The Gravest Girl of All

by Amy Cross

  “You don't know her like I do!” she snaps, before reaching out and gently tapping the side of Sam's face. “She has a plan. I don't know what it is, I'm too dumb and I probably wouldn't even understand. But Sam's the smart one out of the two of us, and there's no way she'd have let that guy kill her. There's no way she'd let him win.”

  She leans closer to Sam's face.

  “What about Henry?” she asks. “Even if you don't care about anyone or anything else, you care about Henry. He's out there somewhere, Sam. You need to come back and make sure he's safe.”

  Again she waits, and this time a rumble of thunder rings out with enough strength to make the entire town rattle.

  Still Sam doesn't respond. Her dead eyes simply continue to stare up toward the ceiling.

  “Anna,” Scott says finally, glancing at the window and seeing that the midday sun has now been completely eclipsed by darker and angrier-looking clouds, “I've got a bad feeling. Like, really bad. Can you feel that wind? It's getting really cold, Anna.”

  “Wake up,” Anna sobs, stroking the side of Sam's face. “Please, you have to wake up. You can't let that butt-faced guy beat you!”

  Heading to the doorway, Scott looks out across the cemetery. Flickers of lightning are starting to show through the storm-clouds, and a biting chill wind is blowing across the entire town. Dead leaves are getting whipped up and blown around, and after a moment Scott realizes that the clouds are starting to swirl around a particular point that seems to be directly above the village.

  Hearing a bumping sound, he turns to see that Anna has hurried over to the desk, where she's frantically looking through the remaining books and papers.

  “It has to be in here somewhere!” she chokes.

  “What does?”

  “The answer!”

  “What -”

  “Sparky told me!” she continues, her voice filled with desperation. “Sam must be relying on me. That's what's happening here, she's relying on me to save her, but I'm too stupid to know what to do! Or maybe it was in one of the other books, one of the ones I dropped in the town square!”

  “You're not stupid,” Scott tells her.

  “I am! I'm an idiot!”

  “Don't say that, Anna. You're smart as hell.” He pauses for a moment. “I mean, in your own way.”

  “I won't let you down, Sam!” she blurts out, dropping one book and turning to the next. “You've saved me so many times, and I'm going to return the favor. I just need a few minutes to figure out what I'm supposed to do, that's all.”

  Scott opens his mouth to ask what she means, but then he hears another loud, heavy rumble of thunder. Looking back outside, he sees that in the space of just a few minutes the sky has darkened even more. He checks his watch and sees that it's barely even lunchtime, yet when he looks back out across the cemetery he can barely even see the tops of the farthest stones. An unnatural night has fallen, and now the wind is startling to howl as it races through cracks in the gravestones.

  “Is this the end of the world?” he asks finally, before turning to Anna again. “Is that what's happening? I mean, I've seen stuff like this in games, and it's always pretty apocalyptic.”

  He watches as she continues to look through the books. And then, after a moment, he walks around the slab and steps up behind Anna, before reaching out and touching her shoulder.

  “I can feel you,” he whispers.

  “I'm not up for anything right now.”

  “No, I mean... I can touch you again. How is that possible?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You must. Anna, this time yesterday you were a ghost, we couldn't feel each other.” He squeezes her shoulder. “Now something's different, now you're -”

  Suddenly his hand moves straight through her. He tries to grab her again, but now she's back to being untouchable.

  “This is weird,” he continues, waving his hand several times through her shoulder. “What's changed?”

  “I don't know, and right now I don't care! I have to figure out how to save Sam!” She glances over her shoulder, looking back at the body on the slab. “I know you're relying on me, Sam. I swear I won't let you down.”

  Chapter Twelve

  One week later

  “Anna? Where are you?”

  Stumbling through the pitch-black cemetery, barely able to see anything at all, Scott bumps against several gravestones. The only light comes from occasional flashes in the sky above, briefly illuminating the path that winds through the now-overgrown grass.

  “Anna!”

  He stops at the door to the cottage and looks inside, just as another brief flicker of lightning reveals the slab in the workroom to be empty. Candles are burning on the bench, flickering in the darkness, but the cottage is otherwise still and silent.

  Puzzled, he turns and looks across the cemetery, and finally he spots a hint of movement over at the far end. After setting a few pillaged cans on the table just inside the door, he makes his way across the cemetery until he finds Anna rolling a human-sized object into a shallow grave.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “What does it look like I'm doing?” she replies, her voice filled with tearful bitterness. “I'm burying her.”

  “But -”

  “I've spent a week trying to get her back, but nothing's worked. I've been through all the books, over and over again, but I can't figure anything out. She wasn't supposed to be able to die, but I guess that whole state of grace thing doesn't apply anymore. All I can do now is give her a decent, respectful burial. I owe her that, at least.”

  Stepping over to her, Scott stops and looks down into the hole. Sam's body has been wrapped in a cloth, although the fabric has fallen away now and her dead, rotting face can just be made out as lightning arcs across the sky. A few flies are crawling across her cheek, and something fat and wriggly has made a home in her left eye. Moments later, soil starts dropping down onto the body, and Scott turns to see that Anna has begun to fill the grave.

  “I can do that,” he tells her.

  “No. It's my job.”

  She tosses in another shovelful of dirt.

  “I wondered whether to remove the knife from her head,” she continues. “At first I was going to, but then I figured it had become a part of her. She always wore it so well.”

  She lifts more dirt and throws it down into the grave.

  “You're able to touch things more and more,” he points out. “More often than not, now. Do you still have no -”

  “It doesn't matter!” she yells, turning to him with anger in her eyes. “Nothing matters anymore! Everyone's either dead or dying, and there's no-one here to save the world! I sure as hell can't do it, and neither can you! All we can do is sit here and wait until...”

  Her voice trails off, and after a moment she looks past Scott, toward the cemetery's far wall.

  “Did you go near the town square on your latest trip?” she asks cautiously, shivering slightly as an icy wind blows through.

  “Not too close,” he tells her. “I didn't see anyone. I think most people are either dead, or holed up in their houses. I did see...”

  He pauses.

  She turns to him.

  “What?” she asks.

  “I don't know what that Abberoth guy's doing in the town square,” he says cautiously, “but I saw this... like, it was some kind of construction. Like lots and lots of tree branches, all twisted and criss-crossing each other. It almost looked like a giant domed nest, one that's filled the town square and that's now over-spilling into the side-streets. Crazy, huh?”

  “It's only a matter of time before this is all over,” she replies, as she resumes filling the grave. “I wish he'd just get on with it. There's no point drawing all of it out. If the world has to end, then he should at least get it over with.”

  “You can't mean that, Anna. We could still figure something out. Or someone else might. Maybe the government. It can't end like this.” He waits for her to reply, but
she simply continues her work. “It can't,” he adds finally, with a hint of desperation in his voice. “This can't actually be the end of the world.”

  Another shovelful of dirt lands in the grave, this time covering Sam's face completely so that only the knife's hilt is now visible. Then another shovelful lands, and even the knife is buried.

  ***

  “I know this might be wildly inappropriate,” Scott says a short while later, fumbling his way through the dark cottage until he sees Anna silhouetted on the floor in the doorway, “but I found something in town and... Well, I figure we might as well use it, rather than let it go to waste.”

  She turns and sees that he's holding a bottle of champagne.

  “You want to drink champagne?” she asks, her voice flat now and tired, with all the emotion and anger drained away. “At the end of the world?”

  “Like I said, it'd be a shame to waste it.” He starts opening the bottle, and finally the cork pops out. “Besides, there's something kinda glam about doing this, isn't there? It feels like the kind of thing a rock-star would do at Armageddon.”

  “We're not rock-stars,” she points out.

  “I know, but...”

  He pauses, before drinking from the bottle and then stepping over to join her. As he does so, another rumble of thunder fills the sky, causing the cottage's windows to rattle wildly for a few seconds. The wind picks up, blowing even colder through the cemetery, and some loose tiles shake on the roof.

  “So what do you think his plan is?” Scott asks as he settles down next to Anna. “This Abberoth guy. If he really is going to destroy the world, why's he taking so long about it?”

  Taking the bottle, Anna drinks for a couple of seconds. It's been a while since she was even able to drink, but her body is becoming more and more solid now. When she's done, she hands the bottle back to him while wiping her chin.

  “Who cares?” she mutters. “It's the end of the world. It doesn't matter what comes after.”

  “I wonder what it's like everywhere else,” he replies. “London. New York. All over the world. I guess they're pretty confused if ground zero for the apocalypse is this little village in the middle of nowhere.” He waits for a reply, but she doesn't say anything. “I haven't seen any more signs of life beyond Rippon,” he adds finally. “There was that helicopter that crashed in the distance a few days ago, but since then there's been nothing. I guess that suggests that the rest of the world has it pretty bad. I mean, otherwise they'd have sent people here to try to do something.”

  “Thanks for stating the obvious,” she says darkly.

  “Then what -”

  “Sam had a plan!” she snaps.

  He sighs. “Not this again.”

  “She did! She must have!” She stares at him for a moment, wild-eyed and furious. “Just because I didn't figure it out, that doesn't mean it didn't exist. I bet when she died, she thought I'd come through and fix things, and Sparky thought that too. It was the one time they were actually relying on me, and I screwed everything up.”

  “You can't seriously be blaming yourself for the end of the world.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that's a little hysterical.”

  “You don't understand,” she replies, before taking the bottle back from him. “I buried Mrs. Allen, too. I should have done that sooner, it was wrong the way I shoved her off the table. At least we can treat people with dignity and respect as the world ends.” She takes another long swig from the bottle, before turning and looking out at the growing storm. “Even Henry's probably dead by now. Sam's baby. He was all she really cared about.”

  She pauses.

  “Maybe they're together in Heaven,” she adds finally, with a very faint, very brief smile. Tears are welling in her eyes. “That's something to hope for, right? Maybe Sam and little Henry were reunited in Heaven. That's the least Sam deserves.”

  For the next few minutes, they sit in silence, watching the lightning and listening to the rumbles of thunder. There are no other signs of life in Rippon, and as far as they know they could well be the only two people left alive in the whole world. There are certainly no other hints that anyone else might be around, and – although he feels he should say something profound or comforting or noble – Scott can't think of anything at all. He simply sits and waits for the world to be over.

  “What's that?” he asks suddenly, getting to his feet as he spots something in the distance.

  Anna gets up too, and a moment later another flicker of lightning briefly reveals the sight of thousands upon thousands of branches forming a crude dome in the center of town, rising from the town square. The construction is clearly bigger than the dome that Scott had mentioned earlier.

  “I think whatever Abberoth came here to do,” Sam says, reaching out and taking hold of Scott's hand, squeezing it tight, “he's about to do it. I think this is really the end.”

  The End

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I'm never drinking again. That's the end. No more shots. No more clubs. No more parties. This is officially the end.”

  “So you're having a dry day?” Kelly asks, her voice hissing slightly over the cellphone's speaker. “What about Wayne's birthday party tonight at the Crow?”

  “I'm serious this time,” Sam replies, reaching down and touching her belly, feeling the extra weight she's put on over the past few months of drinking. “I've got to get my life together before it's too late. Tell Wayne -”

  “I'll tell Wayne you'll be there at seven.”

  “I'm not -”

  “And I know you will, Sammy. 'Cause I know you!”

  “I'm just -”

  The line goes dead.

  Sighing, Sam grabs the phone and brings Kelly's number back up. She wants to call and set her straight, to tell her in no uncertain terms that she – Samantha Marker – is retiring from the local pub scene. At the same time, however, she hesitates as she thinks about how much fun it'd be to go out for just a couple of drinks. Not another bender, not another crazy night that gets lost and forgotten. Just one drink, maybe two at the most.

  “I'll be home by ten,” she whispers, hoping against hope that this time she'll actually stick to this self-imposed curfew, “and I won't be drunk. I won't have another blackout.”

  She's told herself the same thing over and over for months. A year, maybe. And she means every word, at least when the words leave her lips. The problem comes later, when she tells herself she can handle just one drink, and then just one more. The problem is that she gets bored so easily. Bored at home, bored in the pub, bored in clubs. And at least drinking means she's doing something. It's a way to alleviate the boredom, and this realization makes her feel as if she's actually quite smart.

  “I'll just have water,” she says out loud, “and -”

  Before she can finish, the phone rings again. Surprised to see Kelly's number flashing up, she hesitates for a moment before answering.

  “Hey,” she says, “did you -”

  “Hey Sammy,” Kelly says excitedly, cutting her off. “Just checking to see that you made it home okay last night. And that you're coming out for Wayne's do at the Crow tonight.”

  “Huh?” Sam replies, furrowing her brow. “We just talked about that.”

  “You were wasted last night. I'm actually surprised you answered.”

  “Yeah, well,” Sam says, “I'm never drinking again. That's the end. No more shots. No more clubs. No more parties. This is officially the -”

  And then she stops, suddenly, frozen like a robot as she realizes she remembers those exact words. She's had this conversation before, and not just once.

  Over.

  And over.

  And -

  “So you're having a dry day?” Kelly asks. Her voice hisses slightly over the cellphone's speaker. “What about Wayne's birthday party tonight at the Crow?”

  “I'm serious this time,” Sam replies. “I've got to -”

  She stops again.

 
“I've said all of this before,” she murmurs. “I've done all of this before.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly says with a laugh, “you were saying that last night, too.”

  “Saying what?”

  “How every night's the same. How we do the same things in the same places. How we just get trashed over and over again. You said it was like Groundhog Day. So anyway, I'll tell Wayne you'll be there at seven, yeah?”

  “I'm not -”

  “And I know you will, Sammy. 'Cause I know you!”

  “I'm just -”

  The line goes dead.

  Again.

  “I've forgotten something,” Sam whispers. “Not like normal, like the blackouts after a heavy night. I've forgotten -”

  Suddenly the phone starts ringing again. Sure enough, the name on the screen is Kelly's. Sam hesitates, feeling a growing sense of nausea in her belly, and then she cautiously taps to answer.

  “Hello?” she whispers.

  “Hey Sammy,” Kelly says excitedly, just like the last time. “Just checking to see that you -”

  Shocked, Sam cuts the call and drops the phone, before taking a step back. As the phone clatters against the lino and slides over to bump against the skirting board, Sam backs against the wall, and then she winces as she feels another burst of nausea. This time the sensation continues, and after a moment Sam clutches her belly and leans forward, and then she drops to her knees as she feels wave after wave of ever-tightening sickness starting to wrench its way through her body.

  “This is wrong,” she mumbles, as viscous slime starts dripping from her lips. “This didn't happen.”

  She tries to stand up, but instead she finds that her knees buckle and she falls forward. As she lands hard on her hands and knees, she feels a crumpling sensation in her right cheek, and at the same time her vision flickers and spins. For a moment she sees double, but then her sight goes back to normal just as she feels blood dribbling down from the roof of her mouth.

  Letting out a gurgled cry, she's about to stand when suddenly her vision flickers again and she feels something large starting to break through from the top of her mouth. As more and more slime runs from her lips, she tilts her head and groans, and finally a slimy round object slips past her tongue and falls to the floor, splattering against the lino.