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

by Jonah Hewitt

  Lucy looked up at the great beast and bowed slowly from the neck. The creature bowed once in return. Lucy looked back one more time at the small figure in the tunnel she was certain now was her mother and said softly, “Goodbye, Mom.”

  Lucy stood up and let go of her mother’s hand.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!” screamed Amanda.

  “LUCY! YOUR MOTHER!!” yelled Yo-yo.

  Lucy stood up slowly and pulled the stone back. She had held it there so long, now it resisted the sudden retreat, but she gritted her teeth and yanked hard. The stone flew back so hard it almost pulled her over with it, but she steadied herself and didn’t fall. There was a loud crack and the tunnel of light collapsed back down to a single, bright spot before disappearing entirely. As it closed, she felt the spirits of the woman in Scranton, the man under the log, the girl in Riverside and the elderly gentleman from China pass through. As their souls went, it was like a long sigh.

  The crack reverberated around the now-silent ballroom for a moment before another terrifying sound erupted into the room.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

  Amanda had exploded into her specter form, expanding to fill the room with her terrifying, flying black hair and immense hollow eyes. Her large, taloned hands reached out as if to strangle Lucy.

  “WHAT. HAVE. YOU. DONE?!!!” came Amarantha’s sepulchral voice. Lucy cowered, uncertain if Amanda were about to kill her, but as sudden as her rage arrived it departed. Amanda shrunk back down to her human shape, which seemed impossibly frail and small now in comparison with her previous ghostly form. Amanda staggered around the floor like a person in shock after a car wreck, unable to look at Lucy. Then she spoke.

  “I’m…I’m sorry, Lucy. I…must have pushed you too hard.” She looked broken, dazed and defeated.

  A sudden sound crashed against the double doors. Miles spread himself against them, holding them back, and began piling anything he could reach in front of them.

  “Come, we have to go!” Amanda raced forward, grabbed Lucy by the hand and tried to pull her after her, but Lucy shook off her grip.

  “NO!” Lucy said firmly, “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  Amanda looked at her angrily.

  “And I’m not leaving my mother.” Lucy stepped in front of her mother’s body defensively.

  Amanda looked back at her with a forlorn look. It seemed as if she wanted to say something, but then she exchanged looks with Yo-yo, who looked more impassive and numb then ever. Amanda’s face stiffened. She looked back to Lucy. Resigned that Lucy would have it no other way she slowly backed away from Lucy and her mother’s body.

  “I’m not your enemy, Lucy.” she said coldly, “In time…I hope you’ll see that.” She flashed into the specter form and passed right through the wall and was gone.

  Lucy looked to Yo-yo. She saw him standing on the far side of the room. His face locked in that impassive stare, but this time it didn’t brighten when Lucy saw him. He just stood there, idly winding the string of his yo-yo.

  “Why?” he said to her through narrowed eyes. He was hurt.

  “Oh, Yo-yo. It’s hard to explain…but if you just give me some time…”

  “You’re the only one in the world that could bring her mother back, but you didn’t want to. Why?”

  “Yo-yo, it’s not like that.” She ran to him and tried take his hand, but he just pulled away and turned his back to her. She wanted to hug him but held back.

  “I’d give anything to have a mother,” he said sullenly. He rubbed his nose on his sleeve and shot a wicked look her direction. “I hate you,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “Yo-yo!” Lucy said, hurt and saddened. She went to grab him by the shoulder, but a large well of utter blackness appeared on the wall next to him. He turned into it and disappeared.

  Lucy ran to stop him, but her fingers bumped against the broken plaster of the far wall. He was gone. She hardly had a moment to think when Miles grabbed her by the hand and began pulling her away.

  “C’mon!” he yelled, pulling her along toward the doors on the dais leading to the garden, “It’s not over! Those vampires are goin’ to kill us all if we don’t git the bloody heck outta here!”

  Lucy had to struggle to yank her hand free from his large mitt.

  “I’m not leaving without my mother!”

  Miles looked at her in shock and grabbed his scalp in frustration. “Of all the stubborn, pig-headed…” but then the doors burst open and an angry mob of vampires came storming through. Hiero was chasing them around with the butcher knife, but he couldn’t chase them fast enough on his mismatched legs. Miles instantly pulled Lucy behind him to protect her and began charging around the room in dog form, thrashing other vampires left and right. Lucy threw herself over her mother’s body. Nephys ran to her side and cowered beside her. It was chaos.

  “What do we do?!” Nephys screamed.

  Then she realized she was the Necromancer. Maybe she could command them? She stood up and screamed at them to stop, but no one listened, and with a rampaging dog-monster and an imp with a butcher knife attacking them, it was no wonder. She figured they thought that once Miles and Hiero were out of the way, she and Nephys would be easy pickings, and they were probably right. She thought about using the “magic finger” to get their attention, but they were moving so fast she couldn’t even get close enough to touch one of them.

  “What good is it to be the Necromancer if no one will listen to me?!!” Lucy yelled to Nephys over the noise.

  “They don’t know you’re the Necromancer! They are still running on Hokharty’s last instructions, which were to do whatever Amanda told them to do! They’ll only listen to Hokharty!”

  “But Hokharty’s gone!” Lucy yelled back. They both looked at the fallen form of the ancient vampire.

  Nephys yelled to her over the din of the fight, “You have to summon him back!!”

  “What?!”

  “You’re the Necromancer! You can summon back other necromancers!”

  “How do I do that?!” she yelled back as the furnishings crashed around her.

  “I don’t know! You’re the Necromancer!”

  Lucy thought hard and looked at her knuckle. She bit down hard and a spurt of blood came out. She was oddly glad Moríro had made her do that before. It wasn’t so difficult now. She crawled over to the fallen, unassuming body of the bald man in scrubs and rubbed the bloody knuckle on his shirt, but nothing happened. Then she remembered that even the Japanese lantern had required words.

  “Quick, how do I say ‘return’ in Egyptian?!”

  “Um…try saying, “‘Nouy Hokharty!’”

  Lucy rubbed the bloody knuckle across the shirt again, and spoke the words, but nothing happened.

  “What’s wrong?!”

  “Oh! His full name is Hokharty-Ra, I think.”

  “Thanks for telling me!” Lucy yelled at him. She said the full name this time, but still nothing.

  “Why isn’t it working?!” she screamed as a vampire came close, only to be knocked away by the dog-monster at the last second.

  “I don’t know!” Nephys yelled back, “Maybe it’s another word like ‘summon’ or ‘come forth’ I just don’t know which one!”

  “Great!” Lucy yelled. She was beginning to understand why Moríro was so particular about this stuff. She tried a few more of Nephys’ suggestions, but nothing was working.

  The fight was worsening for their side. Miles and Hiero were fighting heroically, fending off the attacks and keeping Lucy and Nephys from harm, but the vampires were in a frenzy of bloodlust. Miles crashed to the floor right in front of them nearly unconscious after Betty landed a blow to his chest with both high heels. Hiero jumped up to defend him, and Betty retreated for fear of an amputation, but the vampires had them surrounded and were slowly gathering in for the kill.

  Lucy threw her arms around her mother certain it was the end. Just then, the Impala crashed through the doors to the garden and careened in
to the room before getting high-centered on the dais and coming to a grinding halt. Graber was on the roof, but when the Impala came to a sudden stop he tumbled off, crashing through the room sending the vampires flying in all directions.

  Tim stumbled out of the car, his arm under Sky’s armpit, dragging him from the wreck.

  “Are we winning?!” Tim yelled.

  “Not exactly,” groaned Miles.

  “What else is new?” retorted Sky with a raspy hoarse voice from under Tim’s arm.

  “Pharnt-Boooyalaarnt!” Hiero seemed to agree.

  “What’s going on?!” Tim screamed in horror as he saw the vampires regrouping.

  “The vampire’s have gone bloody crazy! That’s what!” Miles shouted, “And they won’t listen to anyone but Hokharty!!”

  “Amanda sent Hokharty back to the underworld and I can’t summon him back because I don’t know the right words!!” Lucy screamed.

  “What words?!” Tim yelled.

  “WE DON”T KNOW!!” Miles, Nephys and Lucy screamed together.

  “It could be ‘summon’ or ‘come forth’ or something else in Egyptian but I don’t know what!” Nephys explained frantically.

  Graber was already up on the other side of the room. He looked to where they were gathered around the fallen Hokharty. If Tim thought he had seen Graber angry before, he was wrong. Graber started across the room slowly, gathering steam as he went. The other vampires, Mikhail, Betty, the five kittens and all the rest were already falling in behind him.

  Tim looked down like something was dawning on him. “Oh! Oh! Um…Try ‘Hokharty-Ra Nu Peret!!’” Tim screamed.

  “New Parrot?!” Lucy yelled back incredulous.

  “It means ‘come forth’ in the old dialect!” Nephys yelled, feeling stupid he hadn’t thought of it, “Just do it!”

  Lucy jabbed the knuckle one last time and said the words. There was a pause. Graber was thundering like a rhino right for them. Then the blood Lucy smeared on Hokharty’s front began to boil and bubble and turned into a thin line of red smoke like a snake. The snake rose and wriggled into the body’s nose and mouth, but it was taking an agonizingly long time.

  “It’s working!” Nephys yelled and then he smiled at Lucy for a fraction of a second before the smile melted away to sheer horror. Lucy spun around. Graber was right on top of them his fists raised to smash Hiero and Miles into oblivion.

  Lucy screamed and covered her head, but just then she heard something else.

  “HALT!” It was Hokharty’s voice.

  Lucy looked up cautiously. The Father of All Vampires was standing before Graber and the other vampires, hand outstretched. The vampires had stopped. Graber looked around, frustrated. And for a moment, Lucy was certain he was going strike anyway, but Hokharty just looked up at him more sternly and the lumbering mass with half a head finally relented.

  Hokharty lowered his hand and looked at Lucy with a melancholy smile, but Lucy just let out a breath and closed her eyes, nearly fainting.

  In a small opening behind some bushes, the strange boy Yo-yo emerged somewhere near the outer wall of Rivenden. He had used his powers to come this far, but something about the wall was preventing him from using them to go beyond it. He was frustrated, but surprisingly calm and detached, a detachment created from a lifetime of having to be resourceful in the face of adversity. He had just begun to consider scaling the wall when a sound came from somewhere nearby.

  He didn’t crouch or hide, but waited to see what emerged from the bushes.

  It was the woman in amber glasses.

  She seemed a bit surprised to see him at first but then approached him rather respectfully and said simply, “Here, let me help you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Burial

  Miles surveyed the scene. Not thirty minutes before, it was practically the end of the world, but now an odd, though subdued, celebratory atmosphere pervaded the wrecked ballroom. Tim had set Sky down on the floor. The five kittens were cooing around him, and Sky was trying to look nonchalant despite the fact that he was obviously in horrid pain. Even Tim was getting a fair amount of attention from the five girls, recounting some of his and Sky’s heroics against Graber. It was hard to imagine that they were trying to kill them all just minutes ago. Graber was off somewhere, Miles didn’t know where, probably on Hokharty’s instructions. Hokharty was making the rounds with the rest of the skeletons and mummies that hadn’t fled, apologizing as if they had only just been invited to a really wild party that had gotten out of hand and not the end of the world. The vampires themselves were lying about lazily as usual, smug looks on their faces, not caring what side they were on as long as it was the winning one at the end of the day.

  “Bloody vampires,” thought Miles.

  There was only one person who didn’t seem to be enjoying the world not ending. Lucy was kneeling over her mom’s body with her back to everyone else. She was silent, but she wasn’t crying. Miles, Nephys and Hiero watched her from a ways off. She leaned over, and hugged her mother, pulling her body up into her arms. After a while Miles realized she wasn’t hugging her. She was trying to lift her. Miles tapped Nephys on the shoulder and they walked over to her cautiously.

  “Are ya okay, Lucy?” Miles asked. She was struggling to lift her mother’s body.

  She stopped and sighed, “I need…I need to bury my mom.”

  “But…Lucy…” Nephys began.

  “I just need to, okay?!” she said a bit angrily, and then more calmly, “It’s just…I can’t do it by myself.”

  Miles and Nephys looked at each other. Miles walked forward as if to pick up the body, but Lucy just pulled her mother’s body closer to her.

  “No,” she said adamantly, “I don’t want her touched by any more dead things.”

  Miles retreated. He was a little hurt, but he understood. He didn’t want to have anything to do with himself or the other vampires either.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Miles and Nephys turned around. It was Tim. He had pulled himself away from the adulation of the quints and followed Miles over.

  Lucy looked up, pulled her hair behind her ears and nodded.

  Tim walked forward, and reached an arm under the knees and shoulders of Lucy’s mother. He struggled a bit. Tim was tall but lanky, and not much bigger than Maggie Miller himself, but he steadied himself and lifted her mother’s body up gently as if carrying a child to bed.

  Lucy looked up at him and smiled a tense smile. Then she looked around. The whole room was looking at her, even the skeletons with their empty sockets.

  Lucy turned and walked out the garden doors. Tim followed closely behind with her mother’s body. Miles, Nephys, Hiero and the whole entourage fell in behind them, though at a respectable distance; even Sky came, though he had to have two kittens under each arm to manage it. Lucy wandered out into the woods surrounding the manor. Not far from the back garden doors was an open clearing. Lucy stopped and looked up into the early morning sky, and the whole crowd stopped forty paces back. It was practically the only part of the grounds not overgrown with weeds and bushes and still open to the sky.

  Lucy looked up and then said simply “Here. I think she’d like it here.”

  Then she fell to her knees slowly and started digging at the ground with her own fingernails. Tim looked around anxiously, but then he gently set her mother’s body down and began digging with his own hands right beside her. The whole crowd, all the mummies, skeletons, vampires and even the meat golems and pickled fetuses, stood by and watched on in wonder from a safe distance. It went on like that for several minutes before someone managed to rummage up a couple of shovels from somewhere in the manor.

  Tim and Lucy dug alone for a long while. Lucy was struggling and not making much progress, so Tim told her it was ok, he could do it. So Lucy sat down, and cradled her mom’s head in her lap. After the first hour, Tim began to fade. He paused to take a few deep breaths. Miles stepped forward and grabbed the shovel. Tim looked t
o Lucy for approval before letting Miles take it. Lucy simply nodded and looked down. Miles began to dig. Tim took a short breather, but before too long he started in again, as if taking a break was somehow cheating.

  It took hours. By the end, Nephys was helping and even Hiero was digging away with his butcher’s knife. They dug without stopping, or even knowing where they were going to stop. When the hole was over Miles’ head but not yet over Tim’s, Lucy said, “Stop. That’s good enough.”

  Miles climbed out of the hole and looked at Lucy. Lucy struggled to move the body over to the hole.

  “Can I help?” Miles asked simply.

  Lucy nodded and together they lifted the body into Tim’s arms who was still standing in the freshly dug grave.

  Tim cradled the body in his arms and looked up at Lucy. “We don’t have a coffin, but do you want a covering, or a shroud or something?”

  Lucy just shook her head no. “She was a gardener. She loved the dirt. She’d like it this way,” she said in a soft voice. Tim laid the body carefully on the floor of the grave on her back.

  “No,” Lucy said quietly, “Not like that…here…help me.” She swung her legs over the edge of the grave and held out her arms. Tim lifted her down into the grave. Lucy turned her mother on her right side and drew her knees up and placed her head on her right arm like a pillow. She looked like she had just curled up to take a quick nap.

  “She always slept like that,” Lucy said.

  Then Lucy leaned over and stroked her mother’s hair. She whispered something into her mother’s ear and kissed her face one last time. After a moment more, she stood up.

  Tim lifted her out of the grave and Nephys grabbed her hand to help her out. Last of all, Tim climbed out. The five of them stared down into the grave with Maggie Miller’s body at the bottom of it.