Ashtown Burials

by N. D. Wilson

  Cyrus looked through the hole at the plank paths. The Polygon was silent. Empty. He looked back. Nolan might be crazy, but it didn’t matter. Right now, he was toasting cheesy bread.

  Antigone tucked her feet up in front of her and pressed her back against the wall. “Are you part of the Order?” she asked.

  Nolan smiled slightly. “I am a spider in a corner. I watch. I listen. I live on what I find.” He looked up. “On what finds me.”

  “Um.” Cyrus glanced at his sister. She widened her eyes, and he turned back to Nolan. “Does Rupert Greeves know that you’re down here?”

  “Rupert Greeves.” Nolan sighed. He sounded tired. “He can find a spider when he has need. He found you a nanny among the cobwebs, didn’t he?” He looked at Cyrus and then back at the slowly toasting bread. “He is already lost in your troubles.”

  “What?” Antigone dropped her feet back to the floor and edged forward. “What do you mean?”

  “Your brother was taken,” Nolan said quietly. “I heard you speak with Greeves.” He glanced at her surprised face. “I do not need to be seen to listen.” The toaster oven sparked and its interior light flickered off. Sighing, Nolan thumped it lightly. Cyrus jumped forward, touched the toaster, and then sat back down. The light returned, along with the quiet hum of heat. Nolan’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Cyrus. Cyrus blinked and said nothing.

  “What else do you know?” Antigone asked.

  Nolan inhaled slowly and turned his worn eyes away. “More than I care to. Maxi and his master are hyenas. Their pursuit will not end. But Greeves will stand or fall with you when the time comes. He’s cut from old stone.”

  Antigone shivered, rubbing goose-bumping arms. “Greeves is the one in charge of this place?”

  Nolan slid his stare onto her. “No. He’s Ashtown’s Blood Avenger. The Avengel. He protects and—when needed—he avenges.”

  Antigone dropped her brows. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Nolan’s mouth twitched into a small smile and then grew into another yawn. “If an Explorer from Ashtown freezes on Kilimanjaro or is burned in New Guinea or is imprisoned in France, Rupe sets out after the remains. If a member commits treason against the Order, Rupe’s the one after him. If the Orbis—the circle of Sages—identifies a threat, Rupe hunts him—or her—or it—to ground. He is both hound and tiger.” He slid a glance back over his shoulder, as if his own words wearied him. “And I am one who knows.”

  Crouching on the floor, Nolan flipped open the toaster oven, twisted a cloth around his hand, and pulled out the toasted bread. The cheese on top had browned and bubbled, and the edges were crisp. “Hot,” Nolan said. “Careful.” Banging the little glass door shut, he set the toast on the stone between Cyrus and Antigone. Cyrus breathed in slowly, letting the smell taunt his stomach.

  “Thanks for this,” Antigone said, and she poked an edge with her finger. Cyrus nodded in agreement.

  Nolan moved across the small room and settled back into his low crouch, pale, gnarled arms wrapped tight around his knees. His smooth, river-rock eyes were on Cyrus and Antigone as they took their first tentative bites.

  “So you think Rupert will find Dan?” Antigone asked.

  Nolan ran a hand over the cobweb hairs on his jaw. After a moment, he shook his head slightly.

  Cyrus stopped chewing. Antigone wiped her mouth.

  Nolan shrugged. “But then Maxi Robes might not be running. He wants what he wants.” He looked at Cyrus and his worn eyes flickered interest. Then, as it faded, he stood. “You have much to see and much to do if you ever want to move out of my Polygon. But you’re tired.” He stepped toward the door. “Sleep. I won’t be gone long.”

  When Nolan had stepped through the hole and the sound of creaking planks had faded away, Cyrus looked at his sister.

  “Tigs,” he said. “We just ate cheesy bread in a crypt.”

  Antigone nodded. “I want to know how Horace is doing. What do you think happened to the driver?”

  “Gunner?” Cyrus shrugged and moved across the room to Nolan’s alcove. He squeezed in onto his back and propped his feet up on the painted yellow stone wall.

  Gripping the keys at his neck, he hooked one finger around his soft snake necklace and pulled her free. For a moment, Patricia’s silver body was visible, lapping his fingers, but then she found her tail and was gone. It was hard to believe that she was real. He liked having her—another living thing in his life.

  He held his hand flat, letting the weight of the invisible keys dangle from his palm. Feeling them with his other hand, he found the sheath and flipped it open. The tooth became visible, dangling in the glowing light of the ceiling lanterns, suspended in the air beneath his palm. Cyrus felt the now-familiar chill creep through him. What was this thing? What did it really do?

  He glanced back at the toaster oven he had just resurrected. Shivering, he flipped the invisible sheath shut again, and the tooth disappeared. Closing his hand gently around Patricia’s body and the invisible keys, he let his mind grind through the past two days. Normal life at the Archer—at least normal for him. And then a man in a yellow truck, and Mrs. Eldridge with her shotgun. Gunner and the fast car. Gunner. Guns. Guns that spat fire and bullets that fell from the sky. Maxi’s smile full of worn teeth and Milo’s Pizza. He wanted one of Milo’s pizzas. He wanted all of Milo’s pizzas. The river and darkness and cables and Antigone throwing up. Flying bicycles crashing into a fountain.

  “Tigs?” he said quietly.

  He turned his head. Antigone was curled up tight on her side, arms around her legs, her chin against her knees. Her brows were down and her eyes were squeezed shut. Cyrus blinked slowly, and he didn’t want the blink to end. Warm darkness.

  He could see the big man named Rupert—Blood Avenger, Avengel. A towering wall of portraits and a pale boy beneath them. Nodding. Shaking his head. Nodding.

  He and his sister were Acolytes in the Order of Brendan. Whatever that meant. The O of B. He’d signed the hay-bale book. Cyrus Lawrence Smth.

  Dan was gone.

  Asleep, lost in a tangle of darkness, lost in dark water, holding his breath, he swam through an underwater maze behind a blindfolded woman. The water faded, and he was moving toward the light of a too-familiar dream.

  The California house had pale wood floors, polished to glistening. Cyrus was in the kitchen. He could smell his mother’s lemon soap, and the counters were freshly cleaned. Antigone was in the living room, curled up on the couch, staring through the wall of quivering windows, watching distant spray jump the point on Elephant Island. Cyrus knew what was going to happen next. He waited for it. The kitchen door burst open, and his father slipped inside, smiling, brushing back wet hair, slapping his arms.

  He handed Cyrus a note. “Give this to your mom for me, will you, Cy?” He sounded like Dan, but unafraid. “I have to run a friend to the island. And tell her we might have an extra at dinner.”

  Antigone twisted around on the couch. “You’re going out in this?”

  “That I am,” their father said. “But not for long. Back soon.”

  Cyrus took the note and nodded. His father’s heavy wet hand slapped his shoulder and then ruffled his hair. “Look after Tigger for me.” Then he fired a kiss across the room at Antigone and slid back out into the wind. The door didn’t latch behind him, and the wind threw it open, banging it against the fridge. Cyrus slammed it.

  That was it. His father was gone. Forever.

  And then, for the first time in two years, the dream changed. Antigone didn’t get up and pace the room in worry. She was frozen on the couch. Time didn’t jump forward to his mother’s panic and the cold food and the storm breaking and the light of a heartless moon. Instead, the door blew back open.

  Cyrus slammed it. It blew open again, and he slammed it again. It blew open again, and he pressed his back against it, pushing with both legs until he heard the click of the latch.

  It blew open again. How long this went on, the dream Cyrus coul
dn’t say. Time had stopped. Antigone was frozen. Only he and the door and the storm moved on. Finally, frustrated and confused, he stepped back and watched. Rain was whipping around the doorway, but not one drop entered the house or spattered on the floor.

  Cyrus walked out the door and into the swarming, stinging rain. His father, enveloped in rubber rain gear, was frozen midjump into the passenger side of a truck. Suddenly, the dream moved in. His father landed on the seat and slammed the door. The truck began to pull away. The driver was big and … blurry. He wouldn’t take shape. His profile should have been visible, but it was a smear of blankness. Cyrus squinted and cupped his hands around his eyes, but it wasn’t a question of seeing. Somewhere in his mind, dusty, hidden deep beneath piles of the forgotten, stored with memories he never knew he’d collected—things said in third grade, the color of his first gum ball, his mother rocking him and singing in a strange language—there was an image of that driver. And something had stirred it. Something wanted to dig it back up and have a look.

  The truck moved down the gravel drive, hopping in the puddles and potholes as it went. The dream disappeared with it.

  “Cy!”

  Cyrus opened his eyes and tried to stretch his arms above his head, cracking his knuckles—and a slender snake—against cool stone. His hand closed around sharp keys. Wincing, he sat up. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than five minutes. Or an hour. Or two. He began to gently pull the snake loose from his fingers, but he stopped. Antigone was standing in the middle of the room, her cheek creased with sleep. Nolan was beside her, and his arms were full of ragged clothes.

  Nolan set down his pile. “You shouldn’t sleep any longer. I tried to find you a way into some normal showers. But you two aren’t terribly popular, so you’re left with mine.” He nodded toward the hole in the wall. “Take turns outside. Stay on the planks. Not even a toe on the floor. I’ll be back.” He pointed at the grandfather clock. “Twenty minutes. I’ll find you an actual list of the 1914 standards.”

  Tugging a stiffly folded towel and a brown brick of something soapish out of one of the alcoves, he handed them both to Antigone. Then he ducked through the hole and walked quickly down the bouncing planks.

  Antigone opened her mouth to object, but the objections didn’t come. She was filthy. Horace’s blood was still caked between her fingers, and her hair looked like it had spent some time in a deep fryer. Even Cyrus had showered more recently than she had.

  She stepped to the hole.

  “You’re going to do it?” Cyrus shook his head. “I’m not. No way. Not out in the middle of a room, standing beneath a cold drip.”

  “Yes, you are,” Antigone said. “If I do it, you’re doing it, too. And I’m doing it, Rus. Scoot around the corner and look in the coffins or something.”

  Standing on a wobbly plank beneath a corked spout on an ancient mini-aqueduct carrying who knew what kind of water, Antigone hesitated. But not for long. Holding her breath, she reached up and tugged out the cork. Frigid water tumbled down, tightening skin and panicking nerves. Gasping, Antigone bounced in place.

  “Sounds cold!” Cyrus yelled.

  Antigone chattered.

  “Tigs,” Cyrus said. “You remember when Dad went out to the island, you know, the last time?”

  She said nothing. He knew she did. Cyrus continued. “Did you get a look at the guy he went with? The guy in the truck? I dreamed it again, but this time I could almost see …” His voice drifted off.

  “No,” Antigone managed. “Just the back of the truck. Two heads.” Scrubbing the soap brick at the blood on her arms and hands, she looked around the cold cavern, shifting her feet on the plank. Why did Nolan live here? Why was she here? Because nobody wanted the two Smith kids around. These people wanted her to fail, maybe even die. Why else would they send her off to live in an infestation? They’d hated Skelton and now they hated her. She wasn’t used to being hated.

  A crowd of feelings jostled around inside Antigone’s cold skull. She was shivering. She was confused. She was hungry and worried and more than a little creeped out. But louder than all of those things, she was curious. And irritated. Mad, actually. Angry. And anger made her feel a little stronger. She needed to feel strong right now. It would be too easy to curl up in a corner and cry about the burnt motel and her sleeping mother and missing brother. Who did these people think she was? She wiped cold water from her cheeks. She was a Smith. Her father never backed down. Her mother didn’t, either.

  “Cyrus,” she said. “We’re going to get Dan back, and we’re going to beat these stupid people.”

  Cyrus laughed. “Fine with me.”

  When Nolan returned, he was carrying a huge nest of pillows and blankets and had a creased booklet clamped in his teeth. Cyrus and Antigone, both shivering awkwardly in new clean clothes, were looking through his books.

  Antigone was wearing ripped brown pants that almost fit tucked into tall, extremely worn caramel riding boots. She had slicked her hair straight back. Cyrus’s hair had been rough-toweled in every direction, and he’d cuffed his pocketed and tattered pants at the bottom to shorten the legs. Patricia’s cool body was back around his blistered neck and the keys dangled high on his chest. The canvas shoes Nolan had brought had been too small, so his feet were back in the pair he’d stolen from Dan’s room that morning. Both of them were wearing overly pocketed linen safari shirts with sleeves that rolled up and buttoned in place, but the color was badly faded and blotchy. Cyrus’s collar was torn, and two of Antigone’s pockets had threadbare holes. But at least the clothes were blood- and soot-free.

  Nolan dropped his pillow pile and held out the booklet.

  Cyrus took it and read the title. “Order of Brendan, Guidelines for Acolytes, Ashtown Estate, 1910–1914. Are they much different from the guidelines now?”

  Nolan scratched his chin and turned away. “ ’Lytes now wouldn’t survive the 1914 kitchens.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging.” Antigone gestured at her battered boots. “Who did you take the clothes from?”

  Nolan twisted back around, his eyes suddenly alive, his already-pale face whitening. “You think I’m a thief?”

  Antigone glanced around at the room’s odd assortment and then looked at her brother. She shrugged and raised her eyebrows. “Um …”

  “Out!” Nolan yelled. “Out!” He grabbed Antigone by the shoulders, driving her toward the hole.

  Twisting, kicking, punching, Antigone pummeled the lean boy, but his grip only tightened. An arm slid around her ribs and she was off the ground.

  “Stop!” Cyrus yelled. “Put her down!” Grabbing a thick book, he jumped forward and swung with both hands, driving the corner of the spine into Nolan’s ear. Dropping Antigone halfway out of the hole, Nolan turned.

  “If you touch her again …,” Cyrus said. “If you touch her again, I will seriously try to kill you.”

  Nolan’s white-hot face cracked with laughter. “Kill me? Yes, please,” he said. “Especially with a book.” Rubbing his ear, he looked down at Antigone, her head and shoulders lying on the plank pathway. Turning, she reached down to push off the linoleum floor.

  “No!” Nolan jumped forward, kicking her arm as a gray shape flicked out from beneath the plank toward her hand.

  Tripping over Antigone, Nolan staggered down and out onto the dusty white floor. A swarm of clattering shapes suddenly swirled around him.

  While Cyrus watched with wide eyes, Nolan spun, jumping, cursing, stamping, crunching something with every step, slapping at his legs, and then his hips, and then his stomach and back. Reaching the showers, he jumped and grabbed on with one hand. With his other hand, he kept slapping, grabbing, and throwing.

  “Meat, eggs, anything!” he yelled at Cyrus. “From the fridge!”

  Cyrus rushed to the little fridge and jerked open the door. Rank eggs. Fuzzy cheese. Green meat. He grabbed two fistfuls, turned, and lobbed it all out the hole.

  A moment later, the scene changed.

>   Nolan knocked the last clambering shapes to the floor and monkey-barred his way back to the plank path.

  The Whip Spiders had found a new focus, and more and more of them were tap-dancing in from around the room, clicking and swarming on the food.

  Breathing hard, Nolan looked at Cyrus and Antigone. His right arm was dotted with large red welts all the way up to his bare shoulder and onto the side of his neck.

  “Um,” said Antigone, pointing. “Your pocket’s moving.”

  The pocket on Nolan’s right hip bulged, and then a leg emerged. Nolan made a fist and slammed the spider against his leg. Then he shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the stunned creature.

  He held it on his palm. Five inches long, its back was hinged with armor like a tailless scorpion. Two slender crab claws on arms longer than the body extended forward. Behind those, two long, barbed whips curled and groped slowly. The remaining six legs dangled off the sides of Nolan’s hands. The creature seemed to be naturally brown, but its color shifted and lightened, approaching the shade of Nolan’s skin.

  “Were they pinching you?” Antigone asked.

  “Stinging,” said Nolan. “The whips have stings to bring down prey. Then they strip it with their pincers.” The Whip Spider on his hand quickened and its legs tensed. Nolan dropped it on the plank, crushed it with his heel, and kicked the limp remainder into the seething mass on the floor. “They hunt in packs, change color like octopi, and, given their preferences, would camouflage themselves on the ceiling, dropping onto whatever passed below. In this circumstance, they make do lurking beneath my planks.”

  The three of them turned, staring down at the melee of creatures polishing the floor. The food was virtually gone, and dozens of spiders were already scurrying sideways back beneath the paths.

  Cyrus looked around the room. “Can’t they climb these walls?”

  “Oh, they could.” Nolan smiled. “If I hadn’t rubbed down the base of every surface and pillar with oil. I did that before I hung the planks. And got a share of stings to show for it.”

  “Your arm looks terrible,” Antigone said, grimacing. “Should you put something on it?”