my face, scratching at my flesh. I try to push him away, but his strength is surprising and it takes a moment before I'm able to grab his shoulders and lift him up. His whole body is trembling as he tries once more to scratch at me, and finally he turns his face toward the window and lets out a pained gasp.
“Joseph,” I stammer, “please -”
Suddenly the man steps up behind and swings a broken piece of wood at Joseph's neck, hitting him with such force that the boy's head is torn from his body and slams into the wall before dropping with a sickening, splitting crunch to the floor next to me. I stare in horror as the skull cracks open and more flies start to crawl out from his rotten brain along with several fat, well-fed beetles.
Scrambling back, I push the remains of Joseph's corpse away and frantically brush the insects from my legs. There are so many of them, and after a moment I have to pull my shoes off and tip out a few more flies.
Nearby, the man has dropped to his knees and is gently sobbing with his hands over his face.
As I struggle to get my breath back, I stare at the remains of Joseph's body and see that the flesh inside his neck was almost completely rotten, and it's clear that whole colonies of maggots had made a home in his organs. Turning to his severed head, which came off so easily once it had been struck, I watch as more insects crawl out into the light, no doubt to search for a new home. There are still several twitches on the boy's face, no doubt caused by the festering multitude of parasites trying to find a way out, and I can't help but wonder how the child was able to maintain any kind of sanity at all when his body had begun to play host to such a vast, swarming mass of invaders. It was as if a civil war had erupted inside his body, and I can only assume that he pretended to be dead in one last attempt to get free from the bed.
After a moment, his mouth creaks open, letting out a faint groan that seems almost as if it might come from his soul. As a large bottle worm crawls out, however, it's clear that whatever was left of Joseph, his soul is gone now.
Getting to my feet, I feel an overwhelming urge to get out of this foul, stench-ridden room. Flies are filling the air, buzzing all around me as I hurry to the window and push one of the panels open in an attempt to let them out. Ignoring the sobbing man nearby, I hurry to the door just as the man's wife comes up the stairs, but I push past her without saying a word. A sense of great nausea is building in my belly, and I start running until I reach the door and emerge on the street, where I finally drop to my hands and knees and start vomiting, filled with revulsion at the misery I have encountered in this village. I know people are watching me, and a moment later I hear the woman screaming in the house, no doubt since she has finally seen what is left of Joseph. Feeling an itching sensation under my collar, I reach a hand up beneath my shirt and realize that there are more beetles crawling across my skin, as if they intend to make me their new home now that their old one has been destroyed. Crying out, I start frantically trying to get them all off, even though I can already feel more and more of them scurrying across my flesh and trying to bite through to get inside.
***
The slate gray sky rumbles with a threat of rain as I stop at the crossroads and take a moment to lean, exhausted, against the mile-stone.
Finally, now that I have run and then walked several miles from Offingham, I no longer feel as if I have beetles crawling all over my body. I am fully aware that I must have seemed like a madman when I left that village, screaming about insects and pushing people aside as I raced along the street, but I felt back there as if a kind of rich insanity was digging its tendrils into my flesh and was in danger of overtaking me completely. Now, at least, I can try to focus once again on my purpose.
Except...
What is my purpose?
Looking at the road ahead, I realize that I've been so frantic in my desperation to get away from Offingham, I forgot about everything else. There was something important, something I had to find, but... I hold my right hand up, and I see several wounds in the flesh. At first I assume that I must be covered in bites from the insects, and indeed I remember at the height of my panic having to pull some burrowing beetles out as they tried to crawl through those wounds and enter my body. Now, however, I'm starting to remember that I caused the wounds myself with metal pins, and...
My sister.
Rosie.
How could I have forgotten?
I take a step forward, but a sudden wave of weakness rushes through my body and I stumble, dropping down hard to my knees. For a moment, I feel a shudder pass up my spine as I realize that I truly forgot about my quest to find my sister. It's as if, faced with the horrors of Joseph's body and the sight of his collapse, all other thoughts were chased from my mind. Taking a series of deep breaths, however, I force myself to remember my sister's plight and the fact that she's still out there somewhere, still being tortured by the very man who caused the horrors I witnessed in Offingham.
I can almost hear her screams calling out across the hills.
“Nykolas Freeman,” I whisper, saying his name out loud so as to remind myself of my fury. Ahead of me, the gray road runs to a gray horizon, as a gray sky stretches overhead. “There is nowhere for you to hide,” I continue, struggling to my feet despite the pain in my legs. “I'm coming for you.”
At the next junction, I find a dead body. A man has been left by the side of the road, and at first I assume I have found a murder victim until I realize that the man was deathly thin when he perished, and that there is no sign of blood. There have long been rumors of famine in parts of the country, with some even saying that the king's men have been destroying crops in an attempt to punish those they suspect of harboring Catholics. Englishmen are starting to turn against Englishmen, and some even say war might be coming. Staring down at the man's body, I feel for a moment as if this entire country is falling apart, as if neighbors are being turned into enemies for the benefit of the king as he sits on his great throne in London.
A little further along the road I find another corpse, this time with a knife wound in its back.
Spots of rain are falling now, ice cold against my face as I keep walking. I reach the edge of a forest and take the road that leads between the trees, but finally I have to stop for a moment and rest. Leaning against an old oak tree, I am at least shielded from the worst of the rain, and although I tell myself that I'm only pausing for a few minutes, my eyes inevitably slip shut and my head drops, and I slip into the deepest sleep I have ever known. I dream not of my poor sister, but of my country, torn apart by a great war.
And all the while, an icy rain falls. Rain colder than a man's soul. Rain that seems to warn of great bloodshed and sorrow to come.
Chapter Thirteen
Laura
“You can't be serious!” I hiss, hurrying after Mum as she carries the dinner plates through into the kitchen. “You can't leave us here alone!”
“It's just for twenty-four hours,” she replies, with that weary, put-upon tone in her voice that she always uses when she feels sorry for herself. “I told you, Laura, I have to go and help your uncle bring the van with the rest of our things.”
“So take us with you!”
“There's no room!” She sets the plates down and turns to me with a sigh. “Laura, be reasonable -”
“Be reasonable?” I reply, shocked by what I'm hearing. “You're the one who's suddenly decided she's heading off tomorrow morning and leaving her two daughters here to fend for themselves! Really, after everything th
at's happened since we moved in?”
“What's happened?” she asks, glancing at the door as if she's worried Suzie might overhear. Sighing again, she turns back to me. “Nothing has happened, Laura. You had a bad dream, you hurt your ankle on a broken floorboard -”
“Suzie went missing in the forest.”
“Suzie wandered off for a couple of minutes!”
“And now something's wrong with her,” I continue. “Are you honestly telling me that you haven't noticed?”
“I've noticed something's wrong with one of you,” she mutters, just loud enough for me to hear.
“I've been seeing ghosts!” I tell her, almost losing my temper.
She turns to me.
“Or something,” I add, suddenly feeling flustered. I've never been the kind of person who believes in all that supernatural garbage, but the past few days have made me wonder what's really happening around here. “I've been seeing something,” I continue, “and I'm worried that maybe Suzie saw something too and she's processing it differently, by shutting down and going quiet. She thought she heard whispering coming from behind one of the walls the other night -”
“After you had us take down a wall in the kitchen to check for skeletons?” she asks with a hint of sarcasm, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you think, Laura, that there might be a connection somewhere? Ideas are like worms, they wriggle into your sister's mind and cause all sorts of drama. It'd be really helpful if you could filter what you say around her.”
She turns to head through to the storeroom.
“This is typical of you,” I say suddenly.
She turns back to me.
“You never listen,” I continue. “You want to go back to London so you can drive back up with Uncle Dave, so you're going to do it no matter what's happening here. If you don't like the truth, you ignore it, just like when Dad was -”
I catch myself just in time, but I already know I've gone too far.
“I'm going to meet your uncle tomorrow morning,” she says after a moment, her voice tense with emotion, “and we'll be driving all through the night to get here a day later. Trust me, it's not like I'm actually going to enjoy the trip, so we all have to make a little sacrifice here.” She pauses. “You're sixteen years old and I finally need you to take some responsibility around here, so please don't choose this moment to suddenly start going on about ghosts. I need you to be strong while we start our new life here. Can't you just do something for me, for once?”
“For once?” I reply, shocked by this new level of self-absorption. “When was the last time we did something that wasn't all about you?”
She stares at me for a moment. “Well,” she says finally, “I'm glad you were able to get that off your chest.”
With that, she walks out of the kitchen, leaving me standing alone and feeling as if I just got told off, like I'm some kind of naughty kid.
“Mum, I'm sorry!” I call after her, but it's too late. I hear her heading up the stairs, and then I hear her bedroom door swinging shut. Great, I guess I can still be a selfish brat sometimes.
***
“Tell me what happened,” I whisper later that night, sitting cross-legged on the end of Suzie's bed. We've got the lights off so Mum doesn't realize we're up, but I can just about make out my sister's cautious, maybe even scared expression. “I won't get mad,” I continue. “I won't tell Mum, either. I just want to know what happened to you when we couldn't find you in the forest today.”
She shifts uncomfortably, and whereas earlier she was constantly staring at me, now she can't seem to meet my gaze at all.
“Suzie?” I wait for her to reply. “Something did happen, didn't it?”
She pauses, before nodding.
“Tell me,” I continue. “I need to know.”
“Did you see him?” she asks suddenly, glancing at me briefly before looking down at her hands.
I take a deep breath. This is exactly what I was afraid of. “See who?”
She pauses. “The... The man who came out of the house.”
“You need to give me a little more here,” I continue, but it's clear that she's still not sure whether she should tell me. “You saw someone come out of the house?”
Still looking down, she nods.
“Who?”
“He looked like...” She pauses, before looking at me again, and this time there are tears in her eyes. “He looked like people in books,” she says finally.
“What books?”
“Books about old times. Like, the ones at school about people from the past.” Her voice is trembling as if she's on the verge of breaking down.
“Did he talk to you?” I ask, feeling as if I need to get my worst fears out of the way first. “Suzie, did this man come over to you or... touch you?”
She shakes her head.
“So you just saw him?”
She nods.
“And what was he doing?”
“I couldn't find you and Mum,” she replies, “so I went back toward the house. When I got close, I saw the back door opening and a man came out. He was wearing old clothes, and he didn't have much...”
I wait for her to continue.
“Much what?”
She stares at me. “He didn't have much skin. Some of him was...” She holds her left hand up. “He didn't have any skin on his hand.”
For a moment, I can't help thinking back to the hand I saw under the broken floorboard. “You saw a man coming out of the house? Is that why we found the door open?” Swallowing hard, I can see from the look in Suzie's eyes that she's not lying. She definitely saw a man, or at least she thinks she did. “What happened next?”
“He just walked away. I don't think he saw me. It was like he was in a hurry.”
“And where did he go?”
“Off into the forest. I came to find you and Mum, I was scared, and then suddenly I could hear you calling my name.”
“Is that when we found you?”
She nods.
We sit in silence for a moment. I wish I had a picture of the priest, that Darian Kinner guy, so I could show it to Suzie and ask if he's the man she saw.
“You know it wasn't real, don't you?” I ask finally, putting a hand on her knee. To be honest, I'm not remotely sure that it wasn't real, but I figure I should at least try to make her feel better. Whatever's going on here, she doesn't need to be caught in the middle. “You were just imagining things,” I continue. “Let me guess, did you sneak into my DVD collection some time and watch some movies you shouldn't? Movies where people did nasty things to each other? Like that time I caught you watching Cannibal Holocaust?”
“No, I swear!”
“Suzie -”
“I swear!” she hisses, as tears start rolling down her face. “I saw a man coming out of the house! He went off into the forest!”
“Okay, I believe you.” Leaning over, I put my arms around her and hug her tight. I can feel her trembling in my embrace and it's clear that she saw something awful, but I don't know how to get the images out of her mind. Still hugging her, I look over at the corner next to the bed and think back to the whispering sound from the other night. The thought of those passages running through the house is still enough to give me the creeps, but short of taking the entire house apart I really don't know what I can do to make sure we're safe. Then again, if she really saw a skeletal figure leaving, maybe the man from the walls is gone now.
Maybe the madness is over.
“Can I sleep in here with you tonight?” she whispers, her voice filled with tears.
“Of course you can,” I reply, squeezing her tight as I look over her shoulder, watching the room's dark shadows. “Actually, I was about to suggest the same thing.”
***
“I want you to reconsider,” I hiss, hurrying after Mum the following morning as she makes her way to the taxi. “Just wait a day or two and then go, when things have died down a little!”
“This silliness has to stop,” she mutters,
opening one of the vehicle's rear doors and then turning to me. She's been short with me ever since she got up, as if she's still angry at me for what I said last night. “You're sixteen years old, Laura, and that means you're not a child anymore. You always said you wanted more responsibility, right? Well here it is, in spades. Don't go using childish ghost stories to try to get me to stay.”
“What if they're not stories?” I ask. “What if they're real?”
“And what if martians come down and invade?” she replies, climbing into the car. “Your uncle and I will be here first thing tomorrow, probably around nine or ten. Look after your sister and make sure she eats properly. No TV after dinner and for God's sake don't let her use the internet if you're not there to monitor what she's doing. In fact, maybe you should both stay away from the internet, the last thing I need is for you to give yourselves ideas.”
She reaches out to pull the door shut, but I stop her and lean into the car.
“Please don't go,” I whisper, aware that the taxi driver can probably hear me. “Please, Mum, I'm begging you, just stay. If not for me, then for Suzie. She needs you.”
She stares at me for a moment, but I can see from the stony look on her face that my pleas aren't working.
“There's lasagna in the freezer, “ she says firmly. “Put it in the microwave and make sure you have salad too.”
“Mum, if you're trying to punish me for what I said to you before -”
“Grow up, Laura,” she snaps.