Limbo's Child (Book One of The Dead Things Series)

by Jonah Hewitt

  He began to turn the doorknob slowly. She realized her arms were already tired from holding the frying pan aloft. This was it. She would have to rush forward and strike. She closed her eyes and cringed for just a half second. Her heart quickened and she took a breath to prepare for the lunge, but just then he stopped, stiffened and instantly turned around to face her.

  “Aaaaah!” Lucy screamed and brought the pan down hard, but he raised his arm quickly to defend himself and deflected it from his head. However, the pain made him swear and fall to one knee.

  “La Madre!!”

  She brought the pan down again and again screaming, he fell to his knees from the onslaught but finally managed to grab the heavy pan and yank it away.

  “RUN, YO-YO!! RUN!!” she managed to get out before turning and running down the hall.

  “FIE! Copón bendito!”

  He kept cursing in what she thought was Spanish and a bunch of languages she couldn’t understand.

  “Putrede en el infierno!”

  Whatever that meant, it couldn’t be good. Lucy was pounding her feet down the hall, racing to the back door, but he was already up and after her. She flung open the back door and was already to the porch steps. She made a leap for it and for a split second she thought she was free, but her feet never hit the ground. She was jerked back by an incredibly strong hand that pulled her into the house.

  “Let go of me!!” she screamed, kicking and clawing at him furiously.

  “Diablo!! Silencio!”

  She understood that, but she wasn’t about to quit now.

  He dragged her all the way back to the front room. He was strong, but he was no vampire. His grip wasn’t anything like Schuyler’s, which was like an ice-cold iron band – she could actually twist in this grip. In a way that was encouraging, it meant she might escape if she tried hard enough. She resisted by kicking and screaming and clawing at his arm to no avail. He cursed but did not let go of her arm. Eventually, she decided she had to bite him. She chomped down hard on the arm just above the wrist where she could reach it. He cursed, but he didn’t let go.

  “Monstruo!” he yelled.

  She remembered he had bitten his own finger so he was probably used to biting. Time to try another tactic. She went as limp as a rag doll and forced him to drag her.

  “SANTA MARIA!”

  He responded by hauling her off her feet and throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She beat on his back savagely with both fists and tried to kick his stomach, but he didn’t stop. He carried her to the front room and threw her down hard on their old couch.

  “Demonios!” he yelled, exasperated. He paced furiously back and forth eyeing her like a panther the whole time. She watched him in silence until he got the other side of the room and then she made a break for the front door, but she never got there. He just grabbed her and threw her back on the couch.

  “Ay, Dios! Diablo!” He muttered more curses and went back to pacing and examining her like she was a strange bug. For a second, she remained silent before she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “What are you doing in my house?!” she yelled at him, furious.

  He stopped and leaned forward and then grabbed her face with both hands roughly. “Tu casa?” he spat out.

  She was so scared by this, she didn’t think to fight back but just held her breath and winced. His nose was less than an inch from hers. He held her face for more than a minute and turned it one way and then the next examining it as a doctor might. Finally, he stared directly into her eyes with a withering glare. His eyes were dark and menacing. She tried to pull away, but he just jerked her face back towards him. After an interminable length of time he let her go.

  He stood up, put his hands on his hips and looked down at her with a baleful look, shaking his head slightly from side to side in a gesture that meant complete disapproval. It was a mannerism nearly identical to one Lucy had seen in her mother more than a thousand times. This was so eerie and disconcerting Lucy retreated to the far end of the couch, grabbed a throw cushion, cowered behind it and nearly started crying but she managed to keep it together. He just “hmmphed” at her.

  “You are just like your mother,” he said in a rich Spanish accent, rolling the “r’s” with special contempt on the word “mother.” “You can be full of fire one moment and then crying the next! Inconstante!” he proclaimed throwing his arms into the air in agitation.

  Lucy hated him talking this way about her mother, but she was so scared that she didn’t dare say anything. He was an odd duck for sure. He was wearing olive-drab army pants and combat boots and a large, heavy overcoat in May. Just now, Lucy noticed the faded black doublet with slashed sleeves and silver buttons he was wearing underneath it, like he had just come from the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. Lucy contemplated him for several more seconds before speaking.

  “Who are you?” Lucy said at last, but she already had a guess.

  He straightened up, craned his neck and pulled down on his doublet like a man about to present himself to royalty.

  “I am Lazlo Moríro. Once I was counselor and personal doctor to Philip IV, King of Spain, and I have been advisor to countless other monarchs of Europe. I am the Necromancer and the champion of Death himself. I secure the balance between this life and the next. I am overseer of Death’s minions on the mortal plain and the arbiter of the passing for all mankind.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  “And I am also your Great Uncle, your last living relative and guardian, and believe it or not...” And here he paused as if it bothered him to stoop to the vernacular language of the day, “I am…the ‘good guy.’ ”

  “Who were you calling out to before?” Moríro asked almost indifferently as he turned the page of the thick leather-bound book in front of him.

  The better part of an hour had passed between the time of her rather ugly first introduction to her Great Uncle in the front room and now. Most of that time he had spent swearing to himself about something or the other, storming up and down the halls, searching through books as he went. First, he had insisted she tell him how she had gotten there. She gave a brief account of the evening’s adventures with Sky and Miles and Tim but left out the parts about Amanda and Yo-yo. She didn’t know what he knew and she didn’t want to give too much away. When she mentioned the vampires, he went into another tirade. Lucy had picked up several words, some she recognized, others she did not. “Gilipollas!” “Graber!” “Idiotas!” “Hokharty!” “Tontos!” “Hematofagos sin valor!” When he had calmed himself down a little, he assured her he meant her no harm, but he also stressed she would not be allowed to leave his sight ever again. Then he tried to comfort her, after a fashion, insisting that he would protect her, teach her, care for her, but even then he barked at her more like an angry gym teacher than a caring guardian.

  Content that she was not going to run off, they had returned to the kitchen where he leaned on the butcher block island pouring over the massive, ancient and dusty books he had dragged from upstairs. Lucy sat on the far counter. He had told her not to even think of running, but Lucy decided to hang around anyway just to see what information she could get out of him, and after all, it was her house. If anyone was leaving it was him. Amanda had said his mental state was slipping and everything about his performance so far seemed to confirm that, so best not to push him over the edge, because it didn’t look like he had far to go.

  “You were trying to warn someone.” He said again not looking up from his reading. “Someone named ‘Yo-yo,’ I believe. Who is this ‘Yo-yo?’”

  Lucy tensed. She thought of Yo-yo. She wasn’t sure if she trusted Moríro yet. She wasn’t about to let him know about Yo-yo.

  “No one,” she said, “I was trying to throw you off. Confuse you.” She said it a bit too quickly, as if it was forced. She knew it sounded like a lie, but she had to say something.

  “Hmmph.” He muttered looking up at her momentarily. “I wonder then, who rang the
bell?” he said sarcastically before going back to his reading.

  “Dang!” Lucy thought. She hadn’t thought of that. “I did,” she said at last, “Then I ran back around and snuck in the back door.”

  “You are very fast then. I wonder why you were not faster when I was chasing you.”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose at him. No wonder her mother hadn’t ever told her about him. He was a smug, condescending jerk. After a minute he spoke again.

  “When I went to the door I sensed…no one. Even now I sense…” and here he paused to look up at her over his reading glasses and shrug his shoulders “Nothing. Whoever was with you, they have abandoned you. I suggest you reward them in kind.”

  Here Lucy had to suppress a small smile. “That’s what you think,” she thought to herself, a little satisfied. Yo-yo was no ordinary boy though. He could hide like no one else. That meant he had gotten away or used his powers to hide. That was good. She hoped he was still out there hiding. She hadn’t yet decided what to make of Moríro, but she wasn’t about to give up on Yo-yo.

  Lucy looked from side to side and realized she was hungry. The last big thing she had had was a smoothie and that was on top of a colossal brick of Jell-O. Neither were very good memories now. She hopped down from the counter and went to the fridge to get herself some milk. At least she was back in her own house again and knew where everything was.

  “What are you looking for?” she tried to ask innocently as she took the jug out of the fridge and went to the cupboard to get a tall glass.

  “Answers,” he said cryptically.

  On the way to the cupboard, she went past the cabinet that had the graham crackers.

  “Answers to what?” She set up the glass, milk and crackers on the counter.

  “Answers to questions you would not understand.”

  “Condescending jerk,” she thought. Lucy took out the graham crackers. Mom had always said if they broke perfectly on the perforations that meant you were going to have a good day. “Better than tea leaves,” she always used to say. That always sounded funny to Lucy, that is before she knew her mom was something of a witch, or a necromancer, or whatever. Did her mom actually read tea leaves? She had no idea. After vampires and Amanda, anything was possible she guessed. Next she’d have to go inspect all the brooms in the broom closet, just to make sure that none of them could fly.

  Lucy tried to snap the cracker cleanly. It crumbled into several pieces. None of them broke cleanly on the perforations. “Crud,” she thought. Well that was at least accurate. Today had been lousy. Lucy dunked them anyway and chomped on them angrily. Moríro looked up at her testily and moved the books out of the way of any stray crumbs or drops of milk.

  “Your mother was a librarian?” he said out of the blue, examining the books as if disgusted by their condition.

  “Yeah,” she said, defensively dunking more graham crackers.

  “Like a carpenter that never cleans his own shop,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucy asked, offended.

  “Oh nothing…I was just talking to myself,” he said in a passive aggressive tone. What a creep he was! If he hadn’t wanted her to overhear, he could have said it in Spanish. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that all these books were a mess. They were a mess to begin with. Mom occasionally tried to sort them out from time to time, but she was busy, with the new job and moving in, and the home schooling…and…protecting her.

  Lucy put down the graham cracker. She didn’t like him taking jabs at her mother. Not when she wasn’t here to defend herself from this jerk who was in her house, uninvited. Trouble was, she realized she was mad at her mom too. Mad at leaving her alone and not telling her about any of this and leaving her in the care of this weirdo. She had sacrificed so much to protect her. She had a wild thought. Maybe she was protecting her from him! Maybe Amanda was right! It occurred to Lucy that of all the things she wanted to know about what her mother knew or didn’t know, the one with the answers was right in front of her, no matter how much she didn’t like him.

  “When was the last time you…saw…my mother?” she asked, trying not to sound suspicious.

  “Twenty years.” He didn’t even look up.

  “That’s a long time,” Lucy said, hoping it would prompt him to begin some recollection. “You didn’t see her for more than twenty years?”

  He said nothing.

  Lucy sighed, “Was that the last time you saw her, or was it the last time you spoke to her?”

  He kept right on reading, not looking at her. “It was both the last time I saw her, and the last time I spoke to her…in person.” But he did look up directly at Lucy when he said “in person.”

  “In person?” Lucy asked.

  He took off his reading glasses, left them on the book and walked over to the other counter where a worn army satchel was located. He fished out a small envelope, tossed it unceremoniously on the counter in front of Lucy and then put his glasses back on and commenced reading again.

  “What’s this?” Lucy asked.

  “You can read, can’t you?” he asked in a mocking tone.

  Lucy put down her glass of milk and picked up the letter. It was addressed to a small convent north of Philadelphia in Bucks County. It was addressed to Mr. Lazlo Moríro, c/o The Sisters of St. Clare. It had no return address but the postmark was from College Station, Texas, not far from where they had lived. The date was from just a few months before their move here last year! Lucy gasped. It was her mother’s writing. She quickly fumbled with the letter and opened it. It had no signature or salutation, which was odd for her mom, she was always writing friendly notes, and this thing was far from friendly, but it was definitely her mom’s handwriting. It was very short and cryptic. It read: “I will return to the old house in Pennsylvania this year. Attempt no contact before September first, six years from now. If you do this, I will accept the order.”

  Lucy gasped. Six years. That date was just a few days after her eighteenth birthday.

  “Your birthday is before September first?” Moríro asked as if reading her mind.

  “August twenty-ninth,” Lucy replied, stunned.

  He nodded. “And you will turn eighteen in a little less than six years time?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “The date made no sense to me at the time, but I was so glad that she had finally come to her senses, that I did not question it. I stayed away and hoped she would come to me. I didn’t even know she had a daughter until yesterday.”

  Lucy looked up at him, wide-eyed.

  “Now, of course, it seems ridiculously obvious,” he said, never looking up from the page of the large volume he was looking at. There was a long pause before he spoke again.

  “Your mother hated me,” he said casually. Lucy looked directly at him in shock. Why was he telling her this? He looked at her momentarily and for a fraction of a second he seemed more sad than angry, but it didn’t last. He went back to his reading and turned another page and adopted an aggressive tone.

  “I was your mother’s mentor. Your grandmother never had much of the gift, so I had to teach your mother the art myself. She was not…” he paused, “an enthusiastic student.” He quickly turned another page and continued speaking, “When she left, your grandmother was furious with her, but your mother made her swear to keep her secrets. Zephorah Holveda never approved of her daughter’s decision to leave, or marry.” He looked above his reading glasses at Lucy for a moment as he said that last part before going back to his reading. “But, she was loyal to your mother. She never told me Margarita had a daughter,” he said absentmindedly thumbing the pages in front of him.

  “Margarita,” thought Lucy. It was still weird to think that her mother was a “Margarita” instead of a “Maggie” or even a “Margaret.”

  “For what it’s worth,” he stated somewhat testily, “I never hated your mother. It was only that she was so stubborn.” He turned the next page furiously. Lucy thought he was
going to tear it. She craned her neck to see what he was reading. She couldn’t make out the words, but it seemed to be nothing more than lists of names and genealogy charts.

  “I had lost all hope of her ever returning,” he began after a moment, “I don’t know why she changed her mind, but she did. She came back, I believe, to protect you.” Lucy looked up from the book to Moríro. This was the same thing that Amanda had said. “Whether to protect you from the secret, or those that might have done you harm, I do not know, but it is clear there was one thing more than any other she wanted to protect you from.”

  “What?” Lucy asked, genuinely curious.

  He looked directly at Lucy with the most intense and serious gaze. “Me.”

  Lucy swallowed hard. He said it without a trace of irony or humor. Lucy pulled her hair behind her ears nervously, though she thought she almost saw Moríro smile when she did this. He went back to his reading.

  “There must always be one Necromancer, Lucia.” Lucy could hear the urgency of his voice. “Your mother wanted to make sure that before she took over the mantle, she would never have to leave you in my care. That is why she only agreed to become the next Necromancer after you had reached legal age.” Moríro went on, “She wanted those last years together with you, all to herself without any of my meddling.”

  Lucy poured this revelation over in her head. What did it all mean? Did her mom want to protect her from this crazy Spaniard at all costs? Was Amanda right after all?! Had Moríro gone mad and her mother knew it? But if that was true, why had she sent the letter to Moríro in the first place and agreed to come? Lucy was very confused. She almost felt sorry for how angry she had felt towards her mother just a moment ago. She was obviously trying to protect her, give her a shot at a normal life. The one thing she wanted more than anything herself.