We grabbed him around the neck while the flames poured out. And we closed our bony feverish hands on his windpipe. Without oxygen there is no fire. We squeezed while he burned. And then the fire was gone. Gone for good.
Nine
THEY FOUND ME IN A snowdrift. That's what Relly said when I finally came back from nowhere.
I was in the hospital, and when the long fever-cold sleep finally ended, Relly was there.
For a long time, I kind of drifted in and out of the real world. Nurses were moving around, and my dad, too, I think. A doctor with a foreign accent came and looked in. And then a doctor with cold, soft hands. More nurses, messing with my IV drip. Butt and Jerod, maybe, and then a doctor who smelled of powerful soap.
When the death-haze lifted at last, Relly was there.
He looked pretty bad. Thinner and kind of washed out. Scratched and banged up from falling with the mudslide. The red-purple of his eyes made his skin look even paler. "You're going to be all right."
That was the first thing I remember him saying.
I guess the look I gave him said I didn't believe it. Weakness filled me to the brim. I couldn't even move my head to one side.
"Really and truly," he said. "You're going to be all right."
Later, when I was a little more with it, he told me how they found Knacke burned up, dead and black like a stick pulled out of an old campfire. Frankengoon got swept into the mudslide. He survived, but he wasn't at school anymore. Scratch had just disappeared.
"Jerod's fine. I think he took off when things got too heavy. And Butt's OK," Relly said. "No major damage." Relly came closer and whispered, "You know: the god of dirt. He was in his element."
I wanted to ask a hundred questions. Only I had no voice. Nothing came out when I tried to talk.
The nurse returned and shooed Relly away. I fell back asleep. But it was normal sleep, not a fever haze with dead girls come alive and burning men dying.
Ten
I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL FOR A WEEK. Usually they treat pneumonia with meds and let you go. Relly told me later I was pretty near gone, fighting weaker and weaker to take a breath. They had to run a tube into me, and that whole time is gone, too. I guess they drugged me up pretty good beforehand.
When they finally let me go, I had no voice at all. The nurse said that's normal for people who've been on the breathing machine.
Yeah, normal. That made me feel just fine.
What was normal after you fought enemy gods to the death? What did normal mean after you walked around a graveyard inside the body of a girl buried two hundred years ago?
"You'll be hoarse for a while. That's to be expected. Soon enough you'll have your voice back." The nurse gave me a big plastic smile and went back to filling out the paperwork so I ipould leave.
A doctor came in to give the final OK. A few hours later my dad took me home.
Eleven
I WAS ALL SET UP IN my room to recover. Sound system within reach. A buzzer my dad rigged up to call him if I needed anything. All the junk food in the world.
Still, I had no voice. So my dad got a brand-new notebook for me, and a handful of pens.
The first night home, Silence was there with me. I don't mean some cheesy ghost went floating around the room. It was more like I'd brought her back from Mount Hope inside me. Thoughts drifted up, memories I was sure were hers. Names of people I'd never known. Old songs I guess she'd sung in church.
That was the weirdest part. I could hear melodies and words in my head. And I was positive they'd come from the olden days. They had the same stiff rhymes as the gravestone poems. In fact, I wrote this all out to Relly and he went looking in Mount Hope.
He came to visit the next day and said, "You were right. I found one." He handed the page back to me.
Then let the last loud trumpet sound
and bid our kindred rise;
awake ye nations under ground;
ye saints ascend the skies.
I read the words, moving my lips but making no sound. I tried to say them. All that came out was a rattling hiss. I tried again. Nothing.
Still, in my head, the melody was going powerful and sure. I heard a voice, the voice of Silence Loud, singing this creaky song from the olden days. She had a beautiful voice. Sadness and gladness mixed together. Strength and weakness, too. I wanted so bad for Relly to hear it.
That's what I wrote to him on the notepad. "You should hear what it sounds like. It's great. Totally great. When I get my voice back, I'll show you."
Twelve
BUTT CAME FOR A VISIT, TOO. He gave me the latest news about school. "Knacke's dead. They're hushing the whole thing up. But everybody knows. And Frankengoon's gone, too. They're saying he's on a leave of absence. Only the rumor has it he's gone for good. We got this new guy. He always wears this hideous checkered coat and flood pants. I think his name is Bob Hein. Only everyone calls him 'Mr. Behind.' Get it? Get it?"
I got it.
"OK. So you get better real fast and we can start practicing again. All right?"
I nodded.
Relly got my Ibanez out of its case the next time he came. I hadn't touched it since the Bug Jar gig. That seemed like about a hundred years ago. "You should start playing a little," Relly said. "Keep the songs in your fingers, you know?"
I nodded and took the bass. It felt ten times heavier than I remembered. The strings were cold. Yet when I fit my hand around the neck, the old good feeling started to come back.
With no amp, you can hardly hear a bass. That was OK, at least at first. It was just for me. Nobody else had to hear the riffs that had been playing themselves in my inner ear. Soon enough, Relly would, and Butt and Jerod, too. First, though, I wanted to get them exactly right.
When I was alone I listened to Silence singing in my head. My fingers moved on the Ibanez, finding the sound, matching the melody.
Awake ye nations under ground;
ye saints ascend the skies.
I wondered how long Silence would be with me. She made it easier to sleep. I mean, her voice was kind of a night-light. It didn't shine. Nobody could see it. But it reassured me like the faint quavering bulb used to when I was little.
Thirteen
AFTER A WEEK, I WAS on my feet again. When I practiced, I pressed the headstock of my bass against the closet door and that made it a little louder. It got the wood vibrating. And I wondered if the whole house was sounding too. Real quiet, below hearing. But still shaking with the bass line throb.
Relly came over every day after school. We never talked about what happened in Mount Hope. No mention of gods and fire and tetrads. Maybe he thought it would set me back and I'd never get better again. Or start the fever burning again. Everyone was real upbeat, saying I'd be fine soon.
Still, my dad took me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. "You're a lucky girl," he said after he heard about them finding me freezing in the snowdrift.
Yeah, real lucky, I thought.
He poked and prodded and stared into my mouth with bright lights. Then he ran some tests.
"There's been some bruising and minor abrasion," he said. "This is normal. Your vocal cords are medically healthy. I see no reason why your voice should not return fully to its normal functioning."
Right, normal. Everything was going to be normal.
Back at home it was just me and Silence, with our memories all tangled together. Singing in church—which I'd never done. Taking care of little brothers and sisters—which I never had. Working in the fields—which I had no idea how to do. These were the memories of her life. It was all so weird to me. But I guess it was normal for her.
So, I wondered, did she know about Ghost Metal now? And playing bass at the Bug Jar? Did she understand about Relly and the band?
It was almost funny, thinking about Silence in the pioneer days, with Black Sabbath and Judas Priest tunes running in her head while other people were singing holy hymns in church.
Fourteen
THAT N
IGHT, I TOLD Silence I wanted my voice back.
She hadn't taken it. That's not what I mean. It was more like as long as she was inside me, I had to listen, not talk. I want my voice back. I thought those words, because I couldn't even manage a whisper.
Did she hear? I guess so. As long as she was inside me, our thoughts were like talking. Words would run in my head. And she'd reply with pictures and music and even smells from the olden days.
Her memories would open up and out would pour the smells. Wood smoke. Unwashed clothes. Bread rising. Bitter lye soap. Wildflowers. Mashed corn cooking in a big iron kettle.
The smells came with her voice. Maybe that's why it seemed so strange. You know how perfume kind of floats around somebody? Leaves a trail? That was what it felt like. I heard the melodies first, and then Silence thinking in my head. And then I smelled the olden days.
I'm afraid, real afraid. I want my voice back, I told her.
In reply came her lonely, sweet voice, singing to me from beyond the grave.
Blessed are those who silently wait
for they shall pass the beautiful gate.
I didn't tell my dad or the doctor or anyone else about the voices. They'd lock me up in a minute. Or pump me full of psych meds. It was bad enough being mute, let alone having them all think I was out of my mind too.
I didn't even tell Relly at first. No, I just figured out the songs and taught them to him on my bass. I had him go back to Mount Hope and find the gravestone poems that Silence had sung to me. A few were just fragments. Some were complete.
"We'll get them all down," I wrote in my notepad. "And then we'll record them all."
"That's right," he said. It was almost a whisper. "Ghost Metal."
Fifteen
THEN THE TIME CAME when I was better enough to play. I mean really play, back in Relly's attic, plugged in and turned up loud.
My dad drove me over to Slime Street. I went to the front door and Tannis was waiting, like the other times.
She let me in and we stood there in the kitchen not talking. Only we were OK now. I knew that without her saying a word. I'd done the right thing. She understood that. And a whole lot more now. She knew me for who I really was. And I was OK.
Then Relly came in and said, "All right! Time to kick out the jams. You ready?"
I nodded.
He'd run an extension cord up the stairs and had an electric heater cranking on high. So even though the snow was falling and the wind was moaning, we were nice and warm in the attic.
Butt gave me a huge welcome-back grin. And Jerod, too, was happy to see me on my feet again. "We missed you," he said. And I think he meant it.
"So what do you wanna play?" Relly asked.
I didn't need my little notepad for the answer. I just formed the words Silence Loud, and Relly got it. We had lyrics for the tune, the poem off her gravestone. Relly handed Jerod the lead sheet.
"Now deep in earth, this bed of sighs," Jerod said, getting the feel of the song.
Then Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true.
I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all worked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this moment. My fingers closed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry.
"OK," I whispered into the pounding noise.
I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone.
"Then will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies."
Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song.
I didn't need a voice. I had the bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me.
Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, they were my words. And all the world would hear them.
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