The Realms of the Dead

by William Todd Rose

  Directly in front of him, a leafless tree was silhouetted against the sky. Its branches forked out like fingers from a gnarled hand and the creaking sound came again…only this time, Chuck could clearly see its source. A rope was looped over the tree’s thickest limb, but dangling at its end was not the sun-bloated corpse upon which his imagination had previously insisted. Instead the rope terminated at an object that looked like a giant, shadowy donut, suspended a couple feet above the ground.

  Beside the tree was a figure that seemed to be entirely formed of shadow. Though smaller than Marilee, it was obviously the silhouette of a young girl. Her dress fluttered in a breeze that seemed to affect only her and her hair whipped wildly as she stood with her hands on her hips. Where her eyes normally would have been two tiny flames raged, seeming to burn somewhere deep within the darkness of her skull. The flickering firelight reflected off something that hovered directly in front of her eyes, something that gleamed in the reddish-orange glow like glass.

  At that moment, everything clicked into place and Chuck realized exactly how wrong he’d been. All along, he’d assumed that the spirit tormenting him was Albert Lewis. And it had certainly made sense at the time. But now, with the puzzle finally pieced together, he could clearly see the full picture.

  Everything, after all, had pointed to a child: the creaking of a tire swing as it spun in slow circles; the girlish giggle he thought he’d heard just before Marilee had attacked in his office; even the locations the Bleedovers had been set in had given clues that he had simply been too shortsighted to pick up on. A dilapidated elementary school. A child’s birthday party.

  Part of him, perhaps his pride, insisted there was no way he could have pieced it all together. After all, no one would have suspected someone so young of harboring such malice. Nodens had been murdered, after all. And when the spirit had ridden Marilee, it had attempted to take his own life as well.

  And the insects? his ego demanded. What about the insects? They were in every single Bleedover!

  As soon as the protests emerged, however, Chuck saw the error in this reasoning as well. Insects was a word almost exclusively reserved for adults and the world of science. To a child, such creatures were simply bugs.

  A voice flittered through his memory, confirming what he already knew to be true.

  “All my friends call me Bug ’cause they say I bug them all the time and also ’cause my glasses make me look like one…”

  Picking himself up from the ground, Chuck’s eyes never strayed from the child’s silhouette.

  “Abigail?” he ventured.

  Marilee’s and Control’s jaws both dropped as Chuck addressed the spirit. Neither, however, had to ask who she was. Report 2015367-LA, detailing the events of the Albert Lewis case, was the most requisitioned file in The Institute’s history. Within those pages, the name Abigail Louise Peterson was considered a footnote, a spirit of interest only because she played a small role in the legend Chuck Grainger was to become.

  Abigail Peterson, after all, had been Chuck’s original assignment. It had been her Crossfade he’d originally projected into and his only mission had been to guide the little girl’s soul across The Divide. That, however, was when things had gone horribly wrong.

  “Abigail, sweetie, you have to stop this, okay?”

  The sound of Chuck’s voice whipped the wind fluttering the child’s hair and dress into a fury. Her silhouette now seemed to stand in hurricane-strength gusts and the fires smoldering within her eyes whooshed as the flames were fed.

  “You said you’d help me!” Abigail’s voice quivered with rage and bordered upon shrill hysteria. “You said I’d see Mommy and Daddy! You said I needed to trust you!”

  “Abigail, I know what—”

  “Liar!”

  Something rustled in the grass nearby, but Chuck dared not look away. Abigail’s wrath radiated from her small body, shooting out in beams of unadulterated hostility that burned deep within Chuck’s own soul.

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But we can work this—”

  “You left me!” The child’s screech vibrated in his skull, causing Chuck to wince as needles of pain jabbed his eardrums. “You left me to him!”

  Images of Albert Lewis’s nightmare realm flashed in Chuck’s mind, as vivid as when he’d actually Walked there. Condensation glistened on bloodstained stones by torchlight and the moans and screams of tortured souls rose and fell among the clinking of chains. Rats ripped sinew from victims who couldn’t even count upon death to relieve them of their endless torment and ghastly monstrosities scuttled through shadows. A white-hot branding iron smoldered in darkness and scalpel blades gleamed as the screams of the damned reached a crescendo. All of this, however, was viewed from a low angle, as if Chuck was crouched on the floor and looking up: It was seen through the perspective of a child.

  “You didn’t even notice me! When you came, you came for her.” Abigail’s head snapped to the side and the girl glowered at Control.

  “No!” Chuck yelled. “Not her. Her sister. It was her sister!”

  “Liar!”

  In his peripheries, Chuck saw Marilee inching toward the Faraday Cage during the exchange, but with Abigail’s attention focused in that direction she froze.

  “Abigail.” Though he spoke rapidly, Chuck tried to keep his tone calm and even, to be the voice of reason in a world of madness. “Abigail, look at me, sweetie.”

  Though he didn’t see the child’s head swivel, she was suddenly looking directly at him again, the flames in her eyes burning more brightly than ever.

  “I can still help you, okay?” Marilee edged toward the Faraday Cage again and Chuck’s pulse quickened. He had to keep the spirit’s attention focused solely on him, had to keep her talking. “I can.”

  Laughter swirled around Chuck on all sides, almost as if the girl’s spirit looped and darted in the air around him. The giggling mocked and taunted at every turn and caused goose bumps to creep over Chuck’s flesh. This was not the joyful sound of a child’s merriment; no, it was the voice of a soul that had been pushed over the brink of sanity.

  Abigail’s voice cut through her own giggling, but her words were clearly orientated to her silhouetted form.

  “Why? ’Cause you’re my friend?” She spat the word as if it were a rancid nugget of meat. “You are, aren’t you? My friend?”

  The laughter churning in the air stopped and when Abigail spoke again, it was not in the voice of a small girl. In fact, the words coming from Abigail’s silhouetted form were Chuck’s.

  “Well, I’m your friend…but I’m just going to call you Abigail because a little girl as pretty as you deserves a pretty name.”

  Marilee had reached the side of the Faraday Cage and she fished four small screws from her pocket as she repeatedly glanced over her shoulder. Placing three of the screws between her lips, she held the metal box in place with one hand while she used the screwdriver on the fourth.

  At the same time, Control stepped forward. She tried to keep her movements casual, as though she was simply changing positions, but she angled her body in front of Marilee, effectively blocking the girl’s work from Abigail’s line of sight.

  “He said I was pretty, too!” The spirit spoke in her own voice, but only briefly; when it changed again, it was the voice of a much older man and its words oozed with sadistic menace. “Look how pretty your blood is against such pale skin, child.”

  Marilee tightened the second screw in the opposite corner of the inverter, her nostrils flaring with each frantic breath.

  Chuck knew he had to keep Abigail talking. But in all honesty, he didn’t know what to say. How do you comfort a child who’s been in the clutches of history’s cruelest mass murderer? How do you convince her to trust again when your own failings were what put her in that predicament to begin with?

  “I’m…I’m sorry.” Though the sentiment sounded feeble, even to his own ears, Chuck’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I should’ve looked out for you. I should
n’t have ever, ever let that happen.”

  “Not good enough!” she screamed. “When you’re bad, you gotta be punished!”

  The shadows cloaking Abigail dissipated and Chuck gasped as he recoiled. The little girl’s body was mottled with bruises and precise scars ridged her arms and face. The glasses perched on the bridge of her nose were slightly askew and the left lens was a web of cracks. Her blond hair was matted with dried blood and her dress was so filthy that it was impossible to tell what color it had originally been.

  “Am I pretty now?” she demanded. “Am I?”

  With the third screw in place, Marilee turned her attention to the remaining one. The screwdriver felt warm and slick in her moist palm and she worked rapidly, grateful for the tool’s textured grip.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing…but I don’t like it.”

  Confusion wrinkled Chuck’s brow as he tried to figure out exactly what Abigail meant. She’d stared directly at him as she spoke, ensuring he had no choice but to gaze upon her hideous disfigurements. But he hadn’t been doing anything. He was just standing there…

  Realization dawned on him and Abigail laughed as though his arched eyebrows amused her. The girl’s spirit had been looking at him, true, but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d been talking to him.

  “Control! Marilee!” He shouted their names as a warning, but at the same time the rustling noise he’d heard earlier returned. This time it was louder and he noticed puffs of dust rising from patches of grass at irregular intervals.

  “When you’re bad, you gotta be punished,” Abigail repeated.

  Chuck backed toward his companions as figures rose up from the grass, his mind reeling from what it witnessed. The decayed dog carcasses struggled to their feet as thick fluids slurped out of their wounds. With their snouts nearly shriveled away, their teeth were perpetually bared and they staggered forward with their heads lowered. Those whose haunches had deteriorated past the point of usefulness dragged themselves forward, their front paws digging furrows into the earth as grass disappeared in puffs of dust.

  Elsewhere in the field, there was a fluttering of wings as birds that were more skeleton than meat took to the air. Loose feathers drifted lazily toward the ground as putrefied sludge rained down in their wake.

  Chuck and Control shielded Marilee, who frantically twisted the screwdriver in her hand.

  “Come on!” she shouted. “Come on, darn it, come on!”

  The screwdriver slipped from her grasp and she all but dove after it as the cadaverous dogs closed in with throaty growls.

  “Abigail! Abigail, you stop this right now, young lady! You hear me? Stop it!”

  Chuck’s reprimands fell upon deaf ears. The child skipped in circles around the base of the tree, laughing and giggling as her voice lilted in a singsong: “Dead birds fly again, a dead puppy ain’t your friend, dead birds fly again…”

  The snarling dogs formed a loose ring around the Faraday Cage and the birds of Abigail’s song swooped and circled overhead. The stench of death enclosed them on all sides, as thick and pungent as it was nauseating.

  Having retrieved the screwdriver, Marilee fumbled with a screw that seemed infinitesimally tiny in her trembling fingers.

  “Last one,” she mumbled. “Last one. Connect the wiring harness. Through the breakers.”

  Abigail slid into her tire swing and gripped the rope with both hands as she pumped her legs and built momentum. No longer singing, she hummed her chant and the rope creaked as she swung back and forth.

  “Abigail,” Chuck tried again, “you don’t have to do this.”

  The girl stopped humming and when she spoke her voice was cold and devoid of emotion.

  “Yeah, I do,” she reminded him. “When you’re bad, you’ve gotta be punished.”

  Then, as if on cue, her army of dead animals attacked.

  Chapter 16

  The birds targeted Marilee. They dove at her with squeaks and squawks, talons plucking her hair while wings battered the sides of her face. The girl flailed her arms overhead, batting them away as best as she could. But when she actually managed to send one spiraling through the air, another swooped in to take its place.

  Meanwhile, the first of the dogs sprang. Its body flew through the air and its rib cage flashed in the sunlight as its jaws sprang open. Chuck whirled to the side and caught its front paw mid-leap. Using centrifugal force to his advantage, he flung the animal in a high arc and it twisted and thrashed in the air until finally thudding back to the earth with a sickening squish.

  There was no time to relish this small victory, however. The rest of the pack had learned a lesson from their leader and changed tactics. One putrid pup darted forward, snapping and gnashing its teeth in the hopes of finding purchase only to scramble away again. As it retreated, another dog lunged, repeating the process over and over. Chuck and Control kicked at the dogs, leaping and jumping in attempts to lessen the chance of being bitten.

  All the while, Abigail swung in her tire swing, alternately singing and humming as she watched the attack. Her eyes twinkled behind a glaze of insanity and tiny flames raged within her pupils. Throwing her head back, she laughed and pumped her legs, propelling herself even higher.

  “Marilee!” Control shouted. “We need that box working, girl!”

  The child only answered with screams of pain. A decomposing crow had sunk its talons into her upper lip and blood welled around the wounds as the bones in what was left of its wings smacked her face. She spun in wild circles, one hand stabbing the bird repeatedly with her screwdriver while the other yanked at its body. The thing’s curved claws had pierced deeply, however, mooring it to her face, and the screwdriver ineffectually sunk into decaying tissue only to be pulled out with a squelch.

  One of the dogs had latched onto Control’s pant leg and it shook its head violently, flinging gobs of congealed blood from its nostrils as it pulled and tugged. Emboldened by this success, another darted forward only to have the woman’s foot connect squarely with its muzzle; the animal yelped as it tumbled to the ground and freshly broken bones rammed through its nearly hairless skin.

  “Son of a bitch!” Chuck squeezed another dog’s throat in his hand; its eyes bulged from its head and its rear legs kicked at the air, but its jaws continued scissoring, the teeth coming so close to Chuck’s hand that cold spittle peppered his flesh.

  With a grunt, Chuck sent the mutt flying. Its body bowled into two others that were charging toward him and they skittered around the ground in a tangle of paws and tails while the grass dissolved into clouds of dust.

  Snarls and barks, yips and breathy whimpers, squawks, shrill tweets, and the fluttering of wings in the air: The battle sounded as chaotic as it truly was. Through the din, Marilee’s screams rose in pitch, her voice hoarse and strained as she shrieked in short, staccato bursts.

  The crow covering her face bobbed its head forward and its beak plunged into the girl’s eye. Moving so quickly that it was nothing more than a blur, the bird pecked again and again, switching from the right eye to the left and then back again.

  The forgotten screwdriver fell to the ground as Marilee slapped and clawed the beast in blind panic. Blood streamed down the girl’s cheeks like crimson tears and she collapsed to the ground as the crow finally released its hold. The entire flock streamed across the sky, alighting on the branches of the tree that held Abigail’s tire swing, and the vengeful spirit laughed.

  She taunted Marilee from her swing, her voice rising and falling like the world’s cruelest jump-rope rhyme.

  “Blind girl, blind girl, can’t do your job. Blind girl, blind girl, your eyes’ve been robbed.”

  A second dog had seized Control’s other leg, this one burying its canines into her calf. With both of his partners wailing in pain, Chuck kicked, punched, and throttled all the dogs he could. He was, however, wearing down. His muscles ached and he panted for breath as he fought; things were rapidly spiraling out of control and he knew it couldn’t
last much longer. Soon his reaction time would suffer and the dogs would be upon him as well.

  With a hoarse battle cry he charged forward, swinging and kicking as ducked, bobbed, and wove through the snarl of attacking dogs. His jaw was set in an expression of grim determination and though his eyes tracked only his adversaries, there could be no doubt where his planned trajectory would lead him.

  “Come and get me if you can,” Abigail mocked. “But I’m gonna win this game.”

  Forgotten until now, the multitude of bugs began clicking again as they scuttled forward, swarming toward the man who fought his way past dog after dog.

  “Abigail,” Chuck shouted, “you know this isn’t right!”

  The girl gazed up at the birds above her, as if to imply that Chuck and his companions were of no more consequence. She swung higher and higher as her insects scrambled over one another in their haste.

  If she’d been paying attention, perhaps she would have noticed the way Marilee’s teeth clamped down on her lower lip, biting back the excruciating pain in her ruined eyes. Perhaps she would have seen the girl’s hands groping around on the ground until they finally found the screwdriver by sense of touch alone. But Abigail’s focus was purely upon her birds now and she pursed her lips as she tried to imitate the smaller ones’ songs.

  Marilee rose and she staggered to the Faraday Cage, her outstretched hands telling her when she’d reached it. Her fingers then danced over the inverter box until they happened upon the remaining screw, half-buried in its slot. Despite not being able to see what she was doing, the girl worked deftly. Within seconds, the box was entirely secured and her hands plucked a bundle of wires and expertly slid the twenty-pin connector at their end into the inverter’s receptacle. Once complete, the girl pulled the handle of a switch that looked as though it had once been a prop in a Frankenstein movie and a low hum resounded from the machine.

  Chuck heard this hum, but had no clue what it was. His entire existence now centered upon fighting his way to the swing. The hum, Control’s screams of pain as yet another dog sank its teeth into her flesh. All of this was secondary. He had to stay on task. Had to keep his focus.