Undeath

by Lily Levi

  There was no more time.

  She struggled to lower the right side of her body down, still grasping the ledge with her left hand. Feeling her right foot touch against the stone, she searched frantically for another, lower handhold.

  A misshapen stone on her right side, angled just slightly out from the gray mortar, caught her eye.

  Pressing her body and the side of her face up against the cool outer wall, she let the tips of her fingers slide off from the ledge above.

  Her heart took one long, slow beat and then the wall fell away from her.

  It was like – what was it like?

  It was like the world had opened beneath her and there was nothing but warm air all around and inside of her. It was like a warm bed, a bath, a place there was no hurry to leave.

  There was nothing for her to do but lay there and fall deeper into it.

  There was nothing but the open sky, buried with stars and the wisps of exhausted clouds from the beautiful day just before.

  And it had been beautiful.

  She closed her eyes.

  She watched how her body fell backwards through the mosaic ceiling, as though she were seeing herself from the stars.

  Her first thought was that it was too bad. The ceiling was a work of art and she’d ruined it.

  She hit the floor and it felt like nothing. Leaves crackled beneath her head.

  She remembered the cornflower blue dress and the way he had held her against him. She remembered the beautiful scratching of the gramophone. She remembered the dance and she remembered the kiss.

  But there was no time left.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Flames licked out from the windows.

  “Maman,” he yelled, though it would do no good. She’d wanted to leave this world. If there were flames, she was in them, unless the fire was an accident, but there was no time left to think or to feel.

  Riley darted away from his side, howling.

  His mind and heart raced in unison. There was no time. He lunged forward from behind the trees.

  Closing in on the marble porch, he saw that one of the large side windows was broken. Someone had broken in or broken out, but which was it?

  His question was both abruptly and rudely answered.

  A wild-eyed man, shorter than himself, but still, somehow, almost twice as large, bullied through the broken window frame.

  They stared at each other for seconds, minutes, hours.

  A day passed and then a year.

  Time accordioned in on itself, but it was impossible. The house would’ve burned itself down to ash and the summer turned sleepily over into a deep autumn.

  The disheveled man moved forward and brought everything back to the moment where it existed. The house still burned and the summer still roared darkly all around them. Jolene was still lost.

  “Is this your place?” the man demanded, sweating profusely and breathing even harder. “You got a fucked up grandma in there.”

  His heart sank. Maman.

  The man’s fat lips turned themselves up. “Say,” he said. “You know Jolene?”

  Laurie’s heart threatened to break free from the cage of his chest. He glanced up at the flames above them. “Where is she?”

  The man laughed in a way that made his skin crawl. “Got what she deserved.” He shrugged nonchalantly and moved away from the broken window. “Burnt to fuckin’ crisps,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, pretty boy. But what’s that?” His eyes swam, drunken and red. “So you’re the new boyfriend, is that it? Is that where she got off to?” He wiped his nose. “Don’t matter. She’s dead so no one gets her now.”

  Laurie swallowed back the fiery rage of his bleeding heart. If someone had strangled Jolene in the forest, and they had, it would’ve been the large stub of a man in front of him.

  He would murder him. He would kill the man who had killed Jolene, bring him back to life with his own blood, and then kill him again.

  “You,” Laurie whispered darkly, stepping forward.

  The man reached into his faded jeans and pulled out a clean pistol.

  Laurie held the man’s wavering eyes.

  “Me, Benny, Big Benny, Big Ben,” said the man - Benny. He nodded and pointed the gun first at himself and then back at Laurie. “That’s right, me.” He cracked his neck. “You wanna play, huh? Don’t think I don’t know that look. Oh, I know it all right. Jolene wanted to play, too.”

  Laurie looked from the pistol, to the broken window, and then back again. But there was no time. If Jolene was dead, maybe Maman was still alive.

  If Jolene was dead. The thought was too much to bear, but there it was.

  Benny straightened the front of his stained shirt with one hand. “Say,” he said, waving the pistol over his head. He pointed to the night sky and the flames that licked from the edge of the roof high above them. “Forgot to mention what a nice house you’ve got here.”

  There was no time.

  Laurie lunged forward and grabbed at the man’s raised forearm.

  The pistol launched backwards from his hand, hit the front wall of the house behind them, and slid back over the marble landing.

  He shot up the steps to grab it.

  Benny growled at him like a crazed animal.

  Laurie bent to pick up the gun, but Benny barreled up behind him and pushed him through the open window, sending it from his hand.

  He landed with a hard thud on his hands and knees. Turning, he watched with dismay as Benny picked up the pistol.

  It clicked. Benny pointed the gun down at him. “You’re pissing me off,” he said. “I’ve had a bad fucking day.” He stepped through the window and into the entryway, slowly filling with light tendrils of smoke.

  Laurie stepped backwards through the room and into the hazy air of the foyer.

  Two tall vases lay sideways on the tile. Their top halves had been broken open.

  “Maman!” he called.

  “What’s that?” Benny said, stepping into the foyer after him. “You calling for your mommy? Is that your grandma’s name? Ma-mo!” He kicked a large piece of the vase out of his way. “Is that how you say it? Ma-mo, where are you, Ma-mo?” He turned in a large, mocking circle.

  Laurie waited until Benny’s back was turned to him and then bolted through the first floor’s dark, closeted hallway.

  There was no time. There was never enough time.

  “Hey!” Benny yelled.

  The pistol shot off and the shattering sound of the silver chandelier crashing to the ground reverberated through the walls.

  Laurie passed by the open kitchen. Moonlight poured in through the trellised windows and lit up the swirls of falling smoke.

  He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Benny was following him. He’d take him through the hall, the ballroom, and then lose him in the dilapidated garden maze. It would give him time to come back around to the front and look for Maman and maybe Jolene – but no. He couldn’t let himself even think it.

  She was dead. More than dead. She was gone.

  He slammed into the great doors of the ballroom. With one strong arm, he pushed the left side wide open.

  He stepped inside and the whole world seemed to see what he saw and to stop with him.

  There was no sound, no movement, no fire, and certainly no man with a gun behind him. There was nothing else in that moment but the crumpled figure on the marble floor, surrounded by leaves.

  “Jolene.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  She stared at him. At both of them. She could only look. Frozen on the tiles and piles of forgotten leaves, there was nothing she could say.

  Behind you, Laurie, look behind you.

  The fire roared from deep within the house. Riley barked beside her.

  Laurie raced forward and fell to his knees. “Jolene,” he said, his eyes wet. “Don’t worry.” He moved the hair gently away from her face. “I’m here, don’t worry.”

  Ril
ey alternated between growling, barking, whining.

  Jolene struggled to speak. Behind you, Laurie.

  “Laurie,” she whispered through the pain, but it was too late.

  Benny’s boots crunched through a wayward pile of dry leaves. He laughed, swinging the silver pistol in his hands.

  “Wow,” he said, lifting his shoulders. “All this and you’re still alive? Gotta hand it to you, Jo-Jo, didn’t think you had it in you. I sure didn’t.” He wiped the heavy collection of snot from beneath his nose. “I made a new rule this summer. You wanna hear it?”

  Jolene swallowed against the broken pain of her body.

  He lowered the gun. “Well okay, since you asked. I call it ‘Benny’s Rule Number Five’: If you steal from Benny, Benny kills you.” He chuckled to himself and pretended to wipe a happy tear from his eye. “That’s fair, right?”

  “Benny,” she whispered. She closed her eyes as if it might help her breathe. “I gave it back.”

  “What’s that?” He took another step forward. “You ‘gave it back’? Oh sure. You gave the money back. You gave the bag back. But I’m talking about you. Although, I don’t know, I don’t think I want you back anymore.”

  Laurie, having watched the conversation between them, drew himself back up to his feet. “There’s nothing for you here,” he said.

  Riley growled. Laurie reached his hand down to stop her.

  Benny switched his weight from one foot to the other. “Fuckin’ frankly, douchebag, I think there is something for me here.” He lifted the gun.

  It was soundless because she hadn’t expected it.

  She hadn’t expected him to shoot, not really.

  Laurie stumbled backwards. “Run,” he whispered down to the baying bloodhound beside him. “Go.”

  “Laurie,” Jolene cried. “No.” She tried to claw her way up from the floor. Her ribs ached with her heaving cries.

  Benny pointed the gun from Laurie to her. The sharp gleam in his eye was gone. “Why’d you do it?” he asked her. “Look at what you made me do.”

  She stared at him. There was nothing to say. She could beg for her life, but something told her that he wouldn’t give it to her.

  “Tell me why you did it, Jolene. Tell me, apologize to me, and then I’ll see how I feel about not killing you.” He looked down at Laurie. “No promises, though.”

  She looked away from him and searched for Laurie’s eyes. Whatever mistakes she’d made in her life before meeting him that had led her to Benny, Laurie paid the price for them now. She couldn’t go back and change them. In so many ways, it was her fault that they were all there now, each dying in their own way.

  She’d done this and there was no running away from it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out her hand to him, but he was too far away.

  Benny’s face hardened and he stepped closer to her.

  “Y’know,” he said, “I really did care about you, but you messed things up like you always do.”

  She clutched at the dry leaves. He wasn’t going to let her go. He was going to kill her. There was no way around it.

  “Maybe you did,” she said. “But I’m sure I never cared for you.” She set her jaw and waited for the inevitable. If only Laurie and the old woman hadn’t been there, or that she’d run somewhere else altogether. Now, she’d essentially killed them both.

  She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the look on his face when he shot her. It was all her fault. She thought of the obituary in her pocket. Had she been responsible for killing Jean in the same way, too?

  The pistol shot off a second time, only she felt nothing.

  She opened her eyes just as Laurie fell to his knees in front of her.

  “Laurie, no!”

  “Move,” said Benny, “or I’ll shoot you a third time, you want that, pretty boy? Third time’s the charm, ain’t that right, Jolene?”

  She struggled for air, but there was none. “Laurie, please,” she begged, but she didn’t know what she was asking for. They were both going to die and there was nothing to be done about it.

  A horrific scream sang through the night air

  Glass shattered overhead and a giant mass of fire rained down from the ceiling. Embers scattered across the floor and caught onto bits of dry leaves, setting them aflame.

  “The hell!” Benny yelled. He pointed the gun at the quivering mass of fire.

  A blackened frame, washed in fire, crawled up from the marble tiles.

  Laurie sank down fully onto the floor. “Maman,” he whispered. “No.”

  The old woman’s beaded black eyes stared questioningly from Jolene to Benny. They rested on Laurie’s folded body.

  Her black mouth opened and closed. “My boy,” she said from behind a screen of flames.

  She stepped forward.

  “The hell is this,” Benny said and Jolene heard the deep terror in his voice. He shot at the old woman, surrounded with fire. Once, twice, a third time.

  “That is my boy,” she said. “But you are nothing to me.”

  He shot at her again. The last bullet. He clicked the trigger again and again.

  The old woman lunged forward.

  He stumbled backwards as she barreled her body into his, knocking him back onto the ground, screaming.

  His curdled cries rose up through the broken mosaic ceiling and out into the dark summer night.

  The rancid smell of smoke and burning flesh quickly filled the ballroom.

  “No!” he screamed, but his frantic, terrible cries for help were lost in the flames that engulfed both him and the old woman who turned her eyes onto Laurie.

  Her ancient face had burned away. Her nose was gone and her teeth glowed with the fire that roared through her belly.

  “Maman.” Laurie struggled forward to reach the growing flames, feeding off of two bodies instead of one. “Maman, I’m so sorry.”

  Benny’s struggle slowed beneath the old woman’s body as his screams burned away.

  Maman lowered the side of her head down on to Benny’s charred face.

  “Maman, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, but she was gone.

  Jolene heard how his cries caught in his throat and she felt how her own heart was ripped open by the sound.

  Bleeding, he turned and fought to get back to her, dragging himself across the marble floor with one hand pressed agaisnt his heart.

  He propped himself up beside her and took his hand away from his heart. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. The dark blood pushed through the front of his linen shirt, coloring it a deadly brown.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said, leaning over her. His breath came ragged and deep. He dipped his fingers into his own blood and paused. “Please trust me now, Jolene, just this once, I’ll never ask it again.” He pressed his bloodied fingers to her lips.

  She was going to die. They were both going to die.

  Everything was madness.

  Time passed as it always did. The night grew darker and the fire continued to eat away at the massive house.

  Jolene stared up through the broken mosaic and watched how the stars blinked down at her. Breathing grew more difficult, but there was nothing to be done.

  His tortured face watched hers and he brought more of his own blood to her lips.

  She didn’t think he could last much longer. Benny had shot him twice and there was no one to help them.

  She traced the lines below his eyes and tasted his coppery blood on her tongue. If he truly was mad, it no longer mattered. He cared for her and, even while he was dying, he continued to care for her in the best way he knew how.

  The house would burn to ash all around them. She couldn’t move and so she, too, would turn to ash.

  It didn’t matter. She’d done the best she could. She’d been brave. She might’ve been smarter, but there was nothing to be done for that now.

  It was over and that had to be okay.

  She searched for the stars and listened to the crackling o
f the beautiful house around them. She imagined how all of the antique furniture would be blanketed in flames in the only room she could ever truly remember as her own. Every heavy curtain in the house would be alight. The severed heads of the mountain cat and the bristled boar in the secret study would never be remembered. The leather bound book would never be read. The heat would peel the wallpaper and strip the portraits of their paint.

  So this was how it ended.

  “Jolene.”

  She moved her eyes to his.

  He lifted her wrist up from the tiles. “I’m so sorry.” He lowered his face and kissed her skin.

  She let out a slow breath and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  When she woke, it was still dark and the fires still raged.

  Laurie lay beside her with his hand over his heart.

  She struggled to sit and was surprised to find that her body cooperated.

  She was alive.

  “Laurie,” she said, though she couldn’t expect him to answer.

  Warm blood pooled out beneath him and around them both.

  She pressed her ear to his mouth. Nothing. She felt for his pulse.

  Thinking and not thinking, she scrambled for a piece of the broken mosaic ceiling. Was it a dream, a wish, desperation? Insanity? It didn’t matter.

  In so many words, he’d suggested that he was a vampire and that he’d done something to her, too. Something about blood. Foreign blood. She hadn’t believed him, of course. What was there to believe?

  Vampires weren’t real. People didn’t come back from their graves. If she’d died, she’d still be dead. There was nothing more to it.

  But what if? It would be a small price to pay, just one cut.

  Turning her eyes away, she sliced into her wrist.

  Seething through her teeth, she dropped the piece of glass and pressed her wrist against his mouth. Biting the inside of her cheek, she squeezed down on her forearm to force her own blood out and into his mouth.

  She could have sworn that his lips quivered beneath her wrist, but it was impossible.