The Gravest Girl of All

by Amy Cross

  “Witness the monstrosity that I became in Hell,” he explains, “while I endured my punishment for stealing that loaf of bread. Witness what I was turned into by the system, and then tell me that change is not needed.”

  “You were just a child,” she whispers, with tears in her eyes. “You didn't know any better. You were just hungry.”

  “No other souls will ever have to go through what I endured,” Abberoth says as he closes the cloak once more. “That, I shall ensure. The only question, Miss Marker, is whether or not I have to destroy this world before I get what I want. The Devil ruled Hell when this was done to me. If there is to be any justice, he must be delivered to me, so that he can pay for his actions.”

  He pauses for a moment, as if he sees the indecision in Sam's eyes.

  “When you came to me,” he adds, “you had a little under one hour before the deadline. You now have thirty-one minutes. Use them wisely.”

  ***

  “Well?” Anna asks frantically, as Sam steps through the doorway and enters the cottage's kitchen. “How did it go? I mean, obviously you're still here, so it went better than last time, but what happened? Did you stop him? Is it over?”

  “I didn't stop him,” Sam says, hesitating for a moment as she tries to make sense of everything she just heard.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I talked to him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because...”

  Her voice trails off for a moment, and then she looks around the kitchen. She waits, listening for some hint of another presence, but for now at least the cottage seems strangely quiet.

  “Where is he?” she asks finally.

  “The Devil? I think he's out in the cemetery, looking at the gravestones. I'll go and tell him that you're back.”

  Anna hurries to the doorway, only for Sam to grab her arm and hold her back.

  “Just wait a moment, Anna. I need to think.”

  “About what? Is there still a deadline?”

  Sam nods.

  “Then we don't have time to think!” Anna continues. “Thinking takes too long! We need to do something.”

  “I need a moment,” Sam says, stepping past her and heading through to the cottage's other room, where all the old books remain piled on the table. “Just a few minutes, alone. I need to figure something out.”

  With that, she shuts the door and then picks up a candle, before heading over to the desk and looking down at the array of books that have been left in a huge, disordered pile. However, whereas before she felt a lingering certainty that the books must contain the knowledge she needs, now she's not so certain.

  “I don't know where to start,” she whispers. “I thought I understood everything, but now I'm not so sure.”

  She picks up one of the books and starts flicking through at random, hoping against hope that some kind of answer might leap out at her.

  “You won't find anything in there,” a familiar voice says suddenly.

  Startled, Sam turns and looks over toward the far side of the room, just as the figure of an old man steps out of the shadows.

  “It can't be,” Sam whispers, “you're...”

  “Dead?” Faraday says with a faint, knowing smile. “Surely, Sam, you've learned by now that death is merely an inconvenience. You should have come to expect a ghostly visit in your moment of need.”

  “You've got to help me!” she stammers, hurrying toward him and trying to hug him, only for her arms to pass straight through his glowing, spectral body. “Which book do I look in? I know it has to be one of them!”

  She turns and hurries back to the table, where she starts picking up one book after another.

  “Is it one of the printed ones,” she continues, speaking so fast now that she's almost tripping over her own words, “or one of your old journal entries?”

  She looks at a few more books, before turning to see that Faraday is watching her with a hint of sadness in his eyes.

  “Which one?” she asks urgently. “We don't have much time!”

  “Sam -”

  “There's less than half an hour! Abberoth's going to destroy the world, why didn't you warn me about him in the first place? You could have given me more time to prepare!”

  Grabbing some more books, she starts flicking through them for a moment, before hurrying across the room and holding some of them up for him to see.

  “You have to tell me!”

  “I always thought the answer could be found in those dusty old things,” he replies, sounding exhausted as he flickers slightly in the low candlelight. “I lived my entire life according to texts and rituals, and what good did it do me? I ended up burning to death at the hands of a third-rate henchman. Sam, I can accept the impact my mistakes made on my own life, but I simply cannot allow you to follow my lead. Those books are basically fiction. Well-meaning fiction, sure, but I was wrong when I compiled all that information.”

  He reaches out and takes one of the books, only for it to immediately fall through his hand and land on the floor.

  “Oh yes,” he mutters, “I keep forgetting I can't touch things.”

  “You should burn them all,” he continues sadly. “Every last one of them. Forget the past, Sam, and all the scribbles that were issued by scribblers before us. It's the future that matters.”

  “You can't be serious!”

  “I know this must be difficult to hear.”

  “Sparky appeared to Anna!” she explains. “Right before he died, he told her the answer is in one of these books!”

  “Then he had far too much faith in the old ways.”

  She shakes her head. “No, Faraday. You're wrong.”

  “I don't know much about Abberoth, but I know you won't find any solutions in a bunch of dusty old pages.” He sighs. “I don't have much time here, Sam. The journey required immense concentration and I can already feel myself being drawn back to the afterlife. Sam, you've clearly grown so much since the last time I saw you. I couldn't be more proud of how you've developed as a gardener here in Rippon, but you've developed within a context of old rules. Now is the time to think for yourself, to forget prophecies and texts, and to move on with your own plans.”

  “Tell me how to defeat Abberoth!”

  “If I knew, I'd have told you already.”

  “I'll prove you wrong,” she replies, turning and heading back over to the books, taking another look at their covers. “Maybe you're not even the real Faraday. Maybe you're a trick, sent by Abberoth to make me lose hope.”

  “Do you remember when we first met, Sam?” he asks. “You damn near broke my nose. I suppose that was my fault, for sneaking up on you. Anyway, I introduced myself as your predecessor, and I admitted that I wasn't quite as dead as people believed. Which I wasn't, not back then. It's a different story now, of course. But that day, I acted like I knew everything. I suppose I thought I did. Oh, I think things could have been very different if I'd just admitted that I was out of my depth. It's too late to change that, of course, but you still have a chance to straighten things out.”

  “You can't give up,” she says. She picks up another book and turns to him. “You might not even -”

  And he's gone.

  She waits, but there's no sign of anyone else in the room.

  “Faraday?” she says, looking around as she feels a hint of panic in her heart. “Faraday, wait, I need you to come back! You can't just appear like that and then leave again!”

  She waits.

  Silence.

  “Faraday!” she yells desperately, before running to the door and flinging it open, then stumbling out into the next room. “Faraday, come back!”

  “Sam?”

  Turning, she sees a startled-looking Anna watching her from next to the front door.

  “He was wrong,” Sam says, trying for a moment to pull her thoughts together and regather her composure. “It probably wasn't the real Faraday. Abberoth's just trying to play tricks with me, that's all. He's wriggling his
way into my head!”

  “What are you talking about?” Anna asks. “How long do we have left until the end of the world?”

  Sam glances at the clock.

  “Sixteen minutes,” she whispers, before hurrying across the room and shoving Anna out of the way, then pulling the door open and stepping out into the freezing cemetery.

  “Do you think it'll be quick, like a finger-snap?” Anna asks, hurrying after her. “Or will it take ages? Maybe there'll be, like, volcanic eruptions and all sorts of weird stuff! Or dinosaurs! Do you think he'll unleash dinosaurs and other monsters to eat us all? I've got to admit, if I have to go, I reckon being eaten by a dinosaur would be pretty cool!”

  “Where is he?” Sam asks, looking out across the dark cemetery. “You said the Devil was out here.”

  “Uh, Sam...”

  “I need to talk to you!” she yells, cupping her hands around her mouth. “This is no time to be wandering around by yourself! We've got sixteen minutes to come up with a plan!”

  “Sam...”

  “He's so self-obsessed,” Sam mutters, still watching for any hint of movement out there in the darkness. “And self-absorbed. And just selfish! He could have been helping us since I got back from seeing Abberoth, but instead -”

  “I think this is for you.”

  Turning, Sam sees that Anna is removing a letter that appears to have been nailed to the front door.

  “Let me see,” she says, taking the letter from Anna and immediately spotting her own name scrawled on the front in wiry, old-fashioned hand-writing.

  As she opens the letter, she already has an idea about the contents.

  “He ran away again, didn't he?” she says through gritted teeth as she begins to read. “I should never have -”

  And then she stops, and she feels a sudden heavy sensation in her chest as she realizes what the letter actually says:

  Dear Sam,

  Forgive me for not saying goodbye in person, but I've never been good at that sort of thing. It's clear that Abberoth will only stop once he has me as his prisoner, so that's what I'm going to give him. By the time you read this, I'll have gone to him and surrendered.

  He'll put everything back to how it was. I'll make sure that's part of the deal. He'll get his own way in Hell, but up here in the mortal world things will be good again. Maybe not perfect, but it wasn't perfect before, was it? This whole situation has simply become far too extreme.

  More importantly, you'll no longer need to be the gardener here in Rippon. The job is now unnecessary. You were the last, and now you'll be free. I don't know what you'll do, and I won't be able to check in on you, but I hope you find happiness.

  Don't try to stop me. This is the only right thing to do.

  Yours sincerely, and with great affection,

  The Big D

  “What?” Sam whispers, quickly reading the letter for a second time, and then for a third. “No, why would he do this? We still have sixteen minutes. Well, fourteen by now. We can still fight.”

  She pauses, before dropping the letter and turning to start walking toward the cemetery gate. “I'm going after him. Why does he have to be such an idiot? I mean, sure, we've been cutting it fine but -”

  Stopping suddenly, she realizes she can hear a distant rumbling sound. A moment later she sees that the storm clouds are starting to part in the distance, allowing cracks of sunlight to burst through, and then she spots twigs and chunks of wood rising up from the dome in the center of town as the rumbling sound gets louder and louder. Seconds later, she feels the ground starting to tremble beneath her feet.

  “Sam, what's happening?” Anna asks, sounding scared. “Is this the end of the world now, Sam? Is it happening right now? Isn't that, like, ten minutes too early? Shouldn't we get another ten minutes?”

  “I don't know what's happening,” Sam says, looking around for an answer before suddenly realizing that she's in danger of being knocked off her feet. Grabbing hold of a nearby gravestone in order to stay steady, she looks toward the light and then has to shield her eyes a little.

  “Sam, I don't like this,” Anna continues, hurrying over and grabbing her arm. “Is the end of the world going to hurt? I mean, obviously I suppose it has to hurt a little bit, but will it hurt a lot? And do you think I'll go upstairs or downstairs?” She pauses, before sighing. “I suppose I already know the answer to that, don't I? Damn, I wish I'd been a better person.”

  “He's leaving,” Sam whispers, pulling free and taking another couple of steps forward, before a powerful shudder rocks the cemetery and knocks her to her feet.

  Landing hard on her hands and knees, she looks up just as the rest of the giant nest is drawn up into the brightening sky, and as a howling, agonized scream rings out across the entire world. At the same time, the brightness flares with such intensity that she has to fall back and cover her eyes.

  “That's him!” she shouts, as the Devil's scream gets louder and louder. “Abberoth's taking him away! It's -”

  The End

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The rain has stopped.

  Sitting up in bed, Sam looks up at the ceiling and sees that no more drips are falling through the small hole that has recently developed. She pauses for a moment, wondering why she woke with such a start, and then she hears someone knocking once again on the front door.

  “Coming!” she calls out, tripping on her shoes and almost falling flat on her face. She makes her way across the bedroom until she reaches the hallway, where she sees morning sunlight streaming through the rain-dappled window.

  Someone knocks again.

  “Coming!” she sighs, bumping against the wall as she ties her dressing gown around her waist. She's been an early riser ever since she moved to Rippon, so this feeling of sluggishness is an unwelcome reminder of her old life. Barely even awake, she glances at the clock on the wall and sees that it's almost 9am, which means she's three hours late. Usually she'd be well into her morning chores by this point.

  Suddenly, as she makes her way through to the front room, her head bumps against the underside of the doorway. Or rather, she bumps the doorway with the hilt of the dagger that's embedded in her head. For a few years now, she's managed to avoid catching that hilt on anything. Lately, however, she's bumped it several times. Carelessness, she assumes.

  “Damn it!” she mutters, as a spark of pain ripples through her head.

  She hesitates, waiting for the pain to subside, and then she hears another knock on the door.

  “I heard you!” she hisses. “I'm coming!”

  Finally she gets to the door, slides the eleven bolts across, and then pulls the door open to see Doctor Burnham standing outside.

  “Hi,” she says, unable to hide her surprise. “Is something wrong? Did someone...”

  “Die?” he replies. “No. Absolutely not. It's just, I haven't had cause to drop by for such a long time, and I thought I should come and check that you're okay in here.”

  ***

  “It's remarkable, really,” Doctor Burnham continues as he takes another sip of tea in the kitchen. “It must be two months now since anyone died. I don't want to sound morbid, of course, but... Well, a few of the older residents have been ailing for a while. They're showing remarkable tenacity, though. They're really hanging onto life.”

  “Good for them,” Sam says, trying to take a sip but finding the cup's contents too hot.

  “I hope you're not getting bored here.”

  “Bored?”

  “With no graves to dig.”

  “I've still got grass to mow,” she points out. “And millions of other little jobs. Cracks to fill, ant nests to get rid of, trees and bushes to prune. Besides, I've also started a new project. I'm cataloging the old grave stones and trying to work out how to clean them. I figure it's a little disrespectful to leave them all higgleldy-piggeldy and -”

  Stopping suddenly, she feels as if she might have forgotten something important. Rubbing the back of her neck, she tri
es to figure out exactly what's happening, but then she realizes that Doctor Burnham is eyeing her with a slightly puzzled expression.

  “Never mind,” she says, forcing a smile. “I know what to do here. I've done it enough times before.”

  She pauses, replaying those words over and over in her thoughts.

  “I've done it,” she says out loud, with a hint of wonder in her voice, “enough times before.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I've done it before,” she continues, turning to him. “Doctor Burnham, have we been here before?”

  “Quite a few times, I'm afraid.”

  “No, I mean this exact morning,” she says, stepping closer, “except I think something else had happened.” She pauses for a moment longer, and for some reason she finds herself imagining one of the town's residents on the mortuary slab. She furrows her brow, but at the same time the image is so strong, so very real, that she can't quite put it out of her mind. “How's Mrs. Allen?” she asks finally, cautiously.

  “Mrs. Allen?” He shrugs. “Well, she's fine as far as I know.”

  “Have you seen her today?”

  “I saw her last night.”

  “And she was okay?”

  “She seemed in rather good spirits,” he continues. “In fact, she was quite excited. She and some of the other ladies are off on a little day trip. My wife's going as well. They're taking a little bus and motoring out of town for a while. She did tell me exactly where they're off to, but I'm afraid I didn't really pay much attention. It all went in one ear and out the -”

  “A bus?”

  “I believe so. They must have hired it from one of the other towns.”

  Sam pauses again, and for a moment – in her mind's eye – she sees flames rising into the bright blue sky. Turning, she looks over at the window, but there's no sign of a fire, no hint that anything is wrong. She remembers the sound of screams, however, as well as a general sense of panic.